TEACHING

Don Atkin

DEFINITIVE VALUES AND VISION FOR THE CHURCH

There is much being reported in these days about home churches, usually contrasted to institutional church. Many are finding more life and a deeper sense of personal commitment within these new unstructured structures. George Barna has written a book, "Revolution," loaded with statistical evidence that this is a significant move. I am including the following article which will give you a taste of what you will find in Barna’s book.

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Home Churches Growing Increasingly Popular as Worship Alternative

By Natalie Harris

June 13, 2006

(AgapePress) - Church and culture analyst George Barna, founder of The Barna Group, says millions of Christians are leaving conventional churches to meet in homes. According to the researcher, about 50 million American adults meet in home churches at least once a month, and the numbers choosing this option are on the increase.

Barna says home churches are a growing trend among Christians who want to "be" the church, not just attend church. Many who join such groups do so, he explains, because they are seeking greater depth in relationships and more commitment to spirituality than they may have found in traditional church settings.

Home churches often do not have traditional settings and can vary, depending on what the members contribute from week to week or what they feel led to discuss and pray about at any given time. Barna himself started attending a home church a year ago, and he admits that this style of fellowship can have its weaknesses.

"There are some challenges, of course," the Christian researcher says. "You've got the possibilities of bad teaching and errant theology creeping into the process, but we already have that happening in churches today. So we're going to have a lot of the same challenges that we've always had -- it's just an issue of who's going to resolve them."

Barna predicts that the home-church movement will continue to grow. He also predicts this increasingly popular alternative to traditional churches will prompt many Christians to take their faith more seriously and to avoid depending on clergy for spiritual growth.

Leaders Who Left Traditional Churches: Why They Chose to Go 'Home'

South Carolina home-church leader Doug Shales vows he will never go back to traditional church, which he left more than a year ago to start meeting with about 20 other believers of a variety of ages and church backgrounds. Every Sunday evening, they meet in his home to eat, worship, pray, and teach one another from the Bible. There is no preacher and no structured format for the group's services.

Shales says he left the traditional church because he felt its structure was contrary to the model he found in scripture. "To me, I just could not reconcile it at all with anything biblical to just have three or four people ministering to three or four hundred, and having the spiritual life of those three or four hundred pretty much hanging on what those three or four people give them," he says.

"It's just not the way that I understand the Holy Spirit wants to work in our lives," the home-church leader says. So, instead, he and the other members of his small congregation seek understanding, mutual accountability, and spiritual growth together.

Shale says most problems faced by the home church are logistical. For instance, he notes, members have to consider issues such as how to give and how to grow new churches. But in many ways, he notes, the size of these congregations can contribute to a more intimate style of problem-solving that involves everyone.

Author and former pastor, Rev. Chip Brogden, a home-church leader in North Carolina, considers home churches a necessary part of the Christian community. He believes this style of Christian fellowship is filling some of the gaps left by traditional churches.

Brogden says home churches can be a place for those who have been hurt by the traditional church or for those who do not want to be distracted from Christ by a complex church structure. But he cautions Christians not to differentiate themselves from one another based on what kind of structure they choose for their worship and association with fellow believers.

"Whether they're in the church building or outside of the church building, we're all still brothers and sisters," the North Carolina minister says. "We're just going about the life of Christ and how we see the life of the body of Christ differently from the more traditional way of going about it."

Home churches allow Christians to see the body of Christ as more than just a local fellowship, Brogden says. Also, he adds, such churches give members the chance to gather with believers of different denominational backgrounds from their own.

Obviously, home churches serve a function that their members consider desirable and perhaps vital to their spiritual nourishment and well being. And if many believers who have chosen to leave traditional churches for what this alternative has to offer are any indication, the home-church trend has already begun to change the face of contemporary Christianity.

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It is not my purpose in this teaching to advocate or promote one style of meeting over another. I am reporting on the home church movement as a significant transition, paradigm shift, within contemporary church culture.

My purpose is to bring to light some guiding definitive values and vision for all of us.

Early New Testament Churches were designated by city or region.

Both home churches and institutional churches are, at best, merely local expressions of the body of Christ, which is biblically identified as "the called-out ones" in a given geo-political sphere. While there is much evidence in the New Testament that believers met in homes (and no evidence to support denominations or church buildings) they were always identified as parts of the church in the city - Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossi, Thessalonica, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, etc.

Early New Testament churches had government.

Not only were early New Testament churches identified simply as "the church in (a particular city)," they were not void of authentic spiritual government. For the apostles ordained elders in every city. Today, as we experience this "revolution" in church culture and style, we must also embrace the revolution in church government.

God is raising up apostles to provide father-type love and general-type leadership for God’s family and army.

Apostles have God-given spheres of responsibility, with corresponding authority. There are those who have national and international influence. Others are being raised up to serve cities and regions. We see this combination modeled in the first three chapters of the Revelation. John obviously served Asia, and was instructed by Jesus to write letters to the messengers of the seven churches which were in Asia.

Apostles are messengers - sent ones with a message - not managers of local expressions of the body. They are governmental, providing coordinating servant-leadership for the elders they appoint in every city, as well as other fivefold ministries. As master builders, they facilitate the necessary infrastructure for the church. As fathers, they provide the motivation, security and vision for destiny for the sons of God. As generals, they work alongside the prophets and intercessors in providing the strategies necessary in spiritual warfare.

God has a plan for governing the gates of our cities.

The woman described in Proverbs 31:10-31 gives us a good picture of the body of Christ, not constrained by or contained within "church walls." We see family responsibility, entrepreneurial success, marketplace impact, and more being demonstrated by this wife. Her husband praises her. He is also known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land.

The gates of any walled city is to be the seat of government. Except for the thieves and robbers who would climb over the wall, all who come into the city and go out of the city go through the gates. The elders (appointed in every city) are to rule both who and what is allowed into the city as Jesus sits among them.

God’s government and glory is to fill the earth.

Jesus Christ is on the throne of David at the right hand of the Father in heavenly places. He is ruling and reigning as both Lord and Christ from His heavenly position.

By the Spirit, Jesus is establishing His government through His called-out ones. We are being led by His Spirit in the elders of our cities who are rightly relating to His sent ones, apostles, who carry the vision of His global glory.

God is taking us from glory to glory.

The church today is recovering the priesthood of all believers, intimacy with God and with one another, and redefining who really is a believer in light of the Scriptures.

We must be aware, as the pendulum swings, that we have not arrived. Although we are enjoying new dimensions of spiritual reality and freedom, we must also watch for the emerging of divine order in our midst. We must maintain our forward thrust into the fulness of God’s purpose.

The apostles and elders who will lead us into that fulness will do so largely by example and by influence. It will be easy to follow those who demonstrate:

1. They love us and will lay down their lives to serve us.

2. They are more committed to our destiny than their own.

3. They know where they are going (and taking us).