Category: Christianity

Many of us increasingly suffer from confusion about where to go to church. We are unwilling to keep going to traditional ‘big’ church. I think there is an another, and more biblical alternative and the purpose of this article is to advocate for it. It is variously called house churches, church that meets in the home, simple church, organic church, local ekklesia and various other names. 

Every ‘big church’ I know, operates with paid, ordained, denominationally authorized, institutional full-time ministers, often with no experience of the real world, or experience that is decades old and long forgotten, ‘ministering’ week in, week out to a passive congregation. If we are to believe Paul in 1 Corinthians 11-14, these passive congregants have all been blessed with unique spiritual gifts, given for the express purpose of ministering to one another. And yet the paid, full-time minister has taken upon himself (rarely herself) the role which in the NT is the birthright of ever believer. 

The result of such bare-faced robbery is stunted, immature, diminutive, pygmy believers, of whom Paul might well say ‘But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.’

Now admittedly, this rather harsh judgement is ameliorated somewhat by our small groups, our personal friendships, our reading (especially our reading) and our personal spiritual practices, but it remains true that when I am in a St Matt’s service, and Ian or someone else is preaching, I can look around at the one hundred or so Saints in the congregation and wonder how much more blessing we would be ministering to one another if our speaking rights had not been stolen.

I wonder if Paul could write of these clergy-centric, ‘one man band’ churches: ‘through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.’ I suspect not. 

Howard Snyder, an elder statesman of writings on the church, wrote the following. ‘The clergy-laity dichotomy is a direct carry-over from pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism and a throwback to the Old Testament priesthood. It is one of the principal obstacles to the church effectively being God’s agent of the Kingdom today because it creates a false idea that only ‘holy men’, namely, ordained ministers, are really qualified and responsible for leadership and significant ministry’.

And Christian Smith (a Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame) wrote: ‘It is simply impossible to construct a defensible biblical justification for the institution of clergy as we know it’.

Does the following description of our local church ring bells?

‘The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family. There is the authoritarian presence of the minister — the professional who know all of the answers and calls most of the shots — whom few ever challenge either because they don’t dare of because they feel it would do no good if they did. There is the outward camaraderie and the inward loneliness of the congregation. There are the unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety’s sake are kept more or less under cover. There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativities which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done.’ (Frederick Buechner)

Home churches are (or should be) non-hierarchical gatherings, where all believers are encouraged to participate and minister, using the gifts God has given them, to one another. 

There are millions of Christians throughout the world who are dissatisfied with conventional church to a sufficient degree to cause them to look at alternative ways of meeting. As a result countless home churches, simple churches, organic churches, local ekklesias  etc. are springing up all over the world. As the following photo was posted on a local church Facebook page on 29/6/21 shows, meeting in homes is hardly unbiblical.

Why I left the institutional church
One of my favourite authors left the institutional church for ‘organic church’ some 25 years ago. He wrote an article some time ago in which he gave ten reasons why he left the institutional church. Unfortunately I was unable to obtain permission to reproduce the article, as it has been revised and published in a new book. I’ve attempted to paraphrase it below, as well as condense the blessings he recounts upon actually making the change.
He makes a very significant comment by way of introduction. He points out that most people leave the institutional church because they are looking for a more genuine expression of Christianity — they are looking for face-to-face community, where every member participates, and where Jesus is deeply known and loved.

One autor, Reggie McNeal put it this way. ‘A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith.’ 

So here’s my paraphrase of his ten reasons for leaving the institutional church.

He was not able to share with his brothers and sisters what the Lord had given to him — even in small groups which were still very much under the control of the institutional church with which they were associated.

In like manner, he was not able to hear and receive from his brothers and sisters what the Lord had given to them — this ‘right’ to minister was reserved to the minister and his staff.

He discovered that many of the institutional church’s practices were not biblical — not rooted and grounded in Scripture. Most of its practices developed from non-Christian sources after the death of the apostles, and many are directly counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ. In fact he wrote a book about it.

The institutional church taught the priesthood of all believers, but didn’t actually practice it.

The institutional churches he attended did not care properly for the poor, including members of institutional congregations so impoverished that their utilities had been turned off and the church was completely ignorant of their plight.

The churches he attended were unable or unwilling to minister in the realm of demon possession.

He grew tired of the spiritual shallowness he experienced in the institutional churches he attended. He sought practical handles on how to live the indwelling life of Christ, but found none. He didn’t experience any teaching on the inexhaustible riches of Christ.

He became increasingly bored with church services, which were more or less identical no matter what church he attended. 

Church was always predicable. There was no evidence of the often surprising intervention of Jesus in the services he attended.

The fulness of Jesus Christ could never be expressed by one member of the body. It takes all the member of the body to express the fulness of Christ and that simply doesn’t happen in institutional churches.

When he made the change, He found his spiritual instincts, which were crying out for face-to-faxce community, mutual sharing and receiving were met. He learnt that he could not live the Christian life by himself. He saw how critical it is for local ekklesias to live under the direct headship of Christ without the intervention of ’the minister’, the Parish Council or other governing bodies. He waxes eloquent about the local ekklesia, where every member is giving to others, is ‘just below the glory of heaven. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a body of believers function under Christ’s headship without any one leading, facilitating, or controlling’. He found spiritual depth and maturity, He found that ‘mutual edification’ resulted in transformation in ways that hearing sermons and singing worship songs did not.

Visions for a home church

I wrote the following a good few years ago. There is not a lot I would change. All I would say is that it represents a vision for a fairly mature home church and certainly not for one just getting going — taking its first baby steps. Most Christians used to ‘worshipping’ in an institutional church need considerable training to be able to fully participate in every member ministry in a home church environment. God’s ‘frozen’ people are so used to being consumers of sermons and bible studies prepared by others, that a fair bit of work is required to wean them off such ‘milk’.

I’ve long been a critic of church the way it is commonly done in the various churches I have been a member of. It occured to me that I really should write up what I think church would look like if it was more faithful to the NT pattern. I’ve been thinking about it, and came up with a scenario which would be much closer to the NT pattern than what we have in the big denominations. As I said, it is a vision for a fairy mature gathering, with a reasonable number of members — certainly not a vision for starting out.

The first thing is that the church would meet in in homes, and the number of people who were part of an individual home church could be no more than 20 to 30 people for practical reasons.  There would be no paid ministry and no ordination and no official or ‘assumed’ leader.

I envisage that the church meeting would be quite long — meeting around 9:00am, probably on a Sunday morning. It would go through to midday or 12:30pm, after which there would be a meal, which would incorporate Holy Communion. Perhaps the meal migh be once a month or qat some interval longer than weekly. Importantly, the meeting would be the only meeting — ther would be no expectation of attending numerous other meetings during the week

The really important thing would be for the meeting to be structured sufficiently loosely that the meeting can be genuinely managed by the Holy Spirit.

One person would oversee or ‘manage’ the meeting. I originally thought that such a person should vary from meeting to meeting. However I have come to realise that this is not necessarily the case Leading meetings is a gift of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, Paul gives a list of people whom God has appointed in the church. One group is called ‘administrators’. This translation is favoured in virtually every English translation of the Bible. However the Greek word kuberneseis means helmsman, or more precisely ‘acts of helmsmanship’. Paul has in mind, therefore, a person who steers the ship. The reference can only be to the specific gifts which qualify a Christian to be a helmsman to his or her congregation, i..e. a truly director pf its order and its life. Such a role is a gift of the Spirit. I am very much indebted to David Prior’s wonderful book ‘The Church in the Home’, first published in 1983.

Their role would be to ensure all the various elements of the meeting actually happened. They would ‘run’ the meeting with a very light touch, seeking to ensure there was no quenching of the Holy Spirit. It would be emphasized that whilst we want to have some order in the meeting, people should feel free to contribute as led, with due consideration to what else is going on. Waiting is not a sin. The person overseeing the meeting could make it liturgical, or at least introduce liturgical elements if they wanted to. Following the church’s liturgy is no bad thing, as amongst other things, it ensures that the home church would not stick with a few favourite themes. Quite possibly the Saints who make up the church might decide that the ‘overseer’ or ‘manager’ was unnecessary.

There would be singing. Some would be previously planned, and would therefore most likely involve musicians in the group accompanying. But there would also be unplanned singing, with anyone in the group free to suggest a song as the mood of the meeting, or the effect of ministry on the individual concerned, led the person to make the suggestion. I would envisage that at times, people might want to praise God in tongues. I would also hope that if people were genuinely inspired by the Spirit, they would speak a message in tongues, and that someone would be Spirit enabled to interpret. the group would probably take a while to be comfortable with this. The group might try to put together a song book — something we did in a home church we participated in in Geelong in the ’80s — several words only books stuck together.

Prayer would be a major focus of the group. Through appropriate teaching, the group would take their responsibility as partners with God in the management of the world seriously, and as well as praying for one another, would pray for the needs of the world. I envisage a good chunk of time being devoted to prayer, but, as for singing, prayer ‘breaks’ as the Spirit leads. Prayer should involve giving people the opportunity to seek anointing and prayer for healing for themselves or / and for others. This would be a very important ministry.

There should be constant communication, outside of the weekly gathering, between church members with prayer requests as they manifest themselves, and with news of how whatever is being prayed for is working out.

My wife and I would want to introduce the concept of being a people of blessing. We would want to actually bless during the meeting. We would also want to encourage people to bless their neighbourhood, work people, relatives etc., and to encourage us by telling us about the consequences of participating in that blessing ministry. We would seek the opportunity to do some teaching about this, based on Roy Godwin’s books ‘The Grace Outpouring’ and ‘The Way of Blessing’ — and of course for this to be subject to the judgement of the group.

I envisage that some time would be devoted to people being invited to share with the group how God had been speaking to them through the week. What are you excited about? How has the Lord manifested himself to you during the week? What have you read that has enlightened you? 

I envisage that people would have the opportunity to share how their fulfilment of their mission went during week. This would include work. It would involve our witness at work, and this means not only speaking to people about Christ, but our behaviour — honesty, ethical behaviour, confronting your organisation where it is unethical etc. It would also involve the actual work itself. How has it contributed to making the world a better place? Will any of our work survive the fires of judgement and be taken up in the new creation? How about family and friends? Hobbies and relaxation activities?

In all these things there would be a great need for sensitivity so that people were not threatened, and help and teaching and mentoring was offered to help people grow into these ideas.

And there would be interaction with the Bible. That would happen (no doubt) in all the parts of the meeting, but there would be a particular period of the meeting devoted more specifically to interaction with the Bible. This interaction might take a myriad of different forms. People might be asked to prepare a study or studies on a particular subject. We could look at particular subjects of concern to individuals. Some that I would like to explore include ‘Just what is our mission — is it only to save souls or is it more extensive?’, ‘God and suffering’, ‘Is there such a thing as a blessing ministry’, ‘the Unseen Realm’ and so on. We could also ask people to prepare studies on passages of Scripture that have particularly blessed them or which they feel are greviously misunderstood. My candidates would be Romans 6 and 7, the story of the widow’s mite, and Matthew 28:18-20 (the Great Commission). We could, however, devolve the responsibility for choosing subjects and passages to the lectionary, guaranteeing variety.

People might lead a study or studies on a particular book of the Bible. Visitors might be invited to come and speak to the meeting. It might be that the group could watch a DVD. The important thing is that the whole meeting has the opportunity to participate, comment, criticise, ask questions etc. It would also be important that leading studies was not the province of the theologically trained. All people should feel free to make suggestions and lead themselves. Given that the contribution of people at the meeting, and the discussion that follows, leading is not a particularly burdensome task. In time, people gifted with teaching skills would emerge.

Given that we do not want to quench the Spirit, I would expect that there would be people who respond to promptings of the Spirit by saying things that might be construed as ‘prophecy’. This might prove to be important to help people seeking guidance. 

In all these things, the meeting would be free to exercise its judgement concerning contributions made by people — particularly in areas of teaching, prophecy, and tongues, and maybe singing contributions. Genuine humility will be a feature of such meetings.

And sacrificial love must lie at the heart of the whole meeting and outside the meeting. People should be held to account if they have undertaken to do things. Such holding to account must be done in love (not just saying it). When the meeting exercises its judgement about a contribution, and the judgement is not positive, it must be given and received in love. Doubtless there will be sad, hurt, damaged people in the group. This will be where those with pastoral gifts come to the fore, as they follow up during the week. See the Frank Viola article at the end of this paper for more on this.

The meal would most likely be a ‘managed’ pot luck meeting, where people bring a casserole, a salad or whatever. I doubt if tables would be big enough, so a buffet style of meal would be best. Perhaps whoever is designated the meeting ‘manager’  is the person who leads communion, with a blessing prayer and the breaking of bread at the beginning of the meal, and a blessing and sharing of wine at the end.  Maybe the meeting ‘leader’ could be asked to prepare a blessing to pronounce over the group at the end of meeting. Perhaps, just perhaps, it might be appropriate for meals to be catered from time to time.

Money. As there is no church building and there are no paid employees, there is a great opportunity to contribute to organizations and indivuals who are seeking to make the world a better place. Organizations such as MSF, the Barnabas Fund for instance, could be supported by the group. But perhaps a better way is to ensure that generosity is a core value that is taught, and that individual families are encouraged to support organizations in response to prayer seeking guidance. The various organisations and individuals that group members support would also be a focus of the church’s prayers.

Gender equality. Women and men must be treated equally throughout, so women are equally free to teach and be involved in all the ministries of the meeting, and men must take an equal part in meal provision with women.

Children. I personally don’t envisage being involved in a church with young children, so I haven’t given it much thought. Where churches have young children involved, the meeting itself would need to work out how to handle children. Maybe responsibilities would be rotated? One thing I do believe is that children are more capable of being seriously involved in meetings at a younger age than is normally practiced. When we did have children involved in our Tuesday night group in Geelong (at least six kids), we had no problem — they were not even an issue we ever discussed — it just worked.

It is really important that there is no authoritarian leadership. The church provides the leadership.
Wolfgang Simson describes his vision of what the church, unhindered, is becoming:
[I dream of a] church, which does not need huge amounts of money, or rhetoric, control and manipulation, which can do without powerful and charismatic heroes, which is non-religious at heart, which can thrill people to the core, make them lose their tongues out of sheer joy and astonishment, and simply teach us The Way to live. A church which not only has a message, but is the message. Something which spreads like an unstoppable virus, infects whatever it touches, and ultimately covers the earth with the glory and knowledge of God.

Some suggested reading

I have been a student of home churches and related matters most of my life as a Christian. I think the first book I ever read on the subject was ‘The Taste of New Wine’ by Keith Miller, when I was manager of Keswick Book Depot in Melbourne in the early seventies. However the three most influential books for me were as follows.

Paul’s Idea of Community by Robert Banks. Robert is a world renowned New Testament scholar. He used to be based in Canberra, and he is primarily responsible for us being in Canberra, as he recommended me for the position of Director of Lay Education at St Mark’s in 1985. Robert initiated a group of house churches in Canberra, and we briefly attended one when we came to Canberra. Alas, as an ordained minister, I could hardly keep that up. Those house churches no longer exist, and I have never been able to find out why.

Paul’s Idea of Community is a very deceptive book. You get world class scholarship in the simplest of packages. He takes a few paragraphs to deal with issues that scholars have debated in whole books. He just states what he believes the NT teaches. The book is 40 years old, and a new edition was released last year. His teaching is like icebergs. What you don’t see is the 90% of scholarship under the surface that produces the 10% you can see. Robert and his then wife Julia (who died of cancer many years ago) wrote a little booklet called ‘Going to Church in the First Century’, in which they sought to imagine a gathering of Christians in the First Century. This booklet has been incorporated into the 40th anniversary edition of ‘Paul’s Idea of Community’.

The second book is ‘Pagan Christianity: exploring the roots of our church practices’ by Frank Viola and George Barna. I found this to be an explosive book. The authors deal with the origins of church buildings, liturgies, the sermon, the pastor, dressing up, music, tithing, the sacraments (as regularly practiced) and Christian education. The book is extremely well researched. George Barna is a highly respected Christian researcher. Basically they show that every one of the afore mentioned has its origins in paganism, and that there is nothing holy, nothing biblical in any of them.

The third book is Frank Viola’s constructive follow-up to ‘Pagan Christianity’. It is ‘Reimagining Church’. He shares God’s original intent for the church, where the body of Christ is an organic, living, breathing organism. A church that is free of convention, formed by spiritual intimacy, and unbound by four walls. There are some guidelines on how to move forward for those desperate to leave the institutional church.

Final thoughts

I have mentioned the possibility of forming a house church to a number of people over the years, and I think it is fair to say I have been met with 100% silence. I tend to think that pretty much all Christians I know have a sense that belonging to ‘big church’ with a paid minister ministering to a passive congregation is the only legitimate expression of church, and that somehow it is God ordained, and totally beyond questioning. Frank Viola’s experience is similar. He writes (in ‘Reimagining Church’) ‘It seems to me that many of us are willing to tip over any sacred cow except the modern pastoral office and the Sunday-morning Protestant ritual. Regardless of how unbiblical these two religious traditions are, they seem to be off limits even to the most radical thinkers.’

I don’t know if this describes you or not. Pagan Christianity (and many, many other books) put such a view well and truly to the sword.
Some proponents of house churches say the best way to ‘plant’ such a church is to start it with non-Christians and enquirers. They say that house churches should be ‘missional’. I think this misunderstands ‘mission’, which opens up another massive area of discussion, and I’m not going there now.

I think the role of house churches is to support one another, encourage one another, provide assurance, give everyone the opportunity to discover and use their spiritual gifts, engage with Scripture, explore subjects we find challenging to get our minds around; in short, build one another up, whilst we engage in the mission God has given us during the week. 

I expect that if starting a house church is ‘of God’, then there would be plenty of opposition organized by Satan. I expect this would be mainly in the form of criticism from institutional church people. Expect it and be well prepared to deal with it.

I think new members should be by invitation only. I don’t think it should be an open meeting. It would not be for non-Christians, although I see no reason non-Christians couldn’t attend provided they were accompanied by a group member.

If this article has made you long for involvement in a house church, and if you live in the South Canberra area, please feel free to get in touch with me. You can find my contact details at www.kainosprint.com.au.