Charismactivism

Home » Church & Theology » “Go Out, Come In” – a New (or Old) Type of Church Service

“Go Out, Come In” – a New (or Old) Type of Church Service

Join the Jesus revolution! Write your email adress to follow this blog and get updates about new posts via email.

Archive

Networks

Outside

Outside

I love my church! Uppsala Mosaik is a small house church in Uppsala, Sweden (not to be confused with the mega church Mosaic in Los Angeles, California (we’re way smaller than them)) focusing on the Kingdom of God. We’re evangelical, charismatic and activist, and our aim is, like many other churches, to love God and love people.

When I visited Mosaik for the first time in 2010, I was amazed by its structure. We met in a pub back then. We had coffee break in the middle of the service, between worship and Jesus stories. Jesus stories, by the way, are when everyone can share a testimony about what Jesus has done in their life. And when the service was coming to an end, students flooded the pub while Mosaik volontueers started to serve free pancakes.

Inside

Inside

I sat down with the pastor, Hans Sundberg, and he explained the theology behind what Mosaik looked like. In Sweden, people are leaving churches like crazy, so that statistically, if the drop-off speed would remain at this rate, there would be no Christians here in 2040. Now, God is good and we pray for revival, but Hans was convinced that the church must leave the old Christendom-structures that builds large cathedrals expecting people to fill them, and becoming sad when they don’t.

This is why Mosaik was formed with a 50/50-vision: Half of what we do should be outreach. This is why the services back then ended with pancake handouts, so that we could connect with the students living in that area. And this is why Hans emphasized that the evangelism downtown that Mosaik is arranging every Tuesday, has the same status as the Sunday service. Evangelism is not just something for evangelists, he taught, but evangelists should train all saints to evangelize (Eph 4:11).

Outside

Outside

I joined the church and after two years or so I became a part of the leadership team. We struggled with that even though we emphasized the 50/50-vision, not everyone who were coming on Sundays turned up on the Tuesday evangelism. We then came up with the idea of “Go out, come in”-services. We started the service on the street, handing out coffee to people, sharing the Gospel and praying for healing, and after an hour or so we moved into my apartment to worship in our living room. We also did it the other way around – starting inside and then moving out – “Come in, go out” services.

This has been really effective! Most people that come for the “in” part also join the “out” part, and many who used to be shy when it comes to evangelism has grown in that area. I really think this is a strategy inspired by God. In fact, after I joined Mosaik I realized that the early church viewed evangelism as something mandatory – all the disciples in the apostolic church met both in homes and in the temple courts (Acts 2:46). And when they met in the temple courts, they were evangelizing (Acts 5:12, 20-21). The biblical church were both going out and in, and that’s what my church likes to do as well.

Inside

Inside

 


8 Comments

  1. I love it! =D

    Last week, my wife and I joined with two other families in the creation of a new home group – which may sound fairly normal to some folks. However, this group is vast different that any that I have seen (or been a part of) before in that it is a family-friendly small group with a service focus which involves the kids in every aspect from teaching to serving to praying and worshipping. In other words, the children (who range from 4 to 8) are not sent off into another room to play while the adults study the Bible… instead, every member of the family is involved in every area of the group from worship, teaching, evangelism, etc. As the weather here (which, I’m sure, is not cold by Sweden standards) gets better, we are planning on taking the group out into the community two weeks a month (i.e. every other week in a home, the others out in a park or nursing home or somewhere). I’m not sure what is going to happen…but I am excited to give it a shot and see what the Lord does. It should be fun. =)

  2. […] skrev häromdagen på min engelska blogg om våra ”gå ut, kom in”-möten i Mosaik. Det är vårt sätt att få […]

  3. […] Christians. In the West, it is very uncommon that the whole church leaves (or sells) the building to go out and share the Gospel together, and this builds a culture where Western Christians do not evangelize as often as Christians in the […]

  4. […] And here’s a description of how my own church does this in practice. […]

  5. […] In the video below, Micael Grenholm talks about seven reasons why Jesus followers should hit the streets with the Gospel message. He is part of the Mosaik church in Uppsala, Sweden, which spends an equal amount of time on the street evangelizing as they do in the church a building (edit: they are … […]

  6. […] “Go Out, Come In” – a New (or Old) Type of Church Service […]

  7. […] Testament, God’s character and other religions as we went out to evangelize according to our “Come in, go out” […]

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

The author

Micael Grenholm, a Swedish charismactivist, apologist and author.

Micael Grenholm, a Swedish charismactivist, apologist and author.

Check out my YouTube channel!

A Living Alternative

God vs Inequality

Goodreads

%d bloggers like this: