House Churches

For the first 300 years of Early Christianity, until Constantine legalized Christianity and churches moved into larger buildings, Christians typically met in homes, if only because intermittent persecution (before the Edict of Milan in 313) did not allow the erection of public church buildings. Clement of Alexandria, an early church father, wrote of worshipping in a house. The Dura-Europos church, a private house in Dura-Europos in Syria, was excavated in the 1930s and found to have been used as a Christian meeting place in AD 232, with one small room serving as a baptistry, which gave rise to the current style of church seen today.

The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.                    1 Corinthians 16:19

Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea, and also Nympha and the church that is in her house.               Colossians 4:15

To Philemon, our beloved brother and fellow worker, and to Apphia, our sister, and to Archippus, our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house:                     Philemon 1-2

Luther’s Perspective

Martin Luther was aware that living the gospel presupposes and demands a simple, intimate form of church community in which everyone is closely connected and apprenticed together in Christian work. He believed that public worship was for non-Christians, the unconverted! It has the role of proclamation, of public announcement of the gospel, which should call those who sincerely desire it to follow Christ closely in a small communion. The only reason why Luther did not begin with this third kind of worship was that he did not have the people for it. In fact, he hoped that by publicly proclaiming the word of God, he would gain them. And then it is also quite clear to him that the initiative for such a small communion must come from them, not from him: that is, "from below", not "from above", from the ecclesiastical authorities.

Unfortunately, Luther never succeeded in establishing this and remained with the German and Latin Mass. His socio-political prejudices and his ideas about the necessary link between secular power and the church also led him to reject a movement which, to a certain extent, put in practice this third kind of churchianity: the Anabaptists (“re-baptizers”, a pejorative term given to them by their opponents). It is well known that Luther, while demanding that the authorities persecute and punish the Anabaptists, was opposed to killing them, as the Zwinglians, the Calvinists, and the Roman Catholics were doing. Luther’s attitude towards the Anabaptists was therefore ambivalent, at least to some extent.

A Restorationist Paradigm

Recent developments in the house church movement in North America and the United Kingdom are often seen as a return to a New Testament church restorationist paradigm, a restoration of God's eternal purpose, and the natural expression of Christ on Earth, urging Christians to reject hierarchy and rank and return to practices described and encouraged in Scripture. According to some proponents, many churchgoers are turning to house churches because traditional churches fail to meet their relational needs and do not reflect the structure described in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of the New Testament.

Some authors who are often associated with "house church" by others (examples are Jon Zens, Watchman Nee, T. Austin-Sparks, Milt Rodriguez, Wolfgang Simson, Frank Viola and others) consider the term "house church" to be a misnomer, asserting that the main issue for Christians who gather together is not the location of the meeting, but whether or not Jesus Christ is the functional head of the gathering and face-to-face community is occurring. Other names which may be used to describe these kinds of churches are " simple church, "relational church", "primitive church", "body life", "organic church", or "biblical church". Some authors do not believe "house church" or "organic church" are "movements", and they distinguish between a house church/simple church and an organic expression of the church.

Modern House Churches

House churches can adopt an organic church philosophy, which is not necessarily a particular method, technique, or movement, but rather a particular church expression that the group takes on when the organization functions according to the pattern of a living organism. The church represented in the New Testament is based on this principle, and both traditional & contemporary versions of "Westernized" Christianity have reversed this order.

 

The origins of the modern house church movement in North America and the UK are varied. Some have viewed it as a development and logical extension of the Plymouth Brethren movement, both in doctrine and practice. Many individuals and assemblies have adopted new approaches to worship and governance. In contrast, others recognize a relationship to the Anabaptists, the Free Christians, the Quakers, the Amish, the Hutterites, the Mennonites, the Moravians, the Methodists, the much earlier conventicles movement, the Waldenses, or the Priscillianists. Another perspective sees the house church movement as a reemergence of the move of the Holy Spirit during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s in the US or the worldwide Charismatic Renewal of the late 1960s and 1970s. Others believe that the House Church movement was pioneered by the Reverend Ernest Southcott in the 1950s, when he was Vicar of St Wilfred's Church in Halton, Leeds, in England. Southcott believed that if people would not come to church, the church must go to the people, and his book The Parish Comes Alive spread this idea widely among Anglicans.

Limited financial resources can encourage church leaders to rethink the pattern of ministry and seek ways to advance the church's outreach through unpaid members.

Receive My Words

My son, if you will receive my words [emer – speech, sayings] and treasure [sapan – conceal something of great value] my commandments within you, Make your ear attentive [qasab – listen carefully] to wisdom [chokmah – knowledge and ability to make the right choices at the opportune time], incline your heart [natah – pay attention] to understanding [tabunah – insight]; For if you cry for discernment [biynah – understanding, comprehension], lift your voice for understanding [tabunah – insight]; If you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures [riches]; Then you will discern [biyn – understand] the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up [sapan – conceals] sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk in integrity [tom – integrity, completeness], Guarding the paths of justice, and He preserves [samar – guards, watches over] the way of His godly ones. Then you will discern [perceive] righteousness and justice and equity [meysar – that which is fair or correct] and every good course. For wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; Discretion will guard you; understanding will watch over you, To deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things.                         Proverbs 2:1-12

To walk with God is to listen intently to His commands so as to receive them in the heart. There is a clear interest in being diligent in accepting instruction from the Word of God and the wisdom and understanding it produces. Eight imperatives in this paragraph reveal our responsibilities toward God's truth: receive (accept) God's words and store them in our minds and hearts; incline the ear and apply the heart; cry after knowledge and lift up the voice for understanding; seek for wisdom and search after it. Obtaining spiritual wisdom isn't a once-a-week hobby; it is the daily discipline of a lifetime. Many are out of the habit of daily investing time and energy in digging deep into Scripture and learning wisdom from the Lord. Various forms of entertainment, including religious ones, stymie many people's attention spans. Studying God’s word is a vocation.

According to Jamieson, Fausset. And Brown Commentary:

“Wisdom invites the youth as a son to hide in his heart her commandments, the result of which will be that he will understand the fear and the knowledge of the Lord, and righteousness and every good path. She invites him to admit wisdom into his heart, because when it is pleasant unto the soul, discretion shall preserve him to deliver him from the way of the evil man, and from the strange woman, whose paths lead unto the dead, and to make him walk in the way of good men, who alone shall be saved when the wicked shall be cut off.”

Taught by the Spirit

Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written, "THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN, AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM." For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised [anakrino – discerned]. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.1 Corinthians 2:6-16

The wisdom spoken of in Proverbs is the wisdom taught by the Holy Spirit. He searches all things, even the depths of God, and reveals them to the attentive believer who recognizes the superior role the Holy Spirit plays in receiving God’s mind, the mind of Christ. Through this process, the believer may know the things freely given to us by God. According to James 3, 17, But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. The House church setting may provide the most intimate environment for teaching by the Holy Spirit on the deepest aspects of the Christian life.