In a metal outbuilding at a shuttered horse track near San Antonio, Jeff Bishop says he will celebrate at his “simple church” under a rough-hewed cedar cross, with “folks who speak ”˜cowboy’ like I do.”
In Washington, D.C., at Saturday night Easter Vigil, while “some folks go to services dressed to the nines, we’ll be dressed to the fives: We’ll keep it casual and focused on Christ,” says William D’Antonio, a member of a network of Catholic-style house churches called “Intentional Eucharistic communities.”
No matter what you call them, house churches, or “simple” or “organic” churches, have long thrived in third world countries where clergy and funds for church buildings are scarce. Now, however, they are attracting a small but loyal following across the USA.
“Think of church like family. You don’t ‘go to family.’
So many confuse the building with the Church! How many people confuse a house with the family that lives in the house? Ever? There are family national associations…but I dare say that members of the nuclear family do not conflate or have greater loyalty to some national association of people with the same surname.
What is the systemic fault in contemporary “Church” that leads people to “go to church” rather than to “be the Church”? What is the systemic fault that leads people to point at a building and call it the “church”? What systemic falut leads people to name a denomination when they refer to a “church”?
Kuriakon doma…doesn’t it have living pillars? Isn’t Church organic…a living body? I understand that one identifies a turtle shell with the turtle, but if there is no living turtle, the shell is just a shell, as pretty as it may be. If one sees a sick and dying turtle, one wouldn’t tap on the shell and say, “Oh look…it’s healthy because the shell is strong and durable.” If one saw a serious injury to the turtle’s head, one wouldn’t consider the turtle healthy because the shell was intact.
As of now, we are leaving our local Church at the end of next month and changing where we will be Church, because the national leadership is starting to support serious error and because our local body has refused to allow us to give locally without supporting the national leadership (the money goes into the general fund and a motion to allow for designating funds was tabled) and because locally, the youth ministries have a low priority in the congregation and have been in decline for over 2 years now (with only the slimmest hope of rebuilding and none at all in the short term).
This is a heart-rending decision. We have been in prayer since last August and feel that the Lord is indeed leading our family to be part of a different denomination and congregation. Our comfort is that we are all still in the same Church…Christ is the head and we are all parts in the same Body.
[b]There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.[/b] ~ Eph. 4:4-6
Well, they’re right about one thing — in the NT, house gatherings were the norm. But I think there were other elements at play necessitating such a thing, such as persecution and the logistics of a fledgling movement, which aren’t relevant today.
In contemporary society, I think that house churches could become cliques, at best, or cults, at worst. LOL, I give a friend of mine a hard time because he runs a weekly Bible study at his home. It’s comprised of several other like-minded couples in their affluent neighborhood, not open to others, and has no clergy or scholarly direction or involvement. In other words, it’s a clique that reads some Scripture passages, says what the Scripture means to them, and then has dinner and drinks. It’s not a real “study” and shouldn’t be regarded as a legitimate Bible study or taking the place of one, but it is. That’s the danger here.
However, they really shouldn’t include Cowboy Church with the house churches. Cowboy Church is very different. It serves farmers and ranchers because their lifestyle, daily schedule, and work make attending traditional churches difficult. Farmers and ranchers don’t work 9-5 and don’t get days off. Everyone is welcome at Cowboy Church services, of course, but their primary purpose is to meet the spiritual needs of ranchers.