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Part I
The First
Phase of the Church
The Spiritual Family Concept
Chapter
3
The Case
for House Churches
Much of the information in this
chapter has been reprinted by permission from Saturation Church Planting
by Bob Fitts Sr.
"Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus.
Greet also the church that meets at their house"
(Romans 16:3). "Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha
and
the church in her house" (Colossians 4:15).
"To Philemon, our dear friend . .
. and to the church that meets in your home ...
" (Philemon 1-2).
From the above scriptures, it is
clear that the early church met in houses. They
were not what we might call a "church house." They were houses that people lived
in and opened up to be used as a meeting
place for the church. The early church did not have church buildings. Such
buildings did not appear until the year 232 A.D. It is notable that the
most explosive period of church growth in history, until recently, took place
during those early years when there were no buildings which we would now call
sanctuaries.
As I said before, right now in China there is an
unusual move of the Spirit of God that even surpasses that early growth, and
this is happening without the use of church buildings. This unparalleled revival
is a house church movement.
According to the U.S. Center For World Mission, more
than 22,000 Chinese are coming to Christ each
day. That is equivalent of seven days of Pentecost every 24 hours, and it
is happening right now. Most of this explosion of new belief is coming from
China's rural communities, where 80% of the population of China lives. Jonathan
Chao, founder of the Chinese Church Research Center says the Chinese revival is
being spread by young people, mostly ages 15
to 19, The teenagers go to villages and share the gospel
where
it has never been heard before. As converts
are organized into small groups, the
teens call for the elders, (believers in their twenties) to
come and teach the newly formed home church
while the younger
Christians go on to reach the next village. Chinese pastors and teachers
don't have financial impediments to spreading the Christian message: they live with the peasant farmers in each
new area
and don't construct
buildings. They have very little and need very little. By this simple means, the
good news is leaping across the fields and mountains of China ... 6
The explosive church growth that is now going on in China and that which
attended the early church in the book of Acts had something in common: They
were both a house church movement. This same
kind of growth is seen in other countries today, especially where church
buildings are not allowed.
House Churches are Easy to Start
To plant a house church you do
not need to buy property or build a building.
You won't need a pulpit or pews or hymn books or a
piano. You can do without a baptistery, a Sunday School and a youth
pastor. You won't have to belong to a denomination or be incorporated or meet
on Sundays or have a church bulletin or meet in the
same place every week. You won't have to have a sign with the name
of your church on it. It won't need a name. In fact, you don't even have to call
it a "church" as long as you know that it is a church. None of the above are bad
or wrong, but neither are they essential. The
apostle Paul used none of the above in his church planting ministry.
We have left the simplicity of the New Testament and
added so many extras, which are really not
essential, that it has become more and
more difficult to start a new church. You cannot go to any country today
where the apostle Paul planted churches and point to a building and say, "There
is the church of Corinth!" or "Look at that lovely building! That's the church of the Ephesians!" or "Here is the
church of the Thessalonians!" There are no
such buildings. So far as we know, the churches that Paul planted met in
houses.
House Churches Are Evangelistic Tools
Dr. Peter Wagner, considered by many to be the
foremost authority on church growth today, says, "The best method under heaven
for evangelism is church planting. There
never was a better method and there never will be."
"Saturation church planting"
is the vision now being adopted by mission leaders worldwide. A church that
divides in order to multiply will experience addition. A church that has its
focus only on addition will tend to bog down and stagnate. Our goal in the past
has been to try to make one very large congregation rather than to
multiply congregations. However, the church
in any city will increase much more rapidly by multiplying congregations
than it will by seeking to build one super congregation. The largest church in
the world in Seoul, Korea, under the pastoral leadership of Dr. Yonggi
Cho, has applied this principle of
multiplication. His church is evangelizing the city of Seoul in a
remarkable way by multiplying congregations which they call "cell groups." They
are willing to divide in order to multiply and the addition has been incredible.
House Churches Facilitate the Training of Leaders
It has long been understood by
educators that the best method of training is
still the apprentice method. This is "one on one, hands-on-training" such as a
blacksmith, plumber, or lawyer would have received a hundred years ago. They
learned by observing and doing while being
accountable to a master in the trade. This was Jesus'
method. His disciples learned by watching,
listening and doing while they lived their lives with the master teacher
himself.
House churches enable us to train new Christians
quickly and efficiently. Especially in remote parts of the former Soviet Union,
I have witnessed many house churches being started by very new
Christians who have a quality of
responsibility that belies their spiritual
age. The key to their success includes their reliance on the Holy Spirit
and the recognition that they are evangelists in the body of Christ. As young
evangelists, they know the importance of immediately getting those who are
saved involved in cell groups, lest the new
believers fall through the cracks. Because they themselves have
been trained this way, they stress the
importance of prayer and Bible study in the cell groups and the
importance of being knit together into a spiritual family. Training, spiritual
fellowship and outreach becomes the objective of each cell group. The growth of
these cells led by enthusiastic young people is amazing!
House Churches Help Bond Relationships
A small house church makes it much more likely that
the very shy will find their identity within
the body of Christ. The forming of relationships occurs much more easily
in such "household" situations. In his periodic
Church Growth Report, Win Arn makes
the following statement under the caption,
"A Proven Growth Principle: Effective
Small Groups. "In our study of growing churches, we have
found that one common characteristic is the
high degree of relational 'glue' among
members. Call it 'love, friendship, caring' . . . it's what genuinely
attracts and holds members."
House Churches Can Solve the Problem of Growth
Some of our congregations have grown so large that
they have to build bigger buildings or rent space or go to two services. This is
what we call a "happy problem." There is also a happy solution:
Begin to train pastors by assigning them an area of the city and giving
a few families to start a house church in that section of the city for the
purpose of "having a baby." The most life-giving thing a
church can do is to have a baby. I have seen
too many churches die because of a
spirit of possessiveness in the leadership. The churches that God is
blessing are those who continually give away everything
that God gives them. Jesus said, "Give and it shall be given to you." A
giving church is a growing church.
Michael Green, Principal of St. John's College of
Nottingham, England, in his address before the International Congress on World
Evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974 spoke on "Methods and Strategy in
the Evangelism of the Early Church." He said, "In the early church, buildings
were unimportant; they did not have any during the period of their greatest
advance. Today they seem all-important to
many Christians. Their upkeep consumes the money
and interest of the members, often plunges them into debt, and isolates
them from those who do not go to church. Indeed, even the word has changed
meaning. 'Church' no longer means a company of people, as it did in New
Testament times. These days it means a building."
Other advantages to house churches could be cited.
Most important is that of simplicity and
ease of multiplication. The fastest growing movements in history have
always been those that have not bogged down under ponderous organizational
structures or external trappings and have
focused on the essentials without wavering.
The House Church in
the New Testament
The Scripture passages below show
that common, ordinary dwellings were used for
spreading the gospel and for discipling new converts both during Jesus' lifetime as well as during the expansion of
the New Testament church in the book of Acts.
•
Peter's House Is Used For a Healing Meeting
When Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw Peter's
mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He
touched her hand and the fever left
her, and she got up and began to wait on him. When evening came,
many who were demon possessed were brought to
him and he drove out the spirits and healed all their sick" (Matthew
8:14-16).
In the early days of His
ministry, Jesus used the house of Peter to
conduct preaching, healing and deliverance meetings.
•
The First Communion Service Is Held
in a House
In the last week of Jesus' ministry He said to His
disciples, "Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, 'The teacher says:
My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my
disciples at your house' (Matthew 26:18).
Our Lord could have chosen to
celebrate the first communion with His
disciples in a synagogue, in the temple, or in some other place of religious
significance, but He chose to celebrate it in a common
ordinary house. Thus He set His seal on the common dwelling place
as a holy and sanctified place, worthy of the most solemn worship services.
• Pentecost Came to a House Church
"When the day of Pentecost came, they were all
together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came
from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:1-2).
·•
In the Streets and in the Houses
"They worshiped together regularly at the temple each
day, met in small groups in homes for communion and shared their meals with
great joy and thankfulness ... " (Acts 2:46).The early church not only met in small groups in homes but also in
larger gatherings in public places. The most rapid growth of the
church, both in the past and in the present
day, has been when the church was not
using formal meeting places, but remained flexible, mobile and militant.
• The
House Church That Opened the Gospel to the Nations
The following day Peter arrived in
Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and called together his
relatives and close friends. "As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met
him and fell at his feet in reverence. Peter went inside and found a large
gathering of people" (Acts 10:24-27).
This is a good example of how to start a house
church. Someone who is
hungry for God and for the things of God calls together a
number of his family and friends and then
calls for the man of God to come and share the Word of God. So simple!
This meeting in the house of Cornelius was historic.
It was the breakthrough that convinced the Jewish believers that the Good News
was for all the nations of the world and not just for the Jews.
• Lydia's
House Was Europe's First Church
After Paul and Silas came out of
the prison, they went to Lydia's
house " .where they met with the
brothers and encouraged them ... " (Acts 16:40).
The church of Philippi was formed in the house of
Lydia. The book of Acts does not tell how the
church grew, but it would not be
unrealistic to think that when the group could no longer fit in
Lydia's
house, they formed another house church somewhere in the city and continued to
divide and multiply.
Many of us have never considered the number of
foundational events that took place in someone's house. The first communion
service was in a house. The first healing
service was conducted in a house. The first instance of the preaching of
the gospel to the gentiles came about in the house of Cornelius. The outpouring
of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was in a house. And the first
churches that the Apostle Paul planted were
all organized in houses. Over the
centuries we have lost the dynamic of simplicity and have added things
that have slowed the progress of the church into all nations. The fastest
growing movement in the world today began in houses. The Christian movement had
it greatest growth while it remained a fluid, mobile, relationship-oriented
people.
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