SimpleChurch Journal aka House Church Blog

Just Having Church in a House Does Not Go Far Enough

John White comments on the need to understand what a "household" really is in Scripture.  Just having a church in a house does not do justice to the scriptural meaning of 24/7 community life.  John says, "moving church from a special church building into a home does not go nearly far enough."  Here's his entire email:

Roger Gehring in "House Church and Mission:  The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity" demonstrates that the concept of household (oikos in Greek) is a critical and significantly underappreciated element in understanding the meaning of "church" in the First Century.  To say it another way, if we want to understand what ekklesia (generally translated "church") meant to people like Jesus, Peter and Paul, we need to have a good understanding of what oikos meant to these same people.  For these people, oikos was the context for ekklesia.

Gehring quotes Luhrmann (another NT scholar):  "...the ancient oikos is not just one social and economic form among others but rather the basic social and economic form not only for the ancient world and the New Testament but presumably for every pre-industrial sedentary culture as well."  p. 17

Gehring goes on to say:  "Scarcely anything determined daily life more than the oikos with its network of relationships...the significance of the oikos for the establishment and organization of early Christian church life can hardly be overemphasized."  p. 17

A House is not necessarily a Household. 

The implications of Gehring's insights about the importance of oikos are huge!  For one thing, it means that moving church from a special church building into a home does not go nearly far enough. The churches established by Jesus and his disciples were not mere weekly meetings.  They were literally households - ongoing, 24/7, family like communities.

Consider 1Cor. 16:19 - "Aquila and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house (oikos)".  If we read this from our 21st Century Western context, we would (unconsciously?) conclude that once a week a group of Christians met in this couple's home for church.  However, if we read this verse from the 1st Century context, we would conclude something quite different.

To say that we have a "house church" because we meet in someone's home at 7 pm on Tuesday nights, falls significantly short of the New Testament concept of "house church".

Stop Inviting People to Church

Here is an email/newsletter I received from Mike Lyons:

I have made a promise to myself. I will stop inviting people to my church.

Hear me out now.

I spent nearly a decade with my well paid job in the church trying to get people to come to church. We would develop strategies, advertising through TV, radio, print, internet, marketing plans... wowing them with worship experiences, video, dramas, amazing sermons, direct mail strategies.. on and on..whew. all designed with one aim. That when you would invite your friend, they would say yes and go to church with you. All you would have to do is invite them, they would respond to the engaging message and multi-sensory worship, become curious, eventually come to Christ, and eventually become a part of our church. The problem is, it didn't work very well.

Sure some came, just enough to make us think we were being effective. But still as the Barna Institutes research shows " The unbelieving world remains unconvinced.", and each year the Church continues to loose ground and a credibility voice in our communities.

(Disclaimer Note: I still love, support and honor any church that is doing all it can to reach out to others. God will still work through imperfect people as well as strategies.)

Allow me to be very honest. I see too many of us in the house church falling into the same trap and pattern of fruitlessness. And some are suffering unnecessarily from disillusionment. I hear the same words over and over, "If only we could get more people to come to our house church." Sound familiar? The benefits we offer are different, but the hope is the same. Please come to my church.if we could get them there they will be so captured by our Jesus through our community, intimacy, casualness, or great food... that they will accept Him and become a part of our church. Old habits die very hard don't they.

We can no longer afford to be "come here" people, we must be a "go there" kind of people.

I can honestly say that I have never invited someone to join me for coffee, lunch or breakfast and had them say no. Not ever, not once.

I'm slow but I'm learning.

Here's to forsaking old habits.

May His presence dwell in you richly,

Mike Lyons

Mike administrates a website called Organic Connection and works with Neil Cole who will be speaking at the California House Church Conference in May.

House Church and Mission

I have just ordered a new book recommended to me by John White called "House Church and Mission:  The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity" by Roger Gehring.

Robert Banks wrote this review of the book:  "This is far and away the most comprehensive survey of the role of the house - and household - according to the New Testament.  It demonstrates persuasively their centrality for both church and mission in early Christianity."

John has provided me with a 16 page summary of this book which is available here: Download house_church_and_mission_gehring.doc

I will be working my way through both the summary and the book, but here are some thoughts from it:

1.  Jesus planted house churches

There are good reasons to believe that Jesus concentrated on the area surrounding Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida  (cf. Matt. 11:21/Luke 11:13-15).  During this period of residency in Capernaum, the house of Peter was available to Jesus as a center of operation for his ministry and outreach in the area surrounding the Sea of Galilee.

2.  Disciples (pre Easter) planted house churches

“It seems likely that in his mission discourse (Lk. 10) Jesus instructed his disciples to use houses in a manner similar to the way he did:  as fixed quarters and a base of operations for his mission.”

3.  Disciples (post Easter) planted house churches in Jerusalem

“We know of at least two houses in Jerusalem in which the first Christians met:  the house of Mary and the house with the upper room.  According to all that we know about them, it makes the most sense to assume that the Greek-speaking services were held in the house of Mary.” 

4.  Disciples planted house churches beyond Jerusalem

“…we can assume a plurality of house churches in Antioch.” 

5.  Paul planted house churches

“That houses played a decisive role in the Pauline mission is to be expected, not only in light of the central significance of the oikos in the ancient world but particularly because of the important role they played in Jesus’ pre-Easter mission and in the Jerusalem and Antioch churches.” 

Gehring goes on to provide some key elements of the New Testament pattern.  These, which I simply list, provide a great deal of content to reflect on:

1.  A church functioned as a household (oikos).

"For the Pastorals the church really is the household or the family of God.  Viewed in this way, ‘house or family of God’ becomes the model for responsible behavior as well as for church order and leadership structures, and thus the central, all-guiding image for the self-understanding and organization of the church.” 

2.  The leader of the household was the leader of the church.

"The ‘elders’ in the ancient world were most often householders and they ‘owed their position in society to the power of their family, and their position in the family to their relative seniority."

3.  A primary purpose of a house church was to serve as a base of operations for the expansion of the Kingdom.

“The preliminary conclusion from these findings is that house churches were significant for the missional outreach of the primitive church in Jerusalem in a dual sense.  They were a training ground for Christian koinonia fellowship inwardly and a showplace of Christian fellowship outwardly.  This missional expansion of the gospel was due not so much to the mission-strategic initiatives of individuals as to the powerful attraction of a Christian community actively practicing koinonia fellowship.”

Comments on "Kingdom Love"

My previous post on "That Which Has True Kingdom Value... Love" received so many excellent comments that I thought it was worth posting some of the highlights. I questioned the difficulty of living lives of Kingdom love within the context of the institutional/traditional church structures:

"I believe there are better ways to live lives of Kingdom love than the institutional churches (IC). I've seen it, lived it and others have lived it in front of me. However, I think it is very difficult to go into the IC and do this. Mostly because of the way the IC is set up and run."  St. Valdez

"If kingdom love is the key doesn't it make sense to focus in on people rather than programs. Why develop a form of church that necessitates our serving it instead of the people who are in it."  Frank Doiron

"I have come to realize that true kingdom love happens one person at a time."  Aaron

But there was an excellent balance to these comments as several people pointed out that just changing the structure of church alone would not provide more essential kingdom love:

"I realized that the house churches or other 'emergent churches' may also fall into the trap of institutionalizing church."  John Gray

"The house church cannot do what is the Holy Spirit's job to do and only His job to do. Please take this to heart. Most certainly a new house church can get the feeling that all things are great in the first few month, but as the newness wears off many house churches struggle. We still carry the McDonald's mindset around......ie God will wave His magic wand and we'll be perfect or have a perfect church..
Then, what can a house church do? House church is simply a wineskin that causes the wine to flow more freely. The wine is simply Jesus and His kingdom."  Frank Doiron

"I think that if we strive to find any model or structure and brand it as "the" way to live this Kingdom love it will ultimately end with the same result as the IC has, for the most part...
Relationships, regardless of where or what kind of structure we are in is the key to making any kind of life transformation in those around us."  St. Valdez

That Which Has True Kingdom Value... Love

A friend passed along a sermon by Greg Boyd who was on an indefinite leave of absence from pastoring a large church.  He expresses his crisis of faith:

My present crisis was precipitated precisely because the clearer I¹ve gotten about the profound significance of the kingdom, the foggier I¹ve gotten about the relationship that exists between it and the church.

To be more specific, I¹ve discovered it¹s not terribly hard to build and run a mega church. Anyone with the right set of skills can do it. But it¹s not clear that building a church in and of itself has any kingdom value. One could just be constructing another religious carnival to entertain American religious thrill seekers. One could be feeding the beast of the American consumer mindset that wants more than anything else to use Jesus as a means of improving our already overly-privileged lives.  The question I am presently wrestling with, therefore,  is how can we ³do church² in a way that cuts through all this American religious excrement and actually advances the kingdom of God. That is a much more difficult question to answer than how to build and run a church!

Greg hits the nail on the head here.  He goes on to say that we must be very clear about what the kingdom of God is lest we confuse it with our own cultural conditioning.  "We then delude ourselves into thinking we¹re advancing the kingdom of God when, in fact, we¹re only advancing ourselves."

So how do we become clear about what the Kingdom actually is?  Greg says it well: "Jesus is depicted as the perfect embodiment, the incarnation of the kingdom of God."

Only to the extent that we act as Jesus acted, dying for those who despised him, are we authentically his body. Only to the extent that we sacrifice our lives for others, whether they be enemies or friends, can we claim that the kingdom is present in us. Only to the extent that we replicate the sacrificial love of Calvary for the homeless, the sick, the rejected, the oppressed and for prisoners, do we belong to the kingdom of God, as Jesus taught  (Mt 25).

From the distinct perspective of the kingdom of God, all the profound knowledge we might ever acquire and dispense to others is nothing more than a ³clanging cymbal² if it isn¹t motivated by and doesn¹t result in communicating Calvary-quality love (I Cor. 13:1-4). All the ³true doctrines² we might believe, all the pious talk and religious activity we might ever engage in, all the theological debates we might ever win and all the great revivals we might ever hold are altogether worthless, devoid of any kingdom significance, if they aren¹t motivated by and don¹t result in love  defined as Jesus Christ dying on the cross.

Only to the extent that we bleed out of love for others in what we do does anything we do manifest the dome in which God is king. This is as simple as it is challenging. It is as obvious as it is obviously absent from the Church.

In short, the true kingdom life is one that lives and breathes "Calvary-like love."

Sadly, Greg points out, that although this kind of love is the litmus test of our Christian life, few Christians exemplify this.  HOWEVER, his own personal challenge is to NOT look at others but simply determine to personally live that Calvary-quality love moment by moment.  In other words, the kingdom life begins by pointing at ourself, not others.

Will I live in love, as Christ loved me and gave himself for me? Am I willing to bleed for others? Will I wash the feet of prostitutes  and even more challenging for me personally, the feet of Pharisees?

Awesome thoughts... yet Greg surprised me by saying that he decided to go back to pastoring a mega-church in order to live the kingdom life out within that context.  It's not up to me to judge the decision of another, but I do want to use this entire context to pose an important question:

Can we live out Calvary-like love within systems and cultures that are, by nature, unloving?  Perhaps the reason that so few Christians live lives of kingdom love is because we are so heavily committed to church systems that are so dysfunctional that love finds it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to break through.

I want to be careful here because, like people, no church systems will ever be perfect.  Nevertheless, in the context of living out lives of Calvary-like love, when we look at the mega-organizational structures that are sustained through business principles (and even small churches are set up this way)... and when we see the way these systems themselves defy the very essence of love... I simply want to ask... Can't we do better?  Doesn't it matter that the systems and organizations we are committed to make living kingdom-love so, dog-gone difficult?

Didn't Greg make a very important point back at the beginning when he said, "Can we 'do church' in a way that cuts through all this American religious excrement and actually advances the kingdom of God?"

God, I hope to some degree we can!!!

Servant Led; Street Wise; Humble Hearted

John offers a straightforward comment on the previous post listing some of Robert Fitts "Trends":

The amazing thing that occured to me when reading these "trends" is that these are the teachings of Christ that have been "lost" to a hierarchical, socially concerned, politically connected, professional and academically ingrained church principality since after the time of the early church (as Robert Fitts obviously knows). It's happening in our time! Only now are we beginning to come out of the darkness into his glorious light as a free, servant-led, street-wise but humble-hearted people who are hungry for the purity, glory and abundant spiritual life that is only found in our Lord. (This is not the first wave but it is the most powerful yet). I pray that more people will see that God is doing this now and come and be part of it. This is exciting, I would like to read more! Thanks for sharing, Roger.

Rethinking Church

Robert Fitts has shared with me an early version of a manuscript he is working on called "Rethinking Church."  He is the author of "The Church in the House."

I'm not sure what his ultimate intention for this manuscript is, so I don't want to publish much of it at this point.  But here is one paragraph of his introduction:

The following forty trends are only a part of what God is doing in the earth today to bring the Church, the Body of Christ, out of traditionalism, institutionalism, and commercialism back to the dynamic simplicity of the early church.

Robert then goes on to list and discuss these 40 trends.  Here are just a few of the trends he addresses:

• From the sanctuaries to the street . . . doing the works of Jesus wherever we find a need.
• From Christianity to Christ . . . not a philosophy or a system, but Christ in you, living out his life through you.
• From hierarchy to servant leaders . . . recognizing that the great ones are those who wash feet.
• From denominations to Spirit-led networks . . . identifying with the whole Body of Christ.
• From performance by professionals to I Corinthians 14:26 meetings . . . doing your part in the meetings.

This is a mere sample of some wonderful writing.  I will share more with you as I spend more time with the paper and make sure that it's alright to publish it here.