Going Home
A Major Paradigm Shift
Christianity in America is headed home. And I don’t mean “home for the holidays” either by the way. What I mean is this, Home Fellowships, House or Organic Churches are springing up all over the place. And it makes perfect sense why this is the case. First of all, they’re biblical. They are absolutely biblical and this is not necessarily a condemnation of traditional institutional church model. But, it is me questioning whether or not our traditional institutional church model is the way we should be conducting, for lack of a better way to say it, “church” as well as me wondering aloud if it has gone off the rails?
It’s also worth noting that there were no church buildings designated for only the use of the church in the entire Bible. The early “church” met in homes. It's all over the Epistles of Paul. It's in the book of Acts, the very first church, acts chap 2:42-47 they met in homes daily devoting themselves to the teachings of the Apostles, to fellowship, the breaking of bread and to prayer. They were in homes and that was the way that they went about it for over a 100 years. It’s important to note that during the period where the church saw its most explosive growth, “they” were meeting in private homes.
So, we know that first of all, it’s biblical. Secondly, well, it’s efficient. traditional legacy “brick and mortar” churches are incredibly expensive to run. You have staff expenses. Then you have all the brick-and mortar related overhead such as a mortgage, maintenance costs and utilities. Meanwhile, it's sitting empty 90% of the time. For most traditional institutional churches, we fund a building that is being air conditioned or heated on a Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. when absolutely nobody’s around. That just doesn't make an awful lot of sense from a logistical efficiency or financial stewardship standpoint. There’s nothing wrong or nothing inherently sinful in it. It's just maybe not the best use of our valuable resources.
And I'm not angry or trying to be critical of big traditional churches. I think God has definitely used them through the years. But this inefficiency of valuable resources, especially at this time in history where the global economy is about to implode is just one reason, out of many, why a lot of people are leaving them. They're looking at it and thinking: “I'm giving a $100 or a $1,000 on Sunday and 80% of it is going to salaries and maintenance and maybe, if we’re lucky, only 5%, is actually going to Missions or outreach ministry.” There’s a gross imbalance here that people are getting a little bit tired of and they want to see their funds go to good use.
On the other hand, if you move the church into your house, you've already paid your mortgage, you've already paid your utilities, there is no hireling to pay and so there are no extra expenses associated with starting a house church if you do it smart. And you can start a house Church incredibly easy. You could actually start a house Church this week. However, with a big church, it's going to take a lot of paperwork, raising funds, buying land, getting an architect building the sanctuary building, raising more funds, finding staff. You can figure six months worth for the hiring processes per staff member. So, you can see how much more nimble the house church model is than the big church and people are moving there and it's happening rather quickly.
The third thing is that a House Church is incredibly intimate and highly relational. There is no back pew in your living room. There is nowhere to hide so that means people can connect. You have an opportunity to share, to stop what you’re doing and pray for each other, to share their testimony, to be intimate both with God and with your neighbor. The living room is a familiar space in which we share intimate conversations with the people we love. We're already used to that space being used in that manner. It’s a perfect fit.
On the other hand, when you enter into a church building, there’s an old saying that goes: “The church walls have ears.” People are listening. It's like there are certain things you don't want to say or can’t say in a church building, at least not out loud. You know you don't want to confess your sins out loud in the church building because it just feels like you're going to end up in a real mess or in some trouble if the wrong people hear about it. This isn’t so in your living room.
In your living room, in a house church setting, you might be in tears with people gathering around you, praying for you, hugging you, loving you and yes that does sometimes happen in big church! It's just not the norm for that space. The problem with a with a traditional “church building” model is that it is a “third space” that's located in the middle of or on the other side of town that you probably don’t live in proximity to. You have to go there and although many traditional churches have “visitation programs,” outside of the elderly and the sick, very few people reap the benefits of it and if you add a pandemic to the mix, almost no one does.
But when it's House Church, especially if it’s your house or your neighbor’s house or the house down the street, you’re likely going to live near or maybe even within walking distance of your church. There's also a great opportunity to be a lot more Evangelistic locally within your community and so it's very natural to say to a new neighbor, “Hey we’re having friends over for a pot luck or a BBQ and some family time this weekend, why don’t you come on over?” And be honest about it. Tell them that you’ll be enjoying a little “Christian style fellowship” and maybe doing a bible study afterward and that they’re welcome to stay for as long as they’d want and/or leave whenever they like.
The fourth very important benefit of the house church model is that because it’s adaptable, it’s much more “Persecution Proof.” In a skinny minute you can adapt to changes in the political landscape and fly under the radar if you feel the need to go stealth mode. The government doesn't need to know that you're doing in the privacy of your own homes. You don't have to file for 501c3 or worry about all that tax exempt mess if you don't want to. If trouble comes, make that when trouble comes, you can run silent and run deep. Nobody apart from the actual membership needs to know you have a house church. You can also move the meetings from house to house so as to not draw attention to what you’re doing. It's a lot safer than going to a big church where everyone knows what you’re there for and the authorities are outside taking down license plate numbers like they did during the pandemic.
A fifth reason for starting a house church is that it’s flexible. Because the structure or way you conduct meetings in your home is not rigidly programmed like a traditional church. You have the ability to shake things up, change the times, the location and shift the way things are conducted each week however often you choose to gather together. There’s no need to plan out the order of a service, or what hymns will be sung, or even hold the traditional “invitation” where everyone is told to close their eyes, bow their heads and hearts and sing “Just As I Am” repeatedly until somebody finally comes forward like they do in many churches at the end of the service. Instead, a home gathering allows the attendees to actually participate and contribute to your meetings. This model facilitates the “Priesthood of All Believers” concept that so many churches like to talk about but seldom, if ever, do!
A house church is organic, not programmatic. The fellowship is truly alive and it grows into new areas and new things that are very natural. In the Big Traditional Church we have programs to meet the needs of the membership. In a house church whenever someone has a need, everyone just pitches in and helps where they can. Granted, it doesn’t always fix the problems, but the “one-anothering” does build relationships. Better still, there are no committees that have to meet at some future date to decide, after much prayer on the matter of course, whether or not they can or will help. With a house church the members already know and love each other and as a consequence, they will help no matter how small, even if that help has to come in the form of tough love.
Sixthly is the incorporation of the children. We all know that by age 18 there's a 60-70% drop off rate in church attendance by our children. Why? Probably because in the big church, kids are “siloed off” into Youth Ministries and when they hit 18, they’re siloed off again into some sort of “Singles Outreach.” The result is, our children are losing that connection with what the adults are actually doing. But, whenever the kids are Incorporated from birth and they're in the middle of everything where they're able to pray, share a word or sing a song. Children have this amazing ability to see their connection with the body life with the Christian people who are the adults in their life and it's wonderful! It’s time to start incorporating them into the body at the earliest opportunity.
The Seventh advantage to an organic house church meeting is that there is more open engagement (prayer/testimony). I think you’ll find that people will spend the first 20 minutes of your “typical” (if there is such a thing) house church meeting just chatting and catching up. In the process, they’re finding out what’s going on in other people’s lives, testifying without having to stand up and shout “I wanna testify!” People are communicating naturally and learning of any problems or needs others may have. From there, it’s only natural to share our needs and concerns and then to pray about them together.
People are likewise now more free to speak up and share what they see God doing in their lives and then everyone can just stop right then and there to pray and thank God for it. In the Big Church, it's all programmed. You can't just stop and pray for anything willy-nilly and you can't just shut the whole thing down and gather around someone to pray for them. That “one-anothering” thingy Christian’s are supposed to be doing is just logistically too difficult to do in the Big Church. You have a lot more latitude for that organic movement of the spirit and the priesthood of all believers in a living room than a dedicated church building.
Related, that brings us to the last, number Eight, the priesthood of all believers. Everyone gets to participate! It's not just for the people who've been Christians a long time or that you have to pass certain hurdles in order to earn your right to be up on the stage. There is no stage! Do you know what happens when you remove the stage? People stop focussing on the pastor and everyone just sits around on couches and it gets relational? Things become far more natural and relaxed. Far more people participate than would have if you had asked them to stand up and lead a prayer in front front of 3-400 or a 1000 people. No one is afraid of how they're going to be seen or treated. The anxiety level is far far lower in a living room.
So now what? I don't want everyone to think like I'm this huge critic trying to beat up traditional churches in favor of the House Church. Well, I guess I am, sort of. Anyway, what I'm describing here are the main factors I see that are driving people toward house churches. They’re seeing the opportunity, the efficiency, the intimacy and how beautiful and organic it is. They see the fact that it's flexible in a way that a big dedicated church building and model are not and so their time, their money, their resources and their relationships are being far better leveraged in a home than they were in a church building 10 miles away.
It's going that direction folks and it's going to make the traditional Church model a little bit harder for some to maintain. The enemy of our souls may think that shutting down churches means they’re winning. They’re not! I believe that all of this is a good thing! It’s a work of the Holy Spirit on the body of believers we know as the ecclesia, the assembly of called out ones, or for lack of a better way to put it, “the Church” made with living stones that Jesus, “Yeshua,” our Messiah is building. Our constructing big glorious looking structures and calling it a church is outside of our purview and way above our pay grade!
Just saying. . .