Hi, I'm Wayne Jacobsen and I want to welcome you to our little corner of the web. Here you'll find a lot of my writings, in article and book form, and a lot of what I share with others on this journey in blogs, podcasts and audio recordings. We provide all of these things in hopes of encouraging you to discover how Jesus wants to help you to live more deeply in him and in the affection his Father has for you.

If you're new here and want to get a quick feel for what this site is all about, you can read about our passion, and view the new video on Sharing the Father's Affection. Then you might want to review such articles such as, Why I Don't Go to Church Anymore and The Deepest Freedom. If you have a bit more time reading He Loves Me and listening to Transition will give you a more complete look at what we hope to encourage in people like you. Like most of our best stuff here you'll find them freely available to download and pass along to others as you might desire.

So, ultimately I hope this website is about you and your journey. I hope you find confirmation here for things God has already put in your heart, even if they don't fit into many of the religious voices and forms of our day. The life of Jesus was never meant to be a religion of rituals and rules to practice. Rather, Jesus has invited you into a transforming friendship with him that will allow you to share in his unfolding purpose in the earth even as his character and grace take shape in you.

Our prayer is that we all might come to discover God the Father, Son and Spirit as they really are, and thus come to experience the church of Jesus Christ as she truly is taking shape all over the planet today. I know many of you have been disillusioned by what men and women call the 'church' in our day, but isn't that a good thing? If your illusions about church have been dissed, then you may just be ready to see her as she really is—an amazing family of people from across the whole earth who are learning to live under Father's care, surrendered to Jesus' leading, and connected relationally as his Spirit desires.

It's a life well worth living, even through the most trying circumstances of this age, and one I pray you find with increasing reality, freedom and joy.

Friends and Friends of Friends

By Wayne Jacobsen

BodyLife • September 2007

This is part 12 of an occasional series on Life in the Relational Church. Check our archive on-line for the previous articles in this series.

Since I first wrote The Naked Church twenty years ago now, I have searched for a definition of the church that encompasses her majesty and yet explains in simplicity who she is and how she functions in the world. At first I thought that could be answered in structural ways as I moved from the mechanics of large institutions into more relational structures, like cell groups, home groups, and house churches.

But it didn’t work out that way, for which I am incredibly grateful. Defining the church structurally has two problems. First, the life of the church is found in the affection and cooperation of people who are living in Christ. No structure guarantees that reality. In fact, smaller groups who practice performance-based religion are even more dangerous than larger ones who do. Second, these definitions were inherently divisive—excluding brothers and sisters who met in different structures and inculcating a false sense of superiority in those who think they have finally recaptured ‘the secret’ of New Testament church life.

All the while, my relationships never reflected the reality of the definition for which I groped. I had close fellowship with brothers and sisters who gathered in a variety of expressions, all the way from large institutional gatherings to those who just live relationally alongside others. I wanted a definition that transcends all the structural ways we tend to see church.

This summer, however, I stumbled upon a definition that expresses the life of the church better than any I’ve yet run across. It crystallized in my thinking at a worldwide gathering of believers this summer and it has grown on me more ever since. Its application to a variety of settings seems to bear witness to its clarity as well as practicality. What is that definition? Simply I am coming to see the beauty of the church of Jesus Christ emerge in this day as “friends, and friends of friends.”