Twenty years ago I was leading many to the Lord, especially from the local jail and other places at the edges of polite society.

I would then try to get these new believers plugged into the church I was attending – which at the time was considered a solid, dynamic, Bible-believing church.

But try as I did, it never seemed to happen. New converts from the “street” are good at seeing through facades. They’d quickly sense all the hypocrisy and phony represented on the front stage each Sunday – and wanted no part of it.

It got to the point that I couldn’t, in good faith, bring them anymore to that church. But I couldn’t find another church that didn’t have the same issues, rooted in the very hierarchical, pastor-centric structure common in nearly all churches here in the U.S. over the last several decades.

Essentially, those churches are more about the power, position, and prestige of the “senior” leader than about true ministry to one another for the mutual edification of each other …

Even though the New Testament condemns the former but commands the latter.

So I quietly started opening my home on Friday nights for a meal and fellowship, where everyone could share, be real with each other, and encourage one another in the Lord.

That was the beginning of our journey over the last twenty years into relational participatory gatherings with flat, rather than hierarchical leadership, which focus on ministry one to another instead of ministry by the one.

It’s been challenging at times, but I’ll never go back to the old model.

Perhaps it’s time that you too take a chance, step out in faith, and trust that being the church as the New Testament actually shows it is indeed possible …

Despite all of your prior presumptions about church as you’d previously come to know it.

See what the New Testament actually says, seek the Lord about what He wants and let Him prepare you, then do wherever He says …

Even if it leads you outside your comfort zones.