A New Model of Church: Ecclesiological DNA (eDNA)

Jason Shepperd leads the Church Project in Houston. It is an ancient but new church model based upon decentralized House Churches who focus upon discipling relationships. Jason will be a main stage speaker at our 2024 National Disciple Making Forum, May 1- 2. We think all who follow our ministry will benefit from his summary of the model adopted by the Church Project.

-Bobby Harrington

At some point along the way, for everyone who follows Jesus, a personal decision must be made about the local church. People will have to decide how much they love the church. How much they believe in it. What the church is supposed to be. What is its purpose. How does it function? How is it led? What is my engagement in the church?

These questions are especially true for people who are called to oversee and shepherd the church.

For some reason, from a very young age, I started caring about these kinds of questions. I had no sense that in the future I would be giving my life to serve the church. But other people quietly sensed that I would. And somewhere along the way, it became clear to me that the entire focus of my life was to be directed at serving and shepherding and guiding in the local church.

So, these questions became even more important to me. As a result, I began deep studies of the church. I studied on my own. I pursued church history. I even spent time pursuing a doctoral degree with an emphasis in the early, early church. I traveled the globe and engaged in the local church in dozens of countries.

As I studied the Scriptures, church history, and the church around the world, I knew there was a disconnect between what I was reading, the burning in my heart when I read the early church in the Word, and the church that I, myself was helping to lead.

Somewhere along the way, these convictions became so clear and the frustrations so deep, I couldn’t stay. I had to leave. I was experiencing a result of a verse that had originally different application, but the same consequence: “having a form of godliness but denying its power.” I began to believe that the churches I had been a part of, and I had helped to LEAD, had some very beautiful aspects. They had a form of godliness. But they were denying us full power.

Through all my studies, I began to see some very simple, consistent characteristics across the early church. These characteristics were also present in historical and global movements. They were present from the very beginning, across all people, and all places, and all time. I named this discovery “eDNA – Ecclesiological DNA.”

This eDNA had three consistent strands:

Decentralized from primary place and priest
Distributed pastoral leadership
Diverse discipleship communities

So, I left a beautiful church by most metrics, that I loved, and endeavored to start something on my own. I had no contemporary model to collaborate with or seek counsel from. I had no name, no place, no money, no people, no developed nomenclature, or systems… But I had some biblical principles that I would pursue and not let go of.

In 2010, I started Church Project. I described our church as “A Church of House Churches.” We would be one church, made up of many House Churches. We would DISTRIBUTE pastoral leadership, we would be DECENTRALIZED from primary pastor and primary place, and we would share life together in DIVERSE discipleship communities.

What started with 40 people, gathering in two house churches, has evolved into around 4000 people weekly in one location, with many other Church Projects that have been planted around our area, and around the world.

We are DECENTRALIZED from primary place and primary priest. We have no phone number. We have no door to knock on with a foyer and a receptionist. We do no marketing. No mailers. There is no way to connect to our church other than through House Churches.

No movement is ever fully decentralized. But the gospel movements in the early church had diminished centralization. They were lightly overseen and directed, but they were not super centralized and controlled.

We function with DISTRIBUTED pastoral leadership. We have fully empowered lay people to do all of the frontline pastoral work. We have firemen and teachers and engineers and doctors and businesspeople and attorneys, who are doing weddings and funerals and baptisms and benevolence. We have identified, equipped, and empowered people to do the work of pastoral ministry.

And we gather in DIVERSE discipleship communities. We only identify community geographically. When you gather geographically, you force diversity. House Churches are diverse socio-economically. We are diverse generationally. We are diverse with different levels of spiritual maturity. We are diverse culturally and racially. The church in the Scriptures, and throughout history and globally, lived in diverse community.

Older and younger. Rich and poor. Mature and immature. Different colors and cultures… All pursue Jesus together in the same community. They meet each other’s needs. They help each other grow in their faith. They love and care for one another.

You can’t fully tell about true diversity on a Sunday morning in our auditorium with 2000 chairs. But you can get a true sense of true diversity in living rooms and around kitchen tables across our city.

The reaction to the misappropriation of centralization has resulted in an elimination of any corporate gatherings. The rhyming helps me remember what I often try to articulate–the beauty that God intended through the corporate gathering of the body, is often eliminated as a reaction to its historical misuse.

God obviously believed there was beauty to be gained through corporate gatherings. But, He obviously did not intend for Sundays to become the monstrous caricature that it is today.

In the Old Testament, He gathered the people together at certain times from across the land, and people met regionally weekly. In the New Testament, they were gathering often early by the thousands, and then weekly when able across the nations. In heaven, we will be gathering together too. It seems that the total elimination of corporate gatherings might be going against God’s design for His church.

But, of course, the misappropriation of the Sunday gathering has to be corrected.

Church Project was a pursuit to become a prototype to prove that a true hybrid could exist. We wanted to show that you could gather simply together in the macro, while being decentralized and distributed into the micro.

14 years into our existence, all of our principles are still practiced. Even with thousands of people, we still have a generally inaccessible staff that exists to support what happens within and across House Churches. Our staff size is about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of most churches our size, due to distributing pastoral leadership. We still have no access to centrality throughout the week, but easy and direct regular access into House Churches across our city.

This approach also allows for what we describe as “Simplicity for the Sake of Generosity.” In addition to the unknown and unquantified benevolence that happens regularly and generously within House Churches, we have collectively directed in the tens of millions of dollars towards Gospel centered ministries, and church planting.

It is also within this approach that we are able to teach our body how to become an evangelist and share the gospel. We practice the approach of Good.God.Gospel conversations. We teach our people how Jesus modeled for us how to have a Good conversation, that leads to a God conversation, that leads to Gospel conversations.

The gospel flourished and disciples were made within an ecosystem. Leadership, gatherings, discipleship, mission, and more, were all functioning together within some simple and commonly held forms.

Current church leadership must consider whether the ecosystem they are building, have bought into, or are passively maintaining, is the type of ecosystem that allows for the intended functions of the church.

The priesthood of the believer.

Distributed pastoral leadership.

Diverse discipleship communities.

Simplicity for the sake of radical generosity.

Jesus said he would build His church. We just believed it was a good idea to seek and follow His plans for how He wanted His church to gather and grow and go into the world and make disciples.

With much love and camaraderie for the sake of the beautiful body of Jesus,

Jason Shepperd
Church Project
www.churchproject.org
www.jasonshepperd.com
www.goodgodgospel.com