In the Eye of the Storm: God is Building His Church

In The Eye of the Storm

Part I printer friendly
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 some-thing 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 every-thing 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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