Pastors, The New Testament, and Our House Church Network
It happened so many times in the early days of our first house church that it got old. People would call me Pastor Travis. And I would say, “It’s just Travis.”
“But you’re the pastor, right?” was the next question I would get asked. Usually, for those who weren’t part of my house church my response would be something like “Long story, but let’s just keep it at Travis.”
Why was that so awkward for me? Lot’s of reasons. Admittedly, being called a pastor at 26 was a strange thing, especially since I didn’t go the traditional route of pastoring “underneath” an older pastor. But in reality, my unease came from a much deeper place.
What The New Testament Says
My studies of the New Testament had already challenged much of what I saw being done in church culture. Church had gone from being a formal religious ceremony in a holy building to a spiritual family who met wherever and whenever the opportunity presented itself. As I studied the New Testament, my understanding of the pastoral role had begun to change as well.
As I studied the New Testament, a shocking pattern began to emerge. First, the word pastor was only used once in the English New Testament (Ephesians 4:11). In fact, in some translations it’s not used at all (ESV for example does not use the word pastor). The reason why is the word used in Ephesians 4:11 that is often translated as “pastor” literally means “shepherd.” It’s used 17 times throughout the entire New Testament. Eleven of those times, it’s used to describe Jesus’ relationship with the church. The other times (minus the Ephesians 4 reference) are used to describe actual shepherds who cared for and guarded sheep.
What I also found when I dug deeper into the New Testament was that this role was related very, very closely with the role of elder. In fact, when Paul and his apostolic team started churches, instead of appointing a single pastor to watch over the church, he appointed a group of elders. They were a team of people. Their job was to shepherd (note the use of a similar Greek word) the flock of God through their example, not lording over them (in other words not telling them what to do), but they were to be an example of a mature follower of Christ. They also were supposed do it willingly, not for what they could get out of it.
What Christian Culture Does With Pastors
The problem for me wasn’t what I saw in the New Testament. Obviously the role of pastor existed in there somewhere. The problem for me (especially early on) was Christianity’s outright obsession with the role. Everyone I knew in ministry was called a pastor. Every spiritual leader in a church that was paid was called a pastor. This may be true in your context right now.
I had a dear friend, hired by the church for the sole purpose of reaching lost people. He was called a pastor. He was a good man, called by God to equip the body and reach lost people, but he was not a pastor, he was an evangelist that was given the title pastor. Other people I knew in different churches I was part of were given the title of pastor, but they couldn’t live close enough to everyone in their congregation in order to know them. There was no way they could, their congregations were way too large for them to know half of them. And when you talked to them, they were sincere, godly, good men. But their primary role wasn’t the care of the body. It was leadership, strategy, preaching or something else.
And for the body, this can be problematic. I regularly saw people from church backgrounds come to men who were called pastor expecting to get spiritual care and council from them. And I watched as these “pastors” passed the pastoral tasks on to others in their body. I don’t use “pastors” to indicate any kind of animosity towards these men. They were good guys. They just weren’t pastors. In all likelihood the people the “pastors” referred them to were the real pastors.
I’ve also watched the over-emphasis of this role hinder the multi-membered ministry the church is supposed to demonstrate. Churches seem to focus so much time and attention and energy on a pastor. It’s a natural, human thing. The pastor gives the sermon, he leads the service, he does much of the ministry, especially in smaller congregations. But often this focus causes everyone else to not step forward and serve. In the most dramatic ways, people feel they shouldn’t have to do something “they pay someone else to do.” In lesser ways, people feel less qualified than the person who is the pastor.
Lastly, lets not forget that shepherds are only one of the roles that mature Christians are called in the New Testament. Apostles are frequently mentioned in the New Testament (there are as many as 25 people identified as apostles in the New Testament). But modern Christianity is largely silent about this role. Prophets and Evangelists face a similar situation. But people with these gifts can and often are unintentionally not given space to minister because they aren’t pastors.
Our House Church Network
So as we planted our first and subsequent house churches, there were no titled pastors. We all met as equals, trying to walk out the priesthood of all believers that we believed the New Testament described. We almost developed an allergic reaction to the mention of the word pastor, mostly because of the bad example I set by how quickly I downplayed my name being used next to it. We talked a lot about how Jesus was our pastor. That was (and still is) true.
But our aversion to the pastoral gifting ended up hurting us. We ended up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There is a real pastoral gift that we were minimizing because of our attitude toward the misuse of the word. And so there were times when we didn’t get people the pastoral help that they needed from people uniquely gifted to help and care for others.
Eventually we needed to change. But we wanted to change in a way that reflected the New Testament and the multi-faceted, multi-membered ministry of the first century church.
We’ll talk about how that played out tomorrow.
The Apostolic Nature of House Churches
[Editor’s Note: This article is part of five of a five part series addressing the nature apostolic Christianity. You can read the earlier articles starting here.]
Christianity in the West is in transition. I’ve argued in a previous post that instead of the church moving right, left, or beyond, the way forward is to go back. We need to embrace a model of Christianity that, if seen by the apostle Paul or Peter, would be recognizable to them.
I could make a list of areas the church looking to embrace a more apostolic nature should pursue. (I have, here.) But whenever a return to apostolic Christianity is contemplated the element that regularly gets overlooked is the idea of structure. It’s almost as if the way in which the church lives its life together, strengthens itself, and reproduces itself doesn’t matter. This is the farthest reality from the truth. How the church lives life together ultimately either strengthens and enhances the “apostolic lifestyle” that we’ve been talking about or it wears on it and slows us down on our journey toward it.
There is a design to the way God builds his church. To the degree that we deviate in practice from what Scripture describes of the church, to that degree we work against ourselves in our aim for true, apostolic Christianity. A mere push for the Lordship of Jesus, the power of the Spirit, the evangelistic heart for the lost, a commitment to continue in the face of suffering, and a view of Jesus’ return without a change in church structure that will sustain that lifestyle will find the people inside it frustrated. New wine in an old wineskin is a disaster waiting to happen (Luke 5:36-39).
The particular wineskin I’m advocating for in this space is what is traditionally known in the west as a house church. In the New Testament it was known as “the church that meets at so-and-so’s house.” This particular way of gathering together is important because it was the context that apostolic Christianity was birthed out of in the New Testament. It was the soil that the first century church sprouted out of and it empowered the church to grow both deep and wide across the Roman Empire and beyond.
Much has been written about house churches and why they are important. Book after book tells you what they are and how to start them. Instead of retreading old ground, I want to look at why the house church model is apostolic in its nature. There was a reason why the apostles traveled around starting churches that met in homes. Many assume it was because they were persecuted and unable to meet openly. But in reality, there was a design to the church that sustained a certain type of life and it’s this type of life that we desire.
To be as clear as possible, there’s nothing magical about house churches. They will never replace submission to Jesus or the power of the Spirit. But because they are the way Jesus founded His church, they are an outgrowth of Jesus’ Lordship that our response to can either hurt or hinder our journey towards apostolic Christianity. Apostolic Christianity grows better in the soil of house churches because they are apostolic in nature. And it’s this apostolic nature of house churches I want to explore.
What would cause Jesus, the apostles, and the apostolic church of the first and second centuries to start fellowships in the homes of believers? The easy answer is persecution. And yes, persecution played a part in that decision. But if you look deeper, there were spiritual realities that these small gatherings empowered that were in their very nature apostolic. The apostolic church of the first and second centuries planted churches because they were simple to establish and replicate, they allowed for the Gospel to spread quickly, and they enabled the church to minister and care for itself.
Simplicity
It takes very little to start a house church. Two or three believers that gather together to eat, read God’s word, pray, and encourage each other are the beginning of a church. They can meet anywhere at any time. They don’t need trained seminarians to lead them or any kind of org chart. They exist without much structure in order for the life of Jesus to be the focus.
This isn’t to say that house churches are simplistic. They will still have problems and struggle. But I can talk new believers through how to start house churches over the course of a day or two. These new believers will need a Bible and some encouragement along the way. They might even need someone to bounce things off of from time to time. But they can be a legitimate church with some basic instruction and a true commitment to Jesus. It’s why Paul could plant a church after only being in a place for a short time.* This is possible because it’s the believers’ connection to Jesus that support the church, not the worker.
I believe the simplicity of the early church was intentional. It allowed the church to be lead by “ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures” who may not have been “wise in the world’s eyes.” As the architects of the church, the apostles knew that a simple structure would allow it to function properly among the people it was intended to reach.
The Gospel Spreads
It was this simplicity of structure that allowed for the unprecedented spread of the Gospel. Churches could be planted as quickly as people came to Christ. When a new group of people would come to Christ in another relational network, another part of town, or even another city, they would be the beginning of a new church. They wouldn’t even need elders to be considered legitimate. Frequently elders would be raised up from within a church as those with wisdom and character were identified by apostolic workers (Acts 14, 1 Timothy 1).
With this simple method of producing churches, Gospel outposts cropped up, first in the major cities of the Roman Empire and then moved out into the towns and villages. Unburdened from unbiblical, complex systems, the church spreads. Tony and Felicity Dale share this simple analogy: If you put two elephants in a room together and close the door, in 22 months you may get one baby elephant. But two rabbits together for the same amount of time will result in thousands of baby rabbits! The difference lies in how complex of an organism is being made. Simplicity of structure allows for churches to rapidly reproduce through the spread of the Gospel.
This was crucial to the early apostolic church. Filled with restless gospel exporters, the early church planted house churches that allowed the Gospel to move as quickly as possible through a region. Quickly apostles (especially Paul) would consider a region “reached” if they started one or more house churches there (see Romans 15:19). They knew that the seed of one house church would eventually grow, multiply, and cover a region.
Ministry and Care for Itself
Once established, apostolic church planters would leave to spread the Gospel to another region. But their nature as spiritual parents and architects of the church caused them to care about what happened to the churches they started when they left. They weren’t abandoning their spiritual children, but moving on to another place to raise more. It became important for the church to be able to nurture and take care of itself in the absence of these workers.
Because the churches they started were organic in nature, they were built around the presence and person of Jesus, not around programs or meetings. This allowed even the newest believer to participate in the life of the church. Paul describes this dynamic in 1 Corinthians 14:26. As believers looked to Christ to lead their gatherings, the Holy Spirit would give members of the church different gifts, all for the building up of the body. This is why Paul says in Ephesians that “when each part is working properly, [it] makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love,” (Ephesians 4:16).
This dynamic would allow the apostolic worker to continue to move, entrusting the fledgling church to Jesus (Acts 14:23), knowing the church would continue to spontaneously build itself up as it met together in the overflow of His power. The apostles continually encouraged the churches to practice “one anothers,” means of taking care of each other and showing love that lead to the body being strengthened. This enabled the priesthood of believers to be lived out (not just believed) among the early churches.
Conclusion
It’s my belief that the apostles learned how to live in missional community from Jesus. As an apostolic band, He taught them how to relate to the Father, love one another, and declare the Gospel of the Kingdom. He didn’t just show them the way, He was the Way. And it was this “Way” that the apostles used to start churches first in Jersualem, then in Samaria, and then in places like Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome.
The apostles didn’t start churches in the same way that church is traditionally practiced in the West. They started simple churches that met in homes. This wasn’t simply a response to persecution. It was a conviction that the church be simple, help spread the Gospel, focused on Jesus, and would take care of each other. The result was an apostolic movement made up of house churches.
House churches are apostolic if we let them be. I’ve seen some very non-apostolic house churches. But rightly oriented, house churches serve not just as an alternative to churches that meet in buildings, but as a means of strengthening the apostolic objectives of the church.
The church in the West is at a crossroads. It’s not enough for us to go left, right, or even beyond. We have to go back to Christianity as it was taught and practiced by the apostles who learned from Jesus. This will require not just a return to biblical principles of meeting, but to the truth of Christ and His Kingdom as we’ve been discussing in other posts. But Christ calls us to put new wine into a new wineskin. Living out apostolic Christianity will need to take place in an apostolic structure, both of which the apostles learned from Jesus.
If we return to apostolic Christianity in both it’s content and it’s practice, we will begin to get to a place where the wine and the wineskin work together. The form of the church supports the church growing in the message of Jesus and spreading the Gospel of the Kingdom. And the result of this will be something the world has seen only a very few times in history.
Will you join me on this journey?
Photo Credit: 268d circuit rider sculpture mod by alfromny@sbcglobal.net
*Paul stayed in Thessalonica for roughly 3 weeks according to Acts 17:1-10. We can’t say how long he stayed in Berea, but it seems it was only as long as the antagonists from Thessalonica didn’t know about him being there. Many places don’t tell us how long Paul stayed in a place, but his longest stay was two years and three months in Ephesus. And while persecution was obviously a factor, Paul was incessantly nomadic because he was determined to keep pressing into areas where the Gospel had never been (Romans 15:20-24). Regardless of Paul’s length of stay, it’s obvious Paul spent much less time starting churches than most people in traditional church planting do. The simplicity of house churches aids this considerably.
Why I Still Gather When It’s Not About The Meeting
If you read yesterday’s post, squinted real hard, and didn’t ask too many questions, you probably walked away with the idea that I don’t gather regularly with a group of believers. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. But if it’s not about the meeting, why do we meet?
Some people in the movement assume that church can whimsically happen. And there is no doubt that there is a measure of serendipity when you meet another believer who feels like a long lost brother or sister. God does meet us in these moments.
But in my experience, there is something powerful that comes from having a small group of people who know me well enough to encourage me and hold me accountable. Encouragement and accountability are two elements of the Christian life that don’t happen on a whim. They are the result of sustained, long term relationships that are intentionally built.
The writer of Hebrews says it this way:
Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.
Hebrews 10:24-25
Notice a couple of things here: First, we are supposed to think about ways to motivate others to good works. When was the last time you thought about a way to motivate someone you had never met to acts of love and good works? Obviously the writer is talking to people who knew one another.
The writer also calls us to “not neglect our meeting together.” There is a strong degree of intentionality here. We’re not being encouraged to randomly meet with others. We’re called to continue to meeting intentionally so we can encourage each other. The context of the need to meet together is that “the day of his return is drawing near” and, brothers and sisters, the need to gather together and encourage each other keeps compounding as the day of Jesus’ return draws closer.
Paul calls us to a very similar routine. He describes meetings in 1 Corinthians as ones that they can plan to eat beforehand if they are desperately hungry (1 Corinthains 11:22), have a true communion element to them (1 Corinthians 11:26), and are spaces and places for the gifts in the body to build up the rest of the body (1 Corinthians 14:26). None of these things happen outside of some degree of intentionality, especially with regards to the place and time of a meeting.
So brothers and sisters, we gather because we believe Jesus has gifted others in our spiritual family with other perspectives of Jesus that we don’t have. We believe these perspectives and giftings that we don’t have are essential for being built up into the image of Christ and to be strong in the face of persecution and temptation. In short, it’s by gathering with believers on purpose that we are strengthened in our walks with the Lord the way He designed.
Does this mean that you can contain the life of God in a meeting? No. But it means if we forsake gathering together intentionally with other believers, we are abandoning a main method God has given us to grow up in His image.
We become stronger when the body builds the body up. It’s the way God’s designed it. So we continue to meet.
Photo Credit: Together Prayer by David Amsler
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 