Home church

Home church is having church at home and is a part of the modern house church movement which some acclaim as a rediscovery of the New Testament or first century Christian Church.

A House church group may be a part of a larger Christian body, such as a parish or network, but also may be independent groups that see the house church as the primary practice of the early Christian community.

Some Christian groups choose to meet in houses because it is cheaper and more intimate and find them preferable to meetings in a dedicated building. Some believe small churches were a deliberate apostolic pattern in the first century, and they were intended by Christ from the beginning.

But the word we see translated "house" which is oikos did not just mean a building or the house on the street where you live any more than the word for "Church" which is ekklesia in the Greek meant a building where you met on Sunday or Sabbath.

Both these words can be used in different ways to imply different sense to the word depending on their context. Context is not only the sentence they are used in but the whole context of scripture and the times in which they are written.

The word "oikos" could mean "all the persons forming one family" "the family of God, of the Christian Church" or even the "descendants" of a family. The word appears more than a hundred times in the Bible including references to the "lost sheep of the house of Israel" and a reference to the tabernacle as the "house of God" or the temple where Christ calling it "My house" "the house of prayer" and then cast out the moneychangers of it.

Several passages in the Bible specifically mention churches meeting in houses.

• 1 Corinthians 16:19 "The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house."
• Romans 16:3-5 "Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus: Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Likewise [greet] the church that is in their house. Salute my wellbeloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ.
• Philemon 1:2 "And to [our] beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house:"
• Colossians 4:15 "Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house."

The word Church could also be used in a general sense and a more specific sense. Ekklesia did not really mean an assembly as much as it meant a called out group for a particular purpose. It was commonly a very political term in Greek. The disciples were called out much like Moses called out the Levites to be separate and do service to the people. Those Levites were the called out by Moses and appointed by his authority to become the "Church in the wilderness".

Millions of people are disappointed or dissatisfied with what some people call the institutional Church. Certainly, Churches and the 40,000 denominations of churches are operating in a drastically different way than the first century Church. Are people disappointed or dissatisfied with God and Jesus or are they dissatisfied and unfulfilled by the practices of the Modern Church? Many people are finding the home Church more responsive, more intimate, more fulfilling but are all home churches doing what Christ fully intended?

While there is little doubt Christians commonly met in houses what Christ intended and what the early Church was doing reached far beyond local fellowship meetings in the homes of believers. There is also little doubt that Christ wanted us to set ourselves down in small intimate groups or companies or what the Greeks called sumposion since He actually commanded his disciples to make the people do so. But He also commanded that those companies gather in ranks of Tens.

The Kingdom

Jesus told the people what His plan was when He explained what He intended to the Pharisees and others who sat in the seat of Moses. He was going to take the kingdom away from them and appoint it to another group, His little flock, so they could bear fruit that the existing ministers of the Kingdom of God were not producing.

He was not going to take that government away from them by force or even establish that Kingdom of Heaven at hand by the use of force. They would denounce there position out of their own mouths and Jesus would establish His Kingdom of God by His sacrifice and through the faith, hope and charity through love of believers who were willing to repent and live according to The Way which James calls the perfect law of liberty.

Jesus was the highest son of David which made him the rightful heir to the throne, the rightful king of a nation. Israel was not a government like other governments of the world of the Gentiles that exercise authority one over the other but He came to set men free. For hundreds of years, early Israel had operated with no taxation except the freewill offerings of tithes to individual Levites "according to their service".

The scriptures tell us that the people had rejected God when they elected to have a ruler over them in 1 Samuel 8. Jesus told the Pharisees that if they actually knew Moses they would have also known Him. Evidently what the Pharisees thought they knew about Moses was wrong. Their Corban was not like that of the Corban spoken of by Moses and so somehow it was "making the word of God to none effect".

Both Moses and Jesus told the people to love their neighbor as themselves. Certainly they have expressed that love in many home Churches. They have helped one another in far more intimate, financial, and practical ways. This love is part of the keys to their success. But all home churches are not successful. But what is a successful church?

A successful church is one that does what Christ intended and propagates his doctrines and ordinances. But if we are to do what Christ intended was must look at the whole gospel.

Both Jesus and Moses called out a group of men to serve the people and placed certain restrictions on that body of public servants. They both appointed 70 men who were blessed with the Holy Spirit. In both the Old and New Testament there were also at least one group of 7 men appointed to help with a daily ministration.

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