The many years of repeated failures by the existential fringe of the simple, “organic” church movement – with authors like Felicity Dale, Frank Viola, Milt Rodriguez, Jon Zens, Keith Giles and their buddies – stand as an object lesson moving forward:

Without the plenary authority of Scripture, simple participatory churches don’t succeed.

Although they are now fading away, in their day these fringe authors dismissed the plenary authority and discipline of Scripture – and in some cases even denied that the Bible is God’s written word – to peddle a Jesus of their own perception.

They then used the legitimate yearnings of others for simple, participatory house churches to promote their disastrous, extraneous agendas …

Eventually derailing the hopes and aspirations of many.

Their false Christ – who was little more than a projection of their own “deeper life” angst, post-modern sensibilities and trans-Biblical ideologies – inevitably led to dysfunctional, insular and anemic “communities.”

As each of their sporadic local “communities” then became more and more in-grown, eventually all but a handful of their most ardent “true believers” fade away – disillusioned and ashamed.

They, however, would then move on to some unsuspecting new group in some new town or forum to find new devotees through their books and blogs in order to do it all again – over and over.

They did more to destroy the promise and potential of simple, organic churches than anyone else.

Their pattern was clear:

Over time, their coordinated elevation of a false Christ and existential agenda over the plenary authority and discipline of Scripture became a wholesale disaster.

They laid a foundation of shifting sand for many sincere but unsuspecting people, and produced many wrecked lives and wrecked churches.

Their deceptions also led to a history of infidelity, sexual predation, abuse and cover up among them – with ongoing threats against those who dared expose their patterns of deceit.

Simply put, their private lives and actual histories were at odds with their carefully cultivated, but fake, public personas and grandiose claims.

Insanity is still doing “church” their way, over and over, and expecting different results.

Don’t be insane.

If you seek simple church, forget all the cookie-cutter books, blogs, courses and conferences by the failed existential fringe.

They represented a self-serving cottage industry selling “how to” on things they themselves “didn’t do” – because what they were peddling didn’t actually work over time in their own lives, home towns or anywhere else.

Instead, start fresh and learn from those with nothing to peddle or personal “ministry” to promote, but instead have an ongoing history of humbly and sustainably “being the church” with others in their own lives, living rooms and home towns.

Forget all the extraneous agendas of yesterday’s existential fringe …

Get back to simple faith and simple virtue …

Chill out …

And embrace the practice of simple hospitality.

Then see what God does as people become comfortable expressing their wonderfully diverse, vibrant relationships with the Living Word to one another and to a waiting world, in simple submission to the authority and discipline of His written word.

There can be no other sure foundation for our lives or churches.

It’s really not that complicated!