On House Church

Post one in a series of posts on house church. Navigation:

1. On House Church – Part One – Intro
2. On House Church – Part Two – The Meeting
3. On House Church – Part Three – The Monies
4. On House Church – Part Four – The Leadership

Today we’re going to talk about the house church/simple church model of “doing church.” The purpose of this post and/or series of posts is not to explain why other models are bad, but why house church is good.

But first, a short history lesson.

About three-ish years ago, our great friends the d10s felt that God was calling them to host a house church in their home. Heather and I were invited to be a part of this, as well as several others. Since then, we’ve grown and learned so much about the Lord, and about growing closer to one another in community. The meeting has changed nights, changed locations, changed members (both leaving and coming) drastically, and much more.

During this time we’ve learned a lot about church, what the bible says about church, and what to do in the event of all sorts of situations. And throughout that entire time, we’ve found our approach to be the most biblically sound approach to church, as laid out by the New Testament. That’s not to say our group perfectly lives out what we see in the Bible about church, but that our vision and what our meetings look like try to reflect what we see in the Bible.

Ben, in explaining what I said in the paragraph more effectively than I, said the following (paraphrase):

“Since we’ve started doing church this way, I’ve read through the New Testament several times. And with this way, there’s no ‘gotcha’ verses that I have to ignore or downplay to fit into my framework of church.”

That probably conveys my point as much as anything else I could say would. We’ve found a peace and steadiness in both our ecclesiology as well as our community that we didn’t necessarily find previously.

So where does that leave me as far as the traditional church goes? Do I hate it and everything it stands for? Hardly. I still feel honor and respect toward the traditional church goes, as well as many believers I know that are a part of it. I will say though that as a result of not being a part of this type of church after 3 years does make it more difficult to relate and understand the particular methods some churches employ – my thinking being that I’ve stepped back, and now some things just seem so alien, so strange.

In [potential] future posts, we can explore some of the specifics that makes what we do work, and what makes it different than what others do. If you would like such posts, you know how to contact me (and if you don’t: email, gmail chat, blog comment, facebook message, homing pidgeon, etc.).