House Churches, Coffee Beans, and Learning From The Global Church
Often I have conversations with brothers and sisters in the West about house churches. After enough conversations about house churches with people, you start to recognize the books people have read already by the way they talk. And I inevitably have the same advice for people: Learn from the church around the globe.
Why do I tell this to those interested in house church? I find that in the United States, the house church movement1 is a movement of choice. We don’t have to be a part of a house church in order to survive as believers. It’s voluntary. There are very few economic realities that force meeting in homes. And I think because of this, those who chose to be part of a house church come in for a few different reasons: pain or purpose.
Pain is a regular reason people I know choose house churches. They express it different ways. Sometimes they express it through tears with stories of how more traditional churches have hurt them2. Others express it through stories of burnout that begin in a traditional church and end with them swearing never to do what caused them to burn out again. Often those I talk to have a sense of being cheated when they find out church can exist without the traditional trappings. Sometimes, not always but sometimes, I’m concerned about the level of bitterness in these discussions.
Purpose is the other reason people find their way into house churches in the US. This is usually expressed in the fact that people began studying the nature of the church and realized that many of the churches they see don’t match what the Bible describes as church. These purists attempt to build a church that is faithful to what they see in the New Testament, with differening results.
Regardless of which of these two doors3 people choose, the result is often pride. Whether that pride is expressed in “I’m not going to be the same kind of church that hurt me” or “I’m more biblical than the church I used to be a part of” or “We have the true angle on what church is,” the result is an attitude that Jesus says leaves us unjustified before God.
Which is why it’s so important for the house church movement in America to learn from the church around the world. There are precious, precious saints in China, Iran, India, Africa, and South America that have practiced church that meets in homes because they love Jesus and this is the only type of church they have known. They are stunned by the love of God that they have found. They know what it means to live in true community. They aren’t ashamed of the Gospel and are willing to give their lives for their fellow brothers and sisters to hear it. Being part of a house church and coming to Christ are the same experience, without any pride.
I remember being in a coffee shop with an Ethiopian before I ever traveled to Ethiopia. He told me of the glories of Ethiopian coffee, explaining how the use of coffee beans to make coffee started in Ethiopia and then was exported around the world. In each place around the world, the beans began to take on the flavor of the particular new soil in which it was planted. For example, one of the places it went was to an Indonesian island called Java and since that time the island has faded into obscurity, but it’s impact on coffee continues. Today you can buy Brazilian Coffee, Kenyan Coffee, Columbian Coffee, etc., each tasting a bit like the soil it came from. But the truest coffee, my friend argued, –coffee the way God intended it–was grown and prepared in Ethiopia.
This is a fun story. Whenever I think about it, I’m reminded that churches, like coffee beans, take on the flavor of the culture around them. Often, we’re not aware of it because we’ve only “tasted” our flavor of church. Now, we don’t have a church we can go back to in order to see the original, unlike my Ethiopian friends and their coffee. But if we were wise to learn from our friends in the underground house churches around the world, I think we would perhaps get a little bit closer to the church that God designed, untainted by our American experience.
Tomorrow, I’ll share a little about how the church around the Earth has informed what we do. For now, I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you’ve been part of a house church (or even a traditional church) how has your experience been informed by the soil of American culture?
Photo Credit: Underground Church by Surfing the Nations
1 I’m going to speak in broad generalities here. Please understand there is no way I could ever speak about all house churches as a single, similar unit. That would be like saying all of my kids are the same.
2 Note, by saying this, I’m not saying every traditional church hurts people. Though, I’m sure if we’re humble enough to admit it, every church hurts people, whether it’s their intent or not.
3Again, I’m speaking in generalities. Not everyone comes in through these two doors.
Organic Churches Should Learn the Wisdom of House Churches (House Churches and Organic Churches Part 3)
House churches and organic churches are often lumped into the same category but are not necessarily the same thing. Yesterday I spent some time describing how house churches can be more organic. Today I want to look at what organic churches can learn from house churches.
For organic churches, the idea of being confined to a certain size is unthinkable. And while many organic churches meet in homes and are typically smaller, I find many who are part of the organic church movement who meet in traditional church buildings and bigger groups. And while I’m sure in the grand scheme of things this is okay, I think it’s wise to learn from the wisdom of house churches.
Most of the people I know who have started house churches have looked into the Bible and recognized that the early church met in homes and shared the life of Christ together around tables and in their homes (Acts 2:42, Romans 16:5). There were multiple reasons that people give for this, persecution and finances are two of the major ideas that get expressed. I’d like to articulate another: purpose.
I believe God understood the makeup of the human frame when he created house churches. In anthropology circles, there is a term called the Dunbar Number. The Dunbar Number is a philosophy of what happens with certain sizes of groups. You can read more at Dunbar’s Number at the link above, but the detail in Dunbar’s Number that I want focus on is that when a group starts to reach more than 12 people, specialization within that group begins to happen. Prior to 12 people, everyone in the group was responsible for the group. But when the group grows larger than that, jobs begin to be assigned in order to accomplish whatever the goal of the group is.
But this is the beauty of house churches. Meeting in homes is often a limiting factor for how large a group can become. It gives a kind of ceiling for how large the group can become.Within a house church, there is generally few enough people that everyone can participate, everyone can do some teaching, everyone is known by everyone and knows everyone else. The meeting in a home (or most alternative meeting places besides a meeting hall) keeps the number of people small.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard traditional churches discussing their glory days about how it was when they first began meeting in a home. The story always dims when they talk about how their church moved out of a home and into a building. The relationships changed, the purpose changed, people who knew one another well grew distant. This happens because as a group grows, roles change. But God in His wisdom knew we would flourish best relationally connected.
In truth, the wisdom of house churches preserves the organic nature of churches. It’s exactly because house churches stay small that they are able to allow for the life of Christ and the Gospel to be exchanged between one another without hierarchy or specialization. Crowds never become the issue. Caring for one another remains important. The church Paul and the other apostles in the New Testament describe with “one another” phrases in the New Testament is allowed to naturally emerge.
What happens when these churches grow? Well at some point it becomes important for house churches who grow too large to multiply. I’ve never looked around one of our house churches, counted 12 people in the group, and decided it was time to multiply. But when our churches get somewhere around this number and they start to feel like someone is orchestrating that many people gathering in a home, I begin to pray about how God might be asking us to multiply. What we’re after is not a number, but the ability of every believer to connect with a spiritual family they can feel a part of.
What about churches that are larger than this number but claim the organic title? Yesterday I quoted Neil Cole saying “If your church isn’t organic, it’s probably not a church.” My point here isn’t to say larger churches aren’t legitimate*. But I think what we need to acknowledge is where church is actually happening within these congregations. Usually church happens within the small groups or Bible studies that these churches host or encourage. The wisdom is in knowing and providing some flexible context for where this sharing of Jesus, caring for one another, and multiplication of disciples can take place.
So, organic churches can learn from the wisdom of house churches. I’ve spent a lot of time writing about size, there are obviously other benefits to house churches that larger churches can learn from. But it’s significant to me that God has given us a family-like structure that facilitates all of us participating and caring for one another. Organic churches who adopt the wisdom of house churches will find themselves strengthened in what God has called them to be.
*This will probably receive a follow up article in the future.
House Churches Should Be Organic (House Churches and Organic Churches, Part Two)
House churches and organic churches are often lumped into the same category. Many people use the phrases house church and organic church inter-changeably. When we drill down into the vocabulary, though, we find that the two phrases don’t actually mean the same thing. Organic churches are described as churches built around the presence and life of Jesus, regardless of their size. House churches are understood to be a church adhering to some kind of biblical pattern with a specific size. So which one is right?
Well, both. And neither. Let me explain: I think both expressions of church have elements that approximate the New Testament definition of church. But both definitions and the people representing them have need to learn from the other to get closer to the truth.
House churches should be organic. Aren’t they already? Well, I think there are a lot of them that are. But there are some house churches that are built only as smaller versions of the tradition that people have come out of. It’s “Honey, I Shrunk the Church” in a living room. Some of these house churches have pulpits, still dress up for Sunday morning services, and have one person constantly teaching. Needless to say, this is less than organic.
What’s sad about these types of situations is that house churches are the perfect environment for organic Christianity to take root. There is no more perfect place for Christ-centered ministry, mutual edification, humble service, and operating in the gifts than in small groups of people who are committed to one another. But this isn’t always the case.
How can a house church become more organic?
- House churches that are based around rigid programs that leave little room for God to manifest Himself among His people need to lay down the programs. This will be awkward at first as you learn to corporately wait on the Lord and lay down your (and everyone else’s) agenda. But if you wait for Jesus to show up, He will, even if only in the most simple ways.
- House churches should adopt an attitude that everyone in their fellowship who is a believer has the right to participate in the meeting. There shouldn’t be an unnatural division between clergy and laity, just a willingness to serve one another out of love for the Lord. This will mean some who are used to sharing much will need to hold back and some who are quieter or intimidated to share will need to step up and share more.
- Begin leading new believers to Christ. Many new believers are better at experiencing Jesus than us “established believers.” The sad reality is we sometimes teach people how not to be organic. If we can lead people to Christ and teach them to depend on the same Jesus that saved them to help them walk out their faith, we’ll learn much from these new believers about true Christianity.
- Learn to cultivate the life of Christ in your life and in the lives of others. This is not just a once a week thing. It’s something that is played out 24/7 and can’t be confined to a sermon, a series of songs, and an hour on the calendar. The process of cultivating this life in Christ in ourselves and in each other is called discipleship. The more we practice this, the more organic we become.
- Because cultivating the life of Christ is a 24/7 reality, it’s best to realize that the focus of the church is not a meeting. Meetings are important, but what truly makes Christianity organic is the life of Christ flowing through relationships whenever and wherever they happen. Our dependency on meetings can snuff out the spontaneity and transparency that are so often needed in becoming a church the way God wants it.
House churches should be organic churches. As Neil Cole says, “If you’re church isn’t organic, it’s not a church.” But we have to guard ourselves against only becoming a smaller version of what we saw in the traditional church we came from. In reality, God designed us to go deeper in Himself and become a reproducing agent for the Kingdom of God. It all starts as house churches become more organic.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 