What about the house church movement?

Question 09054.

The house church movement covers a wide range of groups who meet in homes rather than in dedicated buildings, usually with informal leadership, participatory meetings and a conviction that this recovers something the institutional church has lost. In China and other places where the state is hostile it is not a movement at all but simple necessity, and it involves tens of millions of believers.

In Britain the picture is different. Here the house church movement is largely a choice, made by people who are weary of buildings, budgets and what they see as professionalised religion. I have real sympathy with some of that, and real concerns about where it can lead.

Where the House Church Movement Comes From

The first Christians met in homes because they had nowhere else. Paul greets the church in the house of Priscilla and Aquila in 1 Corinthians 16:19, the church in Nympha’s house, and the church in Philemon’s house. Dedicated church buildings do not appear in any numbers until the third century.

So the historical claim at the heart of the house church movement is straightforward and correct. For roughly the first two centuries, the normal Christian gathering was a household-sized group in a private home, probably between twenty and fifty people, eating together and hearing the apostles’ letters read aloud.

The modern British expression owes a lot to the Brethren of the nineteenth century and to the charismatic restorationism of the 1970s and 1980s, though many of those groups eventually acquired buildings and structures of their own, which is itself worth noting.

What It Gets Right

Let me be generous first, because there is much to be generous about. The house church movement is right that the New Testament nowhere requires a dedicated building, and that Christians have wasted enormous sums maintaining architecture that serves no gospel purpose. Any minister who has sat through a two-hour meeting about a roof knows the force of that argument.

It is right that meetings in the New Testament were participatory. 1 Corinthians 14:26 describes a gathering where each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation. That is a long way from rows of people facing forwards in silence for an hour, and congregations of every kind should feel that comparison.

It is right that relationships in a group of thirty are qualitatively different from relationships in a congregation of three hundred, and that the one another commands are easier to obey when you can see everybody’s face. And it is right that ministry belongs to the whole body rather than to a paid professional.

Where the Movement Goes Wrong

My first concern is teaching. Ephesians 4 says the ascended Jesus gave teachers to the church, and 1 Timothy expects elders who can handle Scripture and refute error. Where the house church movement rejects recognised teaching ministry in favour of everyone contributing equally, the group becomes only as sound as its most confident member.

My second concern is accountability. Small groups without eldership are extremely vulnerable to a dominant personality, precisely because there is no structure to check him. I have watched a warm, informal fellowship become the private territory of one man within three years, and nobody could name the point at which it happened.

My third is the ordinances and discipline. Who baptises? Who administers the Lord’s table? What happens when a member falls into serious sin and there is no defined membership from which to remove him? These are not bureaucratic questions. They are the marks of a true church, and a group that cannot answer them has not become a simpler church, it has become something else.

Meeting in a House Is Not the Point

Here is the distinction I would press. A church that meets in a house is entirely legitimate and always has been. A group that meets in a house and has no eldership, no defined membership, no ordinances and no discipline is not a house church. It is a Bible study, which is a good thing to be, and it should not pretend to be more.

The New Testament house churches had elders. Titus was told to appoint elders in every town, and those congregations were meeting in homes. Meeting in a living room was never treated as an alternative to being ordered. The building was incidental; the structure was not.

So the question I would put to anyone in the house church movement is not where do you meet, but who leads, how are they recognised, who belongs, and what happens when something goes wrong. Any group that can answer those four questions has my respect regardless of the venue.

The Chinese House Churches

The largest house churches in the world are in China, and they deserve to be treated separately, because their situation is not a preference. They meet in homes because registering with the state means accepting supervision of what may be preached.

What is instructive is that these congregations have developed exactly the things the Western house church movement often dispenses with. They have recognised leaders, catechesis, careful attention to doctrine, real discipline and, in many networks, formal connections between congregations. Persecution has made them more structured, not less.

That should give any Western group pause. If the house churches nearest to first-century conditions have moved towards order rather than away from it, informality may be a luxury of comfort rather than a mark of authenticity.

When a Building Helps and When It Hurts

I minister in a congregation with a building and I will defend it without pretending it is required. A building gives a public location that anyone can find, which matters for evangelism in a way that a house cannot replicate. It allows growth beyond the size of a living room. It provides a place for community work, and it says something about permanence in a town that has watched most institutions leave.

It also carries dangers the house church movement identifies correctly. Buildings consume money and attention. They can become the thing the congregation exists to serve. And they make it possible for people to attend for years without anybody knowing them, which almost never happens in a home.

So the honest position is that neither arrangement is holy. Both have characteristic failures, and a congregation is wise to know its own.

What I Would Say to Both Sides

To those drawn to the house church movement: examine the motive carefully. If you are leaving because a congregation preached the gospel faithfully and you found it dull, that is a problem you will take with you. If you are leaving because there was no accountability and no teaching, then be sure the new arrangement supplies what the old one lacked, because informality does not supply it automatically.

To those in established churches: stop dismissing this. The house church movement grows in exactly the soil that traditional churches create when they become impersonal, passive and preoccupied with maintenance. Every person who leaves for a living room is telling you something.

And to both: the New Testament word for church is a word for an assembly of people, never for a place. Whichever venue you use, the test is the same.

What Made the First House Churches Work

It is worth asking why the arrangement functioned so well in the first century, because the answer is not simply the size of the room. Those households were not gatherings of individuals who happened to live nearby. A Roman household included family, servants, freedmen, clients and dependants, bound together by real obligations, and when the head of such a house believed, the whole structure came with him.

So the church in someone’s house had a social density that a modern group of friends meeting on a Tuesday does not have automatically. There was an existing pattern of authority, provision and accountability, and the gospel entered it rather than replacing it with informality. That is a point the house church movement should sit with, because voluntary association between people who can walk away at any time is a much weaker structure than it looks.

It also explains the eldership. Those congregations needed recognised leaders precisely because they were embedded in real social life with real obligations, and Paul’s qualifications assume men whose households can be inspected. Take away the eldership and you have not simplified the New Testament house church. You have removed the part that held it together, as Titus 1:5 assumes without argument.

Learning From It Without Joining It

My conclusion is that established congregations should take the criticisms of the house church movement seriously and act on them where they land, rather than waiting to be emptied by them. Three things are worth borrowing.

The first is participation. A congregation can build genuine opportunity for members to contribute without abandoning ordered teaching, and a mid-week meeting where people actually speak is worth more than another polished service. The second is hospitality. Nothing in the New Testament suggests the church’s life should happen entirely in a hired hall, and the fastest way to answer the house church movement is for church members to open their homes. My article on church planting touches on how new congregations often begin exactly this way.

The third is scale. If your congregation is large enough that people can be invisible, the answer is not to shrink but to make sure nobody is only ever in the big room. Smaller gatherings within the church do what the house church movement values, without giving up the eldership, the ordinances and the discipline that the New Testament assumes. If you want the fuller list of what a congregation must have, my article on the marks of a true church sets it out.

So, now what?

If you meet in a home, ask the four questions this week. Who are your recognised leaders, and by what process were they recognised? Who belongs, and how would anyone know? Who serves the ordinances? And what happens if a member sins seriously and will not repent? If you cannot answer them, you have the beginning of a church rather than a church, and that is worth putting right.

If you meet in a building, ask a different one. When did somebody in your congregation last open their home to people they did not already know well? The house church movement is often a reaction to something we stopped doing, and there is nothing stopping us starting again.

Greet also the church in their house.

Romans 16:5 (ESV)