There is a good article written by ABC News. Following is an excerpt. The complete article is here.
Every Monday night, Meredith Scott and eight of her friends get together at one of their homes in St. Paul, Minn. They cook a meal, share what’s going on in their lives and pray together.
But Scott and her friends don’t call this a Bible study or a support group — they call it a church. They are part of the growing number of Americans who are shifting from traditional churches toward more informal, intimate settings, dubbed "house churches."
"How do you form a community in a church of 4,000 people?" asks Scott, who used to attend a megachurch in St. Paul. "Sometimes it’s hard to get really connected. What I’ve really been looking for is community."
And so are many others. The number of adults attending house churches in the United States has grown substantially over the last decade, according to George Barna of the Barna Group, a Christian ministries market research firm. Though official numbers are hard to pin down due to the nature of these churches, Barna said a conservative estimate is that 5 million adults attend a house church every week…
Comments
12 responses to “ABC News Article”
I have never commented here, but this article is very interesting. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Two things caught my eye. First, the statement, “People are tired of getting into a car to drive to one set of relationships, and then getting into a car to drive to another set of relationships.” I’m not sure there is a cause/effect relationship between this statement and the growth of house churches. However, I do see people around me recognizing that there is something wrong with leaving their neighborhood in order to find relationships. It would seem that God would have us and our neighbors in the same neighborhood for some reason.
Second, I think the pastors from Saddleback and Willow Creek have missed something. You cannot equate house churches with house-based small groups simply because they both meet in houses. The two are not the same.
Thanks again for the article.
-Alan
House Churches on Mission?
This is my thought on a blog found at http://sojourner.typepad.com/house_church_blog/ about an article by ABC on house churches. I am very excited about the movement toward house churches even though I do not attend one at present. All over the
House Churches on Mission?
This is my thought on a blog found at http://sojourner.typepad.com/house_church_blog/ about an article by ABC on house churches. I am very excited about the movement toward house churches even though I do not attend one at present. All over the
I wonder how many other people are invovled in fellowships like this? I find this very exciting
I found this article surprisingly good. A few points stand out. Many of us are friendly to traditional churches and actively look for relationships and common ground. I’m more radical about this. Community relationships should be just that, immediate community, family and neighbors. I’m with Alan on that. (But we’ve got a long way to go). I believe the nature of the “church” is a body that is One, with God, in God. So relationships are vital and truly the core of Christian life. The article also mentions Tony Dale’s comment that the idea of pastors, sermons and programs are “infantile”. I would be much harsher. I believe God is in the process of restoring the original, fundamental purposes and functions of the body and our traditions are going to be confronted and anything that doesn’t pass muster will come down. It is happening now. Christians in more and more numbers will begin to recognize where man has set up shop in His courts, and who the Pharisees are among us. It’s God. He’s clearing the temple courts and He will overturn some tables and chase some people out.
Having served overseas in a church planting capacity, my wife and I have planted churches in two different countries with two different strategies.
The first was in a country where we had almost complete freedom to buy property and to publicly advertise that we were a church. The initial plant was in the home of a missionary. Attendance varied, but the last two meetings (related to Christmas) we had over 60 in attendance. The sponsoring church (local) insisted on having a building that looked like a church (with pulpit and pews) and advertised as a Baptist church. The first meeting there we had about 25 people. Most were from other churches. Growth was slow, although we canvassed the neighborhood and had numerous activities inviting outsiders to attend. Last time I checked, the attendance was about 25-30 and was still not constituted as a church (Baptist terminology).
The other plant was in a “creative access” country and again, met in homes. Most who attended were either first-time believers, or “seekers.” The leadership of this group came from within the group, and showed great signs of progress, but we returned home for retirement, and so the members were absorbed by other groups.
The point is that we both felt an excitement about the latter group than we ever did about the former, simply because we were reaching the lost, not just members from other churches.
I agree, there is a difference between small groups related to a larger church, and small groups that are, or function as churches. The responsibility felt by the small group churches is vastly different from those who are members of a larger church. If you are interested in seeing how small group churches are finding success in other countries, while meeting opposition from local churches and pastors, I recommend reading Guy Muse’s blog “The M blog” http://guymuse.blogspot.com/
We are trying to start small groups in our home church here in the US, but there is a great deal of resistance. But we do believe that God is restoring his church through the small group churches.
Milton
I agree. Church isn’t an organization, it’s people. People connection is what God calls His church into, it isn’t anything else! We are the body and God’s Spirit will work not just through a pulpit but through each other. people need that one on one close knit interaction to truly grow healthily how God desires!
What is church? We have come to believe that church is an activity that we go to at a special time in a special place organized by special people. But Church is not something that we go to, it is not an event. Church is people. As the previous post well stated the “Church isn’t an organization”. It’s more of an organism. I’m finding in my own life that as I look closely at what I have really believed about the Church there is a lot of baggage and tradition that has outlived its usefulness. I want to learn what it means to be the Church instead of just going to church. Thanks for the posts!
Emergency – Large and Small
I enjoy the above conversations about personal preferences regarding large (traditional) versus small (home) churches.
I’ve wrestled with my own feelings about the large and small of it.
I don’t have any final answer. I see no perfect solution.
I love home churches. I have greatly enjoyed my experience in several of them. I hope to keep mixing it up with small, home-churches.
While I currently have a bias in favor of smaller, home churches, I notice that a great deal of the inspiration for this new movement in favor of home-churches comes out of the language “emerging/emergent/emergency” kinds of theory, and science. I have no objection to this. I feel that the Spirit can use anything to get our attention, and so, my attitude toward borrowing and taking inspiration from the language of the science of “emergent” systems is not a hostile attitude. I wish we could learn more from science. As a biology student in undergrad, and in studying science in general, however, I know that words like “emergent, emerging,” and “emergency” have special, technical, scientific meaning. In the natural world (which science studies), all kinds of life, large and small forms of life, “emerge” and undergo an “emergent” process. For example, one of the largest living things to have emerged (emerged, or grown into its large size) is a huge fungus covering many square miles, in Wisconsin, a single, huge organism. On a smaller scale, at a microscopic level, we know of thousands of single cell organisms, too tiny to see without magnification. Nature displays life on a very broad spectrum of scale – a scale from large to small.
I feel that a similar kind of “emergent” process happens in church, and in other social institutions.
Our human relationships reflect a broad spectrum, of small to large associations. I’m not trying to reduce faith, God, or church life to a scientific explanation. I’m merely making an analogy and metaphor by which to say that there are places, and valid functions for the large church, and equally so, there are valid places and functions for the small groups in homes. This insight about the value of large churches and large groups works as a check and correction against my personal favorite bias, my bias in favor of small, home churches.
There are so many things that we humans do that seem (note: “seem”) to require cooperation at larger, massive scales: like networks of national and international roads and highways for travel, or like cooperative international efforts to preserve the environment, or like combining international resources for humanitarian aid and assistance, after a devastating tsunami – there are just so many things that small groups alone cannot accomplish, and so, we use the larger vehicles to get the job done.
Much of the small, home church movement is such a new idea, the latest fashion, the newest fad – that its proponents jump into it, and bash the larger churches, or they unload years of pent up personal, and unresolved frustrations against the larger churches. I’m all for venting anger. There are good reasons for being angry with large institutions, including churches, which work to keep their own life, to perpetuate their own existence, instead of giving their life away in true care.
But at the same time, the fad and first-flush of this latest fashion of new, small, home churches will, and does include over-reactions, like having a blindness to the value of the work and place of larger groups.
And the recent fad of small, home churches, especially when it is justified by the idea that movement of small, home-churches is a “restoration of the pure” early version of Christianity, this too is a fad that must be looked at with careful attention.
It was in those so-called “pure” home churches in Corinth that a man had sex with his step mother, and it was in thos so-called “pure” home churches that Peter himself (sitting on the roof) argued against God, saying that he didn’t want to go to Cornelius’ house, and it was in those so-called “pure” home churches across the ancient Roman world that just about every other mistake, and every other fault that Paul rants about in his letters (every letter of Paul contains some rebuke and correction) took place.
The idea that small home churches are a return to some “pure” original state, without looking at all the crazy things that happened in those early churches, is just not a mature vision.
And those who jump into the movement as a fad, who jump on this new bandwagon of small home-churches, may end up being blown away, and having their faith injured, when they end up in a home church where some son is having sex with his mother.
All of the abuses that happen in larger churches can happen in small ones too, just on a smaller scale.
The smallest and first home-church ever, Adam and Eve, was not protected just because it (they) was (were) in the right environment, in the right place, in the perfect-sized relationship, that is, in the first home-church of two or three. The size of their small church (of two, and Three, including God) did not insulate them and protect them. The most ideal paradise, and most ideal home-church, went down the tubes.
While I wish the home-church movement well, and while I intend to keep participating in it, because I love it, I hope that this new movement (or, this return to a former movement) can keep its eyes open, keep a level head, keep a mature faith, and a mature expectation, instead of over-advertising itself as the cure-all, end-all, fix-it-all, kind of movement, like many fads do.
Perfect relationships get ruined: like Adam and Eve did.
Before this new “emergent” movement of home-churches is over, the whole movement will need as much grace, forgiveness, mercy, and even as much correction, discipline, and rebuke as the large churches which we so easily criticize.
And so, in time, what will really emerge in this newly emergent movement, will be the emergence of our own emergency, that is, we will all need the same old Grace, Love, Forgiveness, and Correction that we’ve needed all along.
This movement alone will not save us.
If we cooperate, then God will save us in our own emergency, and God may save this movement too.
Great article. Thanks for the link. I recently came across this blog and am finding it very interesting.
I think this is a decently explanatory article, but I think it simply expresses the social acceptability of the more recent house church structure. At the end of the day, this is about finding a structure that reinforces our values. None of them are perfect or will be. There are many who will only come to God in the large setting. For me, I find it easiest to live out my relationship with God in the context of a life group/house church. I believe that, if anything, this article demonstrates that we, as a culture, are on the swing of the pendulum back toward intimacy and community. In another three decades, the large event experience may be fresh to that generation. I think because this reflects a social trend, it is important to be prepared to create a “house church” context for the believers and unbelievers to discover and grow in their relationship with God.
Interesting to read that ABC News would be interesting in this phenomenon. To be honest, this is something that my wife and I have become very interested in as of the recent past. Though I haven’t had a chance to look over the rest of this site, I’ll definitely be doing so over the next few days/weeks.
Josh