What They Are:

House churches are simply church in a house. The word “church” translates the Greek word “ekklesia.” It literally means a group of people “called out” into a public place. On Sunday of each week we are “called out” for a worship service. In a worship service, we serve worship to God. “Such the Father seeks to worship Him: true worshipers who will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth” (John 4:23).

On the last Sunday of each month we meet in Homes throughout the city to offer that worship. In Jerusalem, the early church met in the Temple and in believer’s homes throughout the city. In Corinth it appears that the church met in houses and in a large central meeting place (1 Cor.11:22, 16:19). In Ephesus, Paul taught in the synagogue and for two years in the Hall of Tyrannus, yet throughout the New Testament the church is said to have met in homes. Where a church meets, doesn’t seem to matter all that much in the New Testament; but that she meets is huge and that she meets to serve worship to her bridegroom Jesus is everything.

Through worshipping as one large group and also in smaller groups we hope to be better worshippers. We also hope that through that worship God will grow us into a healthier body of believers. You see our worship is expressed through the songs we sing, the prayers we pray, the offerings we give, the messages we ingest, the communion in which we partake AND in how we love our neighbor. So first and foremost we meet in homes the last Sunday of each month to serve worship to God: to Love God, yet in Loving God, we love each other.

We are God’s Sanctuary; his temple and body. To love God is to love Him in the place he chooses to dwell. He dwells in us.

What They Are Not:

• Simply a small group. We don’t meet to simply make friends. Yet worshipping together we make the best friends
• Simply a therapy group. We don’t meet to simply “fix each other.” Yet worshipping together we are healed.
• Simply a class. We don’t meet to simply learn stuff. Yet worshipping together we learn the best stuff.

What They Do:

• First and foremost, house churches gather for corporate worship.    This is their one essential function.
• They may also form small groups, classes, and any ministry program a larger church might form.
• We encourage each house church to adopt one or more “mission projects” which they participate in through designated financial offerings, as well as the offering of time and energy.
• We also expect them to be the “first line” of pastoral care for those in their midst.

Perhaps the greatest thing “They Do” is something God does, while we try to do the things listed above: they provide a more intimate environment for worshipping God by learning to love; a more intimate environment for learning to forgive. In Colossians 3, Paul writes, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,  bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

Has it ever struck you, that in order to “bear with one another” and “forgive one another,” we must insult and even sin against one another? We don’t have to try to sin! We are already sinners. We just need an environment where our sin is exposed as we bump into each other. Once it’s exposed, we can worship God by “bearing with” and “forgiving” the Sanctuary in which He dwells; that is extending His grace to His people. If we only worship God in large groups where we remain anonymous, we are rarely “sinned against” or “sin against” others. And therefore rarely learn to worship God through the practice of extending His Grace or receiving His Grace through His Sanctuary.

Leadership:

• In each house church we (the pastors of The Sanctuary), have designated a Pastor of the house church. The pastor of each house church is called to pastor that house church by helping those in that house church pastor each other. The “Pastor” must NOT do all the pasturing.
• Each house church should also develop a leadership team. The leadership team meets at least monthly for the sake of caring for the house church and planning the monthly worship service.

What A Worship Service Entails:

We hope that each house church worship service would include at least the following:

• Food. We would like each church to share a meal together.
• Worship Singing
• A Corporate Offering
• Corporate Prayer
• A Devotional, Message, Testimony or Bible Study
• Communion

It might also include:

• Some sort of “Ice breaker” of fellowship game.
• Children’s message or activities. (each church will need to decide how they want to minister to their children)
• Skits
• Mission presentations
• Audio visual presentations
• Bohemian liturgical clog dancing… OK, you get the point: be creative.    

Freedom and Boundaries:

G. K. Chesterton wrote: “…the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.” We’ve prescribed some rule and order to our “house churches,” yet we’ve done it in the hope that “good things” will “run wild.”

We sincerely hope that as we gather to do the few things that we’ve prescribed (really that God has prescribed: eat, sing, give, pray, listen, commune – worship), some of those good things will run wild. We hope that we’ll discover new forms of worship. We hope that God will grow new ministries. We hope that He will change our hearts forever. And we hope that He will bind us together in deeper and deeper bonds of Love.

What We Want From You:

• Understand that each House Church is unique.  Because each is unique, there’s no need to compete.  If we compete, we’ve already lost. We hope that you would find a house church and love her, not because of what she can do for you, but because of how God has called you to love her. We are not called to “consume” the Lord’s Church, but to bless her.
• Minister to others alongside your House Church Pastor. God calls pastors (shepherds) to give direction to the sheep and unify their actions. However, the House Church Pastor will not do everything, but will provide a context for everything getting done.  Each house church will need pastoring, but each house church pastor will facilitate the members of that house church in pastoring each other.  Caring for each other may be to simply be a friend to another, or it may mean to visit someone in the hospital, help someone move or provide some other practical means of support.
• Find a way to personally give of yourself to your House Church.  You may do this by volunteering according to your gifts.  You may offer to send out email invitations, call & invite people, help set up, greet people, lead the prayer time, lead worship singing, count the offering, give a devotional or share your testimony, serve communion, help organize childcare, coordinate social events, coordinate care for those in need in your Home Church, set up volunteer service times with another ministry, or do administrative tasks.   Whatever your gifts & desires are, your Home Church needs what you uniquely have to offer!  Contact your Home Church Pastor to let them know how you’d like to be involved.
• Support the leadership team for your House Church.   It’s critical that each house church develops a leadership group that is in touch with the needs and desires of each person, and even more, seeks God in prayer as to His hopes for the house church.  The leadership group meeting monthly and needs to ask questions such as:
  • What aspects of our meeting were too long…too short?
  • Is there a balance of shared responsibilities?
  • What’s helpful? What’s not helpful?
  • What mission/ missions should we support?
  • Who should do what in the service each month?
  • Who is in crisis that we need to attend to?

We welcome your feedback & ideas – feel free to pass them on to your Home Church Pastor and/or leadership team.

Reproduction:

We hope that as The Sanctuary grows, the number of house churches grows and visa versa. We hope that each house church would pray about starting new house churches, with new pastors, new leadership teams, new locations and indeed new personalities.  New House Churches might start out as a small group that later grows.  As the number of house churches grows, we hope that our expressions of worship and the diversity of our worship would grow as well.

We hope that “house churches” would provide rich soil in which the Spirit of Christ would grow an abundance of new fruit, both in extent and in kind. We’ve discovered that all of the coolest things don’t happen according to our plans and control, they happen between people as they gather to worship the One who has made his home in our midst; Jesus in His Sanctuary. When we gather to worship Him, we the bride become pregnant with His Life. The Sanctuary is filled with Glory. And the glory spills out into all the world.

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