Our church, The Branch, is in the process of developing a community of believers who are committed to each other as we pursue following Jesus on mission from our neighborhood to the nations.
Weekly Church Gathering — Sundays 5:00-8:00pm+*
Our approach is not just a human invention but a divine vision. Inspired by the church model from the book of Acts and the Epistles, we gather in homes or other existing places, with no financial overhead. This simplicity allows us to naturally multiply as we grow. We see this model being adopted globally, with many churches multiplying and gathering in a similar way. The Lord gave me this vision years ago, and we’re now walking it out in faith, in solidarity with our brothers and sisters worldwide who do the same.
When we gather, our time is devoted to three areas:
Look Back 👈
❤️🎣 Care & Accountability – As we eat, check in with each other, encourage, and pray.
How am I doing?
How am I obeying the word?
How did I do with my goals set from the previous week?
GROW: love/obedience in connection/relationship with Jesus?
GO: share, disciple, train?
🙌 Worship - Direct focus on praise and worship of God through song, the Lord’s Supper, Scripture reading (ex: Psalms), sharing praises and thanksgiving. Take time for prayer.
👁️ Vision Cast - remind/refocus minds/hearts. The Why? What should we BE and DO?
Encourage & inspire by sharing examples of what God is doing.
Wrap up this portion with prayer for the unreached and/or the persecuted church.
Look Up ☝️
📖 Lesson - Time in the Word/Scripture to discover for obedience: (when using a story) tell, rebuild, read, re-read: ask questions to discover and discuss the good news of the Kingdom to believe and live out. Teach, train, and facilitate with questions and discussion from a Word-based tool, etc.
Be sure to discover for obedience (not just knowledge).
Play a Bible video for the younger children.
Look Forward 👉
🏃♂️ Practice - The story/Scripture, tool, etc, from the lesson. Split into pairs/usually best or as a large group or two, depending on context.
🥅 Set Goals - Pause and listen to the Holy Spirit; write out any assignments and adjustments He is showing you to obey and live out this coming week. Be as specific and instructive as possible. Use the lesson as a springboard in hearing the Lord and also think, “How will I practice and pass this forward?”.
How will I GROW in my love for Jesus, shown in my obedience and connection/relationship with Him?
How will I GO to engage others in sharing, discipling, and training?
BE SPECIFIC 😀
🙏🔥 Commission Prayer - The focus of this prayer should cast vision forward with authority and power for our commitment, focus, and consistency to live on mission. If time permits, also pray for specific mission/vision-related needs.
I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. — John 15:5
Our focus is on the mission of Jesus —> because obedience to His commands is our focus —> because Jesus is our supreme focus.
We are committed to disciple-making with an strong emphasis on the unreached (Unreached People Groups or UPGs, to learn more, click here).
We define a disciple of Jesus as someone who follows Jesus as both Lord and Savior, loving God with their whole heart and others as themselves —> obeying his commands, which includes intentionally helping others do the same.
The DNA piece of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) …teaching them to obey all that I’ve commanded you, is central to disciple-making. We invest our lives deeply in others to help them love God, hear His voice, and obey Him. We disciple others to Jesus, and the Holy Spirit does what we cannot do. We are co-laboring with God as disciple-makers, watching God transform lives as we abide and invest.
Our weekly gathering can and should contribute to providing a space of overlap to the discipleship process because God is always working to transform us. However, we don’t believe that our gatherings replace intentional relationship-based disciple-making.
We place a strong emphasis on the priesthood of the believer where every follower of Christ is encouraged as a minister of the gospel of Kingdom of God. We all have unique giftings and roles to serve toward the building up of the body of Christ to reach the lost and make disciples. Ephesians 4:11-12 is a foundational text about our calling to equip others for the work of the ministry to train up others to multiply the work of Jesus.
— More to come on this subject will soon be on our Disciple-making page.
Love God + Love Others —> Make Disciples = Heavenly Father is glorified.
We begin our time together with a shared meal and try to end close to 8/8:30pm, but we often find ourselves going past this, allowing time for more fellowship, discipleship, and prayer.
(Note: Links will be added on terms like disciple-making and redirected where we go in-depth on our philosophy and process, which is modeled after Jesus as we read in the Gospels.) Being a part of our house church gathering does not replace intentional relationship-based disciple-making. It adds to it but is not the same.)
