312 words on house churches

By Jason Evans - September 2002

IÍve been a part of faith communities that meet in homes and coffee shops for a while now and I love it. I love it because itÍs messy, itÍs hard to lead in this setting sometimes and itÍs unpredictable. I love it most because it is beginning to free our minds of ñfour-wallî ministry thinking. We are beginning to see what a lifestyle of discipleship looks like. No longer are we expecting the entire ministry to be done for us in an hour on Sundays. For this movement of organic ministry to continue to be effective we have to understand that there is more to house churches than a church that meets in a home. To simply move our fruitless techniques into someoneÍs living room would be pointless. This is more of an alteration in philosophy of ministry than a model of church structure. A philosophy that says ministry is a way of life. The church is something you are, not where you go. Because of that homes work, but so do cafes, tattoo parlors, restaurants, a park or virtually anywhere. The result of this is that the church (and in effect the Gospel) can be taken into the social structures of anyoneÍs every day life. We gather in homes and other everyday places not because it's the new thing that works, because quite often it doesn't. ItÍs not easy dropping all the flashy and fun stuff in exchange for relearning what it means to live in a lost world as salt and light. But because of the simple structure of house churches, this movement is going to make a difference. It will allow followers of Christ to move from being consumers to the crucified, becoming a people who work towards His will done ñon earth as it is in heavenî and through this pushing forward the cause of the Kingdom globally.