New Testament House Church – by Intentional Design.
This is a little story about New Testament church design and patterns.
Way back in the beginning when Jesus was walking the earth he would celebrate the Jewish Sabbath. Every Friday night at sunset he would faithfully meet with others, light some candles or a menorah, eat some food, say some prayers and drink some wine. Then on Saturday (the Sabbath day) he would take it easy and not work until sunset.
That’s what Jews did, according to a pattern or design that God instructed.
In those days salvation was focused primarily on the Jewish people, as the gospel program had not yet started for Gentiles.
Then Jesus died, rose again, walked the earth for 40 days, being seen by many witnesses, and then ascended to heaven.
The church looked very different back then to the way we typically see it today.
As far as we know from the book of Acts, from the very beginning believers met in their homes, and Paul confirms this in his writings.
Later when Paul was converted and travelled on his mission trips, occasionally he would use or borrow or rent a larger venue like the school of Tyrannus, or visit Jews in synagogues. We see this in Acts 19:9 but we don’t know the venue arrangements Paul made. These meetings were not considered a church, their purpose was mainly preaching, debating, reasoning, persuading and teaching venues for the public (and we assume local house churches) to gather. Eventually Paul had his own house church in Rome in Acts 28:30.
Other house churches found in the new testament are Mary’s house church Acts 12:12, Lydia’s house church Acts 16:40, Prisca and Aquila’s House Church Romans 16:3-5, Nympha’s House Church Colossians 4:15, Philemon and Apphia’s House Church Philemon v1-2 and finally Paul’s own house church in Rome in Acts 28:30
By 70ad the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple so there was no more temple venue for Jews to gather at, or temple taxes paid by the Jews. In fact Jews were purged from Israel in the great diaspora by the Romans. Jewish and Gentile believers had nowhere to gather, again except in homes.
The entire New Testament writings assume the reader understands that the primary means of believers to gather was in domestic homes. This also hold true for the seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Jesus was speaking about networks of house churches in those seven cities. There were no Church buildings back then. None.
To Jews in those days, the Sabbath was considered both a holy day and a holiday in which Jews did not work and the marketplace did not function. Shops and businesses were closed on Saturday (Sabbath). Even in modern Israel today the Sabbath is generally very quiet.
In Israel, what we know as Sunday was the first commercial day of the week where shops, businesses and government offices were opened and workers went in the fields or workplaces to work. Again in modern Israel when I worked there, Sunday was a normal work day in the marketplace.
Back then, and today, Sunday was (and is) very similar to our modern western Monday, being the first commercial day of the week. I digress… lets get back to the early church.
Acts 20:7 refers to “the first day of the week“, meaning… the first commercial and business day of the week, the disciples gathered together for fellowship and to break bread.
We have to stop and ask a basic question… If the disciples all went to work that day (and it was a work day) then how did they possibly gather to eat ? The answer is simple. They gathered for the evening meal after work on Sunday night, which was a work night, just like our western Monday night. Go figure. These are the written facts.
So we can now form a picture of the early church believers running home from working (in the fields, the bakery, the carpentry shop, wherever). They would enthusiastically gathering family members and bags of bread and bladders of wine and hurry to a home (or be hosts to others in their own home) where they would talk about Jesus late into the evening, and be discipled, ask questions, eat, pray and celebrate together. That church design actually sounds rather exciting. They shares stories of Jesus, they had the Holy Spirit to guide them, and if they were fortunate they may have access to someone who understood the contents of the Jewish scrolls (which were always locked up under lock and key in local synagogues) who could share some Old Testament context, since that was the ONLY scripture that existed at that time. Paul, James, Peter, Jude and the Gospel writers had NOT YET written anything. The New Testament that we have today, did not yet exist for those early church pioneers. That’s a fact and the reality.
We now understand that this gathering was a “daily” occurrence when we look at Acts 2:46 and furthermore as a consequence the church grew with new converts being added daily in Acts 2:47 and even more converts being added again in Acts 16:5. Radical growth was an outworking of this church design as more disciples were made. Something amazing was happening.
We also begin to paint a picture where these house meetings were dynamic with food, singing, prayer, worship, social interaction, lots of talking and discussion and according to Paul, even wine. Yes I am afraid so.. real alcoholic wine. Sounds more like a party or a wedding celebration. Imagine that going on every night !! Paul even chastises the wild Corinthian group for being drunken (obviously some were drinking too much alcohol at the church gatherings) in 1 CORINTHIANS 11:21 Paul says “For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken.”
There also appears to be no clergy, no professionals, no building fund, no programs and no liturgy. The church met daily, all members participated and contributed in some way, the church grew, disciples matured and made more disciple-makers, and the church in that design changed the world.
Since then, the simplicity and purity of the early church has been complicated and polluted with pagan rituals, dogma and corporate religiosity, and with that change the church has lost favour and lost its influence. Others have done a great job of documenting how the church has steadily veered away from its simple original roots. I won’t treat that topic here. However, Jesus also came to set us free from the bondage of religion (like the evil Sadducees and The Pharisees).
Instead of complaining about our church life, my wife and I have implemented a house church as close as we can to this original pattern. It’s not perfect but a good start. After 4 years, we are moving onto our 2nd design iteration and making structural changes to improve the training and improve the disciple-making “fruit” that comes comes out the end of that new design.
Originally, we met at a cafe. We’d meet on Saturday night. We would follow a “wedding celebration” format of eating, speeches and celebrating. That format is just a “method” that we use… it’s not a doctrine. The main principle here is that everyone contributes and participates in the gathering. Everyone is important. We did this and it seemed to work well. On occasion we also would move the gathering from house to house with the hosts running the evening’s agenda. We had been doing this for 3 years and its grew and was a lot of fun. We saw deep healings and change in others, and we were also challenged to grow spiritually along the way.
In terms of gathering style, we kept looking into scripture to see how these gatherings actually worked, and we continue to reshape and improve the gatherings as we learn more, and become more confident.
To make the scriptural point a little crisper… I’ll use 1 CORINTHIANS 14:26. Paul says “How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine (which means a “teaching”), hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying (which means building each other up).“
Lets pick on one element in that scripture. Doctrine. So to my mind, for people in a gathering to be permitted, and empowered to say, bring a “doctrine”, means that the entire group is willing to listen respectfully, discuss the new teaching topic that has been introduced by another member of the group and potentially (respectfully) agree or disagree with the teaching. The group will thoroughly discuss the topic and study it out together to agree if it is correct or not, based on scripture. We cannot imagine the chaos this would cause a traditional church mired in pagan traditions. It would NEVER be permitted, and it is not permitted. So we see supposed “Christian” churches literally throwing out the Apostolic directions for gatherings, and adopting meeting formats, like an entertainment show, from the pagan temple system. That is sad.
Lets look at another simple, yet provocative scripture. In Ephesians 4:11-12 Paul instructs us saying “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting (Training/Equipping) of the saints (that means all believers), for the work (the mission) of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ“. This is staggering. What Paul is saying to us is that all ministry work is to be done by all the believers, and the special roles described in Ephesian 4:11 are simply there to train everyone to do the work. The ministry work is NOT meant to be done by elite clergy or professionals only. Not at all. This is what the Bible says. This is an Apostolic teaching. Today, can you image the uproar of supposedly “unqualified” lay people doing all the work of the ministry and possibly doing it for free !!! We can now understand why religious professionals start wringing their hands and wetting their pants when people being to read the Bible, and start acting on it. It makes these so called professionals look silly and fake, and threatens their “hireling” job role. They don’t really care for the sheep anyway, because they are a “hireling” as it says in John 10:13.
To take this idea a little further, lets look at the topic of Evangelism. Traditional Churches might say “Let us do a community outreach, so let us call for the Evangelist to do the Evangelism work”. We see this all the time. This is not at all what Paul is talking about. What Paul means is “Call the Evangelist and get him/her to TRAIN EVERYONE so we can ALL do the community outreach and be effective in Evangelism”. This is what Paul means by training and equipping us all.
We have all heard some Church goer say “Oh I am not called to do Evangelism. I am not an Evangelist”. This is what spiritually bankrupt churches teach, and allow people to believe this is correct, and let them rot for decades sitting in pews on a Sunday. This is simply not correct. This is NOT what the Bible teaches. So my advice is keep reading the Bible and you too will work it out.
I’ll add one more scripture, to emphasis the interactive group dynamic that we see in the New Testament churches. The Apostle James instructs us in James 5:16, he says “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” So here we have a situation where ANYONE in the gathering can confess their sins and faults to ANYONE ELSE in the gathering, and HEALING is the result. Again, this is staggering as a pattern for gathering. As leaders we need to create trusted relationships, safety and space in the group to allow this to occur. Again, in traditional churches this is impossible. We don’t know the person we are sitting next to. There is no space made in traditional church meetings to allow confession to the group, or confession one-on-one. It just doesn’t happen. The best we can see is the vain attempt by the Roman Catholic stream to have “blind” confession to a Priest in a box. This is NOT what James is speaking about. The amazing dynamic that has been lost by the traditional church is that when the speaker confesses, BOTH the speaker and the hearers get healed. We all get healed. The whole group gets healed by the proper biblical process. We have experienced this in our gatherings. It’s miraculous. To be specific James says in the KJV, “that ye may be healed”, and “ye” means “you all” (Plural) in the Greek, not “you” but “ye” . It does not mean individual healing, it means “you all” may get healed. Boom ! How did the traditional church miss that basic form of how confession is made ? Again, if this is followed, this is miraculous and we have seen this over and over in our group where members get delivered and set free from all manner of trauma, hurt, secrets and pain.
In our experience, humans are not looking for “house church” or church by a “brand name”, they are simply looking for Jesus and that original and pure expression of the early house church format, not religion. They want the fresh new spiritual wine, not the old corporate wineskin. House Churches sadly can be as religious and grubby as traditional Churches, and this happens largely when leaders bring the pagan rituals and pagan format into the home. Again, we all need to keep examining scripture to test and check what we are doing lines up with the Apostolic instructions, and argue why we should or should not follow those postolic instructions.
I heard a precious brother once say “Jesus does not like apple pie, but I will keep making apple pie, because I think Jesus SHOULD like my apple pie !!”. The reality is we need to give Jesus what he died for, and what he wants, and he wants obedience, faith and fruit.
This little story is meant to challenge our thinking on how we meet, when we meet, why we meet, and the “go into all the world” disciple-makers we are all meant to become in that House Church gathering process.
I hope this gets you thinking how you see church design and I hope you yearn for changes back to original pattern, as I do, that changed the world.
Martin and Cher Spratt are house church practitioners and lead Oasis.org.au which is a disciple-making and house church planting movement based in Melbourne, Australia.
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