Wednesday, August 03, 2005

House Churches

Well, it's funny that this topic comes up this week when any other time I would have simply said that house churches rule. I'm still in process regarding them, but I think that house churches (or simple churches, as I think the two movements are pretty similar) are a good check to the impersonal nature of many churches that grow beyond 100 people. I think they are born out of the desire by many to actually live a whole LIFE of faith and that means inviting it into your homes (a thing you don't have to do with the majority of church systems). They are also a great way for people who love Jesus but hate the institutionalized church (or are hated by the institutionalized church) to remain in a faith community without putting up with all the BS.

I think the negative side of the house church movement is twofold. First, the house church movement often points to the early church as its model, where people met together in their homes daily to eat and share life. This is a bit of a mistranslation, however. It would be better to call those churches "household" churches rather than house churches. In those days the house was the family, extended family, slaves (who usually got off work in the evenings and could do what they wanted) and it was the center of commerce and trade. When we take that concept and move it directly into our suburban houses, we've missed the mark. Our concept of "house" and "family" are much narrower than the first century's.

This leads to the second negative aspect, house churches easily lose contact with the larger Body of Christ. I'm the last one to argue for stronger denominational ties, but there's a family aspect to each denomination (good and bad) that allows you to have a network across the country (and sometimes around the world) of fellow believers that you are connected to.

The problem is that you will often disagree with this larger body. Most of us here are of Southern Baptist affiliation and we all know that any time the convention says anything as a whole, it will alienate immediately half of its own members (e.g., outright attacks on homosexuality, the disney thing, support for the war in Iraq). It's much easier to do your own thing and separate from all of that junk.

I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed the past few years away from the dominance of my own tradition where I can carve out what I believe is of Christ and what I believe is not of Christ. (The Reformed tradition is pretty prominent, but not tradition dominates Fuller, so pretty much all voices have to be heard). I will have to return to my tradition, though, soon. I have sojourned beyond its borders, but it is the place in which my family resides. This is the negative side of the house church: you don't have to put up with people you disagree with, and thus you are never challenged and you do not grow.

There is a more personal growth that happens in house churches, though. Your life becomes intimately interwoven with your group's and you will be challenged to integrate your faith into every aspect of your life as you invite more and more personal scrutiny and accountability into it. A denomination won't do that for you. And certainly, if you are in a region of the world that is hostile to the faith, the house church is the way to go.

So.... After that very long set of paragraphs. I think that house churches as we know them today only get it half right. I think that our churches today for the most part only get it half right as well. I wouldn't propose a simple merging of the two, but I'd propose a model like St. Thomas' in Sheffield (http://www.sttoms.net) where they have small groups, clusters (the missing element), and large celebrations. This is what we spent our week on in class and I'll talk more about this stuff soon. St. Toms is also where I'm trying to do my practicum, so I wanted to put a little plug in there for them, too ;)

Ok, back to you Speck :)

1 Comments:

At 10:09 AM, Blogger Wayj said...

Yeah, I think the problem with going straight back to the first church model is that you negate about 2000 years of history in the process. I think we tend to read the Bible and ask what they "did" while focusing on some sort of system they put together. But the most important thing to glean from the first century church is that they prayed a LOT, and came up with a model of church that both felt natural (they met in somebody's house/courtyard) and was challenging (they dismissed the racial/sexual/economic boundaries Roman and Jewish societies had set) to their current contexts.

We can't recover what they did, because we're not them and God is certainly not as prone to live in the past as we are. We can, however find a model that fits naturally and challenges our current society in the same way.

 

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