Tuesday and Wednesday this week I didn’t do a Blog. Tuesday and Wednesday I was a conference on House Churches. This blog is not intended as a reasoned article on the conference. I am not sure, at this stage, what to make of the two days; in fact I am not even certain where this piece is going.
There were some things that did stand out though, things that may be of significance to some of you out in Blogland.
A House Church is not just a house church, it can also be called a Simple Church, a Viral Church, or an Organic Church. What then, is a house church, it is a meeting of a small group of people who meet somewhere anywhere to fellowship together, worship God together and, or, study the Bible together. No two groups need to do all to the three activities in the same order or priority.
The group size was roughly defined as up to 15 members approx, however I can imagine that the numbers would, could, vary depending upon the location, the size of the meeting place, and the desire of the group. A group who meets at a work place has different limitations to a group who meets together in a public park other venues mentioned included coffee shops.
These churches have a lot of similarity to the church in the early part of the Book of Acts the most significant seem to be that they simply appear grow and multiply like a virus, perhaps that may be why another name is viral church. They just multiply across the landscape like a virus.
There were several areas where these groups seemed to be doing church better than the established churches.
One of these was that they can be made up almost entirely of unbelievers; in fact the comment was made a number of times that house church with unbelievers is easier than with Christians. The one thing that makes a group like this a church is the primacy of the authority of the Bible. There are numbers of people who are into spirituality and who are willing to investigate the Bible as God’s word.
Another fairly big group is the Christians who have an active faith but cannot tolerate traditional church for any number of reasons. These people leave the churches to “preserve their Faith”. The problem, for them, is that they do not have a fellowship forum, such that we are encouraged to not give up in the New Testament. They love Jesus and for reasons that are valid to their experience the established church has no relevance for them, at the same time they lose out on the support that usually comes from the fellowship in an established church.
Tony Campolo tells the story about how when his body clock was out with jet lag on morning he wound up in a greasy spoon (milk bar) at 3 AM when a group of prostitutes came in. It happened that one of the girls birthday was the next morning and she vainly tried to get discussion started about the fact that she had never had birthday party in her life. When she left to go back to work Campolo managed to fix it that he would get a party going for Agnes the next morning. When Agnes arrived at 3:15 the place was packed. The cook brought out her cake and she didn’t want to cut it before she took it to show her mother, just down the road. While she was away Campolo’s credentials as a philosopher were challenged and he finally admitted to being a preacher, BUT, a preacher in a church that “threw birthday parties for hookers.” The general consensus of the people in the cafe was that they would “join a church like that”.
Perhaps there is a certain amount familiarity between the “faith preserving Christians” and the hookers of Campolo’s party.
I think this was written to draw attention to issues that really exist and that we as a “faith community” probably should be aware of, either as a “mission field”, or as an alternative resource that may solve a situation we may be facing. For me this idea is somewhat of a Pandora’s Box because of all the elements that are still in flux. I hope this has met some need today for someone.
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