(An interview with Tony Klasson, a home church leader, who since this interview has moved to Kimberley, BC)

I am sitting in a cool, shaded living room on a warm summer evening, in the company of a rugged young man in his thirties. His shaved head accentuates his piercing blue eyes and the large earrings he wears in both ears. His bare feet and torn jeans give him an air of relaxed comfort as he sips water from a tall glass, and settles his feet up onto the coffee table.

Tony Klasson is a carpenter, and looks every bit the part in his worn clothing, with a new, half finished tattoo which he is proud to show off, but he is also the pastor of a small house church in Chilliwack, BC. I am here to find out why this graduate of Canadian Bible College, and former Alliance church youth pastor, chose to leave mainstream ministry and instead open his home to a small group of friends and neighbours to form a very different kind of church.

“I became a youth pastor in 1995, and I had long hair back then,” he remembers with a large smile, “and only one earring, which I had to remove, and to be honest, I felt like a fish out of water from day one.  At Bible school, they teach you how to do Bible study, but not how to be a pastor. I call myself the ‘anti-pastor’  because I don’t work the way the mainstream church works.”

A phrase enters my mind as I listen. “A reluctant pastor?” He smiles. “I’m not good at visiting people or praying with them. I’m a reader, and a thinker, and a faith grower. I love working with older kids like 18 to 24 year olds, because I want to help them find a faith of their own. I love to preach, but there weren’t many opportunities when I was a youth pastor. I realized that God has to use me as I am, and that I had to be willing to trust him.”

He describes how the church he served in Fort Saskatchewan, had clear plans and ideas as to how to move forward, but that it wasn’t right for him personally. “It felt as if they wanted a job filled, rather than me and my ideas. I was on a journey of self discovery, and until I realized where I wanted to go and why, I stayed put for four years.”

Hoping to find more ministry opportunities elsewhere, he explains how he and his wife, and their three young children, moved to BC and became involved with another local mainstream church. “We got all involved. I played in the band and my wife led a women’s group there, and on the surface, the church seemed very open to exploring new possibilities. We offered to be part of developing something new. I thought maybe there was an opportunity for planting a new church within the church…to operate independently, but nothing came of it. Again, it seemed like they were more interested in finding bodies to fill roles rather than the condition of people’s hearts.”

He sees church structure as one of the problems in mainstream church, and his tone indicates frustration as he speaks of the hierarchy and rules which he believes hinders the church from functioning as a living body. “I don’t like the rank and file of the church. There’s the senior pastor, and the elders and (in this church) you had to be a member to have any input.”  He describes a situation to illustrate his point. “A financial crisis occurred at our former church, and at the AGM we sat down to discuss the problem and attempt to resolve it. It struck me that it wasn’t actually a financial problem, but more a spiritual one.” He continues to explain how he attempted to suggest this and to pass a motion to deal with the issue, only to have his motion struck down by the senior pastor on the basis that he wasn’t considered a member, having not got around to transferring his church membership. “They appeared to have more interest in rules and bureaucracy than resolving problems and allowing the input of the Holy Spirit. Everyone looks up to the senior pastor rather than looking in his own heart and growing from there.”

He tells me about a picture he once saw on the front of Mcleans magazine, which had a deep impact on him. “It was a picture of your typical church, with a conveyor belt of ‘cookie cutter’ Christians coming out one after another, all exactly the same. It’s as if the church produces Christians, rather than Christians flavouring the church. Everyone seems to look the same, but if you think about the idea of giftedness… people’s hobbies and gifts, everyone is different, so any gathering of people should look completely different to any other, because it’s the sum of its parts.”

Clearly, he sees people as individuals, believing the Body of Christ should embrace and develop each individual and diverse part, and he shares more of his desire to see people grow in their own spirituality, speaking with increasing passion. “As a youth pastor I was often asked, “when are you going to develop the spiritual lives of our kids?” But my answer to that is that if you can’t figure it out for yourself, what’s the point of learning someone else’s spirituality?”

From his experience he believes that by default, many people have unintentionally been taught that they can’t worship properly unless they are a skilled musician, that they can’t learn from Scripture unless they have been to Bible college, or that they have to depend on the pastor or leader’s teaching and spirituality to find their own.“I wanted to teach people not to depend on people like me to grow spiritually. The whole idea of being a pastor, or a person who gets paid to help prompt spiritual growth in others seemed like a splinter in my brain. When I’m fostering spiritual growth for a pay cheque, it doesn’t seem right. I used to think that if people pay me to be a pastor, they will expect me to use my time for spiritual things, instead of them doing it themselves, and so I thought if I could get a regular job and be paid for something else, yet still be a pastor using my gifts, then the expectations on me would be different.”

This then is why he left the church to form a house church?  “I felt we needed to get unplugged from the big church. We like to start people on their spiritual journey, when they often don’t have a single spiritual building block in their life. We poke them and prod them to see what God wants to grow in them. I realized that Sunday morning when all the Christians are in church, is the only time when our neighbours are home and when we can interact with them. It occurred to me that it’s the dumbest thing in the world to be somewhere other than home on a Sunday morning. If you want to get to know your neighbours and be Jesus in their life, you need to be there.”

He shares how one Sunday morning in December, a few neighbours were putting up their Christmas lights, and he offered to help. One by one other neighbours appeared and soon most of the men who lived in that street were out together helping one another, and getting to know each other while they worked and their kids played. He believes this opened new opportunities for his family to share the gospel message with these non churched folk, who now regularly play street hockey together and have barbeques.

“Instead of being the family who were never involved because we were always away at church, we are right there in the midst of their lives, building relationship and sharing the gospel in practical ways.”

His hanging out with friends and neighbours has certainly had an impact, as he describes the many opportunities he and his wife have had to share their faith as they interact in their neighbours lives, resulting in one woman who had no previous interest in the church, taking the first steps to becoming a Christian, and regularly coming to their home church, which, doesn’t necessarily meet on a Sunday.“We meet any day of the week that suits our schedules,” he says, “ and not always in our own home. We like to give others the opportunity to host. We are very casual. We begin by eating together and we often have communion…not necessarily with bread and wine…once we used coffee and buns because it was all we had.  Jesus said to do it whenever you break bread and share together. We believe we can remember him and give thanks for his sacrifice at any time when we come together in his Name. After that we study together, talk, sometimes cry, or laugh, and share insights.”

He describes how in some ways it has been a personal challenge for him as the leader of this group following his traditional training. “Having gone through college and done all this reading, and having been taught to bring the meat of the Word out in the form of a traditional sermon, it’s a challenge to get down to just the real nuts and bolts of living our lives in front of these people and sharing the insights we have learned. There is nothing traditional about the way I lead or ‘preach’ now. It is more sharing insights and discussion. It’s been harder but much more rewarding. I’ve learned how to share what I believe from how I live. In the ‘big building’ church, God is ‘shop talk’.  There’s jargon and phrases that only the church understands. It can be hard for people coming in with no Christian background or understanding. Outside the church, if your spiritual life isn’t made real in how you live, it doesn’t make sense. You can go week after week hearing pulpit preaching, but often people don’t find it relevant.  I believe my wife and I are both doing more ministry now than ever before, and I hope and pray that we’ve made a more profound difference in our world, than the big building church. If people are going to see Jesus and hear stories of faith, it has to come from our lives and example, and we have to trust that the rest is up to God.”

His voice grows more emphatic as he shares his passion for God, and how he believes true pasturing is living moment by moment in God’s presence and stimulating others to do the same. “Everything I read or learn is an experience of God. I find worshipful moments in the CD’s we play, or in nature…in the mountains…that’s where I find God. To me, prayer without ceasing is being aware of Gods’ voice all the time…being in constant communion with him. I’ve never had Sabbath days like I have since we left the church. I’ve never been more aware of him, and never enjoyed his presence so much. I find God can speak through anything, even non Christian books and movies, and I feel that I have the ability to make connections between the things I experience and what God is wanting to say or teach us.”

Does he read much Christian material then?  “I don’t read non fiction or those ‘how to’ informational Christian books. I’m more interested in knowing more about the author…in knowing more about people.  I love mountaineering stories, and stories that bring out the best and the worst in people. I like war movies because I am interested in people and how they tick.”

An impression forms in my mind that this man is a pastor in the true sense of the word. Here is someone with a heart for people, whose desire is to see them grow and have the freedom to pursue God freely, independently and creatively as they find him in their everyday life experiences, not just briefly on a Sunday morning in a traditional church. Here is a man who can see that the Spirit of God is free and at work in every part of life, and in each unique individual, longing with him for growth, and for each person to be severed from the dependent state he feels the church is often responsible for imposing upon them as they wrestle with the rules and bureaucracy that so often takes over in the mainstream church.

“I don’t believe anything different theologically” he muses, “ I just wish that the spiritual leaders of our time could get a hold of the fact that people are being kept dependent on them and the church, instead of growing and being free to spread their own spiritual wings. I have dreams that a house church revolution would start,” he laughs.

As I sit in the company of this rugged carpenter with his soul searching gaze, and his passion for people, I can understand why the contemporary North American church might not accept him, with his two earrings and his tattoo, and his different ideas about what a church should be, just as religious leaders long ago rejected another carpenter whose face didn’t fit, and whose radical teaching challenged everything they had believed for generations, and worked so hard to preserve.