By: Sean Steckbeck and Marco Gmur
My wife and I have served in Israel in ministry to the Jewish people for seven years now. My wife is a native sabra Israeli who came to the Lord through supernatural circumstances while attending an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva in Jerusalem. For the last three years we have embraced multiplying and simple forms of house congregations.
We truly believe that the house congregation concept started in Israel and it is time to return to Israel. The idea of multiplying families is not only a New Testament Christian concept, but an ancient Old Covenant and Hebraic concept. The economy of the Torah was based around the home and around agricultural communities. The context of the oikos and agricultural community was the basis for everyday discipleship (Deut. 6:4-10), with a temple-centric pilgrimage only being adhered to three times a year (Deut 16:16-17, Ex. 23:17). In other words, the temple was only the center of worship three times a year, the majority of the time the home was the center of both worship and discipleship. The oikos of the New Testament is much more than just the physical home; it also consists of the family units of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. God’s own Trinitarian oikos is expressed with Him as Father and Yeshua as Son. With this in mind, we need to realize what God is doing in the Global House Church movement around the world with rapidly multiplying house congregations is a fulfillment of an Old Covenant pattern and prophecy and part of the very nature of God. This was part of his plan from the beginning. Now let us take a journey with Abraham on what my spiritual father (Marco Gmur) and I call the “Way of the Fathers.”
“And I will bless those who bless you, And the ones who curse you I will curse. And in you all the families on the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12:3 NASB).”
Here God is promising that every family (oikos) on the earth will be blessed through the offspring of Abraham. There are some versions in English which say “nations”, but in the Hebrew the actual word is “mishpachot” which literally means families. Also the families of Israel will weep when they look upon the return of Yeshua (Zechariah 12:11-14). This is why we must go beyond the vocabulary of multiplying house congregations and start using the word “multiplying spiritual families”, and goes beyond the vocabulary of “apostolic church planting teams” and start using the word “apostolic families.” Families naturally multiply; it’s in the very nature of every family to multiply. Part of the move away from the institution and towards family can be described in Paul’s day that “you have many teachers, but not many fathers” (1 Corinthians 4:15). So the first part of restoring the way of the fathers is through reviving family language and patterns.
The second step is that we must honor our older brothers, Isaac and Ishmael, and our spiritual father Abraham. Through Isaac and Ishmael all the families of the earth will be blessed. Of course, Isaac, as the son of promise, brought forth the Jewish Messiah- Yeshua. As is written, “Salvation is of the Jews.” However, Ishmael also received promises to become a mighty nation and that he would live in the presence of his brothers (Genesis 16:11-12, Genesis 17:18-21).
Isaiah 19 is the fulfillment of a highway that God wants to build between Isaac and Ishmael together to be a blessing to all the families of the earth:
“In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and the Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The LORD almighty will bless them, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:23-25).
It’s amazing that God in His infinite wisdom decides to bless the entire earth through both the sons of Isaac and the sons of Ishmael together joined by a special highway. With all the fighting today between the Jewish people and Muslims, the last thing one would expect is that through their companionship the nations of the earth will be blessed.
As I said earlier, my wife and I have been in ministry to the Jewish people for nearly seven years, and only this last year have we grasped the importance of this key. Marco Gmur, my spiritual father, has been in ministry to the Jewish people and to Muslim people for many years. He kept both ministries separate until the Holy Spirit spoke to him that this is done together for maximum effectiveness as a spiritual law. We have seen many testimonies of God’s faithfulness now as we embrace both the Isaiah 19 highway between Jews and Muslims and the One New Man (Ephesians 2) between the Jews and the nations.
One day I was invited to pray for a Muslim Jordanian immigrant to Israel in Beer Sheva. He had a disease in both of his legs that kept him bedridden for a month. Upon arrival at his house, he refused prayer because he was a Muslim and didn’t want prayer in the name of Isa (Jesus). After sharing with him that Jesus heals the sick, from Surah al Imran 3:42-56 in the Quran, he was open for prayer the next day. He invited all his Muslim friends. He was healed and saw a vision of Jesus that same day in the midst of his Muslim friends. He then invited his Jewish neighbor to join in as many Muslims lined up for healing. That day both a Jewish lady received the Lord and a Muslim lady under one living room!
In one of the house congregations a young Druze (a break-off of Shia Islam) believer commented, “I know Jesus is Lord because there is no other place where Jews, Bedouins, Druze, and Christian Arabs can worship together in one room!”
In the last year, through a Luke 10 strategy, we have seen over 100 healings in the homes of Jewish sabra Israelis secular and Orthodox, Jewish immigrants, Bedouins, Druze, Palestinians, Christian Arabs, and even Gentile immigrants. God is using Jewish believers to minister to Palestinians, and Palestinians to reach Jewish people. He is using the Druze believer for both. The Bedouins, previously an unreached people group, now has a new believer! This has been mostly in the Negev desert and the Hebron hills, both the territory and home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is what was named archeologically “the Way of the Fathers.” The “Way of the Fathers” which the Byzantines built can still be seen in its remnant form today. However, God is spiritually rebuilding the Isaiah 19 highway and Way of the Fathers in the south of Israel as a fresh house church (family oikos) multiplying movement!
“He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” – Malachi 4:6
Let’s return to the “Way of the Fathers”. The House Church movement is one expression of this return, but let us embrace the entire return. We need to embrace the return to family language as an expression of our ecclesiology, a return to the physical sons of the patriarchs in Isaac and Ishmael, and a return to the Isaiah 19 road of reconciliation of Isaac and Ishmael in the gospel.
Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was but one and I blessed him and made him many.” – Isaiah 51:2
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