Guide A Church in the House

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A house church or home church is a label used to describe a group of Christians who regularly gather for worship in private homes. The group may be part of a  ‎Early Christian precedents · ‎Modern revival in North · ‎House churches in China.
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A Rare Look At Secret House Churches in China

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Update newsletter preferences. Comments Share your thoughts and debate the big issues. Join the discussion. Please be respectful when making a comment and adhere to our Community Guidelines. The members enjoyed each other's presence, laughed together, and drew near to Jesus. Robert Banks writes , "We find no suggestion that these meetings were conducted with the kind of solemnity and formality that surrounds most weekly Christian gatherings today. Most scholars agree that the early house churches emphasized the following elements:. Communicating information was another essential activity in the early house churches.

News from visitors, letters that were passed from one city to another e. They also served as centers of social services for those members who were in need. Young widows and the poor looked to the house churches as a means of support. Church historians agree that house churches could rarely have been more than 15 or 20 people—simply because they took place in small apartments.

The vast majority of people, perhaps as many as 90 percent, lived in apartments of one or two rooms crowded above or behind shops.

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Once a house church grew larger than that, it multiplied by simply starting another house church nearby. If not, the growth immediately caused problems. Normally a house church met in the largest room of a private home, usually the dining room. Most apartments shared a public courtyard with adjoining units, and families cooked in the courtyards. The dining room and courtyard provided space for teaching and preaching ministries, baptismal instruction, prayer meetings, the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and missional activities.

Privacy was rare. Wayne Meeks writes that life happened in front of the neighbors. In our privatized world, it's hard to imagine what the early church experienced. One of the major cultural gaps between then and now is the extended family, or the ancient oikos structure. Those who live in the Western world have a hard time imagining the New Testament culture in which it was normal to live with parents, relatives, servants, and other workers.

We are accustomed to living in nuclear families—father, mother, and children. Yet, the ancient world didn't even have a way to express what we call the "nuclear family. God used the oikos to extend the gospel throughout the Roman Empire. The early believers modeled transformed lives and distinct values that were often countercultural. Yet, in these crowded, urban environments, people were able to see Christianity up close. They heard and saw the testimonies of those transformed by the gospel, and they desired to experience Christ for themselves.

Husbands loved wives, servants were treated with dignity, married partners submitted to one another, and love reigned supreme.

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Friends and neighbors were drawn to this new transformed community. Many are amazed at how quickly Paul developed leadership in the early church, but the early house churches were natural incubators for leadership. In Paul's church plants, we don't see formal leadership structures. The person who opened his or her home would assume leadership, and the rest of the leadership structure was already in place—Paul used the oikos structure that was already built into the social infrastructure.

Those leaders were only later given titles. In 1 Thessalonians , Paul says, "Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find a picture closely resembling any of the fully developed systems of today. Church government was not very highly developed, and local congregations were rather loosely knit groups.

What Was the New Testament Church Like?

House churches in the New Testament existed side-by-side with other house churches. Individual believers and house churches considered themselves part of a greater citywide church. Church ministry was fluid and dynamic. In fact, Luther wrote about three types of divine services. The Latin liturgy and the German service were for the unlearned people, many of whom were not even believers.

Those services should continue, he believed, for the primary purpose of evangelism. However, a third kind of service was most needful — a "truly evangelical" one. It would be held privately for those "who want to be Christians in earnest and who profess the Gospel with hand and mouth. According to this order, those who do not lead Christian lives could be known, reproved, corrected, cast out, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ Matthew Here one could also solicit benevolent gifts to be willingly given and distributed to the poor, according to St.

Paul's example 2 Corinthians 9. Here would be no need of much and elaborate singing. Here one could set out a brief and neat order for baptism and the sacrament and center everything on the Word, prayer, and love cf. Ulrich S. Leupold, Liturgy and Hymns , Vol.

Helmut T. Lehman [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, ] pp. Luther confessed, however, that he did not have the people to implement such an important task this is because church attendance in Protestant territories was compulsory and also because a high percentage of the members were unregenerate :. As yet I neither can nor desire to begin such a congregation or assembly or to make rules for it. For I have not yet the people or persons for it, nor do I see many who want it.

But if I should be requested to do it and could not refuse with a good conscience, I should gladly help and do my part as best I can. What needs to be understood here is that Luther was not talking about a small group within a large parish. Rather, he was talking about small house-churches with their own sacramental practice and ministry of the Word! The kind of church meeting described in the New Testament suggests a small group setting as its primary worship context. Much of what the New Testament records about early church gatherings will not fit into the large group meeting, no matter how much we try to force it.

Paul's exhortations to the various churches presupposes the small group or house-church setting:.


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The size of the house-church becomes a crucial factor for the relative effectiveness of other New Testament church practices as well.