House Churches - There's No Pulpit Like Home

Time magazine had an article this week about "Why House Churches are filling up - there's no pulpit like home." House churches are the new "thing" in the evangelical movement. George Barna recently wrote a book about this called "Revolution."

The idea is that "church" as we no it is no longer needed. Now people just meet in their homes. This really is nothing new, people have been doing this for ages, for several reasons:

• Perhaps there was not a church in their area, so it became necessary to meet in someone's home.
  
• There may not have been any churches in the area who believed the same way - this is how many of the churches like mine were started. However, most of these house churches eventually became churches.
  
• Another reason for house churches has probably been either laziness, or an un-willingness to get along with those from the local church. I suspect this is one of the reasons for the popularity of house churches today.
  

The current "house church" movement points to the Book of Acts as a model and how in Acts they "went house to house" worshipping, and that there was not formal "church" buildings. However, I would disagree with this view, because we know that by the time the New Testament closes, there was definitely "churches." These churches had pastors as the leaders, and the Apostles and Elders in the Church-at-large provided oversight.

One of the biggest problems I have with the current movement towards "house churches" is that most do not have a pastor leading them, and they are not connected to a larger "body" (denomination etc.) which provides oversight and accountability. I believe this whole movement stems from a mindset that is so prevalent today and that is the idea that we don't need someone to tell us what to do - we can do it ourselves...I believe this is a selfish, carnal mindset which is so predominate in all of our culture. The problem is that this goes so cross grain to what God wants of us. You see, it is not about us - our lives should be all about pleasing Him and living according to His Word.

I believe the emergence of house churches is partially a result of this mindset of "it's all about me and I'll do things my way and no one will tell me what to do." Why go to a church and listen to someone tell you how to live (and beg for money :) when you can just stay home and have "church" there and no one will tell you how to live?

I recognize that this may not be true in all instances, but I do believe this is at least part of the reason for this movement. There are other reasons that contribute, perhaps I'll post about some of those at a later time.

Let me wrap this up by saying that while I realize that the local church is imperfect (I believe at last count my town of approximately 16,000 people had over 200 churches - one for every street corner!) There have been some glaring abuses and failures in some places. There have been some who have been deeply hurt by a local church. At the same time, I believe the local church and the pastor is both Biblical and a necessity. What do you think?


Here are some other good reads about this issue: (most of these deal specifically with George Barna's book "Revolution.")

• "Beheading Christ" and "I Like Emergents" and "Barna's Revolution" by Keith Drury

• A letter by Chris Bounds, Keith Drury, and David Smith about the George Barna's book to students and friends of Indiana Wesleyan University.

• Revolution an article I came across by Joel Comiskey

...by the way, I am all for the church getting outside of it's four walls and reaching out into the world, and I am in favor of Bible studies in homes. What I am opposed to is these Bible studies replacing the church.