Just some reminders of what home church meetings are orchestrated to accomplish...
It’s a meeting where everyone contributes for the purpose of mutual edification. It is the house church meeting where each one has a “song, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation” (1 Corinthians 14:26). In these meetings the agenda is not individuals leading and others listening, but rather each contributing, and sharing what he/she brings to the meeting.
House churches are intentionally smaller groups of diverse, intergenerational people, where we share our lives on a regular basis, make our needs known to each other, and bear each other’s burdens. This tends to happen best through a weekly meeting in homes throughout the area where the church exists, around the joy of a shared common meal and the restored richness of the Lord’s Supper (Acts 2:46).
These small gatherings of house churches are like a family, while the large gathering on the weekend is like the family reunion. As important and fun as real life family reunions can be, they are not even possible or practical without first having the family relationship that precedes the reunion. The house church is where you can get to know people, get questions answered, grow spiritually, serve alongside others, share meals, eating with each other and with God, and express your faith face to face, in real time, with actual people. It’s hands-on church, where everybody gets to play.
Because our lives are different, our gifts are unique and our personalities are diverse, when we spend time together in the house church, it becomes very quickly a comprehensive way of being the church. When house churches meet, they’re not together just to have a Bible Study. Nor are they together as a social group just to eat and hang out. They don’t come together simply to take care of one another’s needs. And they’re not together just to do some task beyond themselves, like helping the poor. In other words a house church is not a specialty group.
It’s more than a Bible study, a worship group, a social group, a care group, a prayer group, or a special task group. It’s a hybrid of all these things because all of them are features of the church. When the church gathers, people worship, study Scripture, pray for one another, take care of needs, eat together, reach out to others together. Not all of these things have to happen in the same meeting or in every meeting, but all of them are regular features of house church gatherings over time because of the comprehensive nature of the church.
It's good to read the details again. It's good to be reminded of the things that are essential components of what the church looks like. Thanks for the reminder Chris.
Posted by: Ames | July 28, 2004 at 11:57 AM