Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – Churches in Homes: New Efforts in Reaching Today’s Globalizing/Diversifying World
Obvious Concept Shifts in Having Lay-led, Home-based Churches
The complete, healthy, autonomous Church of Jesus Christ has nothing at all to do with buildings. In the basic, literal definition of church as Jesus established it, neither size nor facilities exist. Some things seem quite difficult to get away from in our concept of “What is a church?” Two prominent ones are: (1) a church needs to grow numerically and (2) often as a consequence of that, a church needs to have the opportunity to worship together in numbers that require a building that is purchased, rented or borrowed.
Less Portentous yet Real Shifts in Having Lay-led, Home-based Churches
A “church” has nothing to do with constitutions, committees, organizations (within or beyond the church), choirs, praise teams, salaries, relationships to secular or religious governments, elected officers, designated office positions, budgets, long-range planning, conferences or any other extra-biblical trappings. Those things are needed and helpful in some church models. Not so in the home church.
The church is not about formally trained pastors per se. A church may have a “called” pastor, bishop or elder; however, the actual, literal, Greek wording in the New Testament has nothing to say about the “office” of the pastor. It is a function, not an office. Acts 20:28 reads within the conceptual image of “the shepherd who watches over” and 1 Timothy 3:1 renders it: “If one wants the overwatching.” Hierateia, “office” or hierarchy, is not there. It has not been changed from a different word—it is simply not there. The insertion of that word in translating demonstrates a pre-conceived concept. Jerome and other early translators had already made up their minds. In Romans 11:13, Paul claims “ministry,” not office. In Romans 12:4, it is “function” to describe the work of all of the members of the Church (including the bishops/elders). Only in Luke 1 and in Hebrews 8 do we find the actual word “office.” In all three cases it refers to the office of the priest (as opposed to, or different than, Christ’s declaration that all who are in him are priests). He declared the “office” of priest vacated and he, himself, the only high priest.
A church may have a “called” pastor, bishop or elder; however, the actual, literal, Greek wording in the New Testament has nothing to say about the “office” of the pastor.
Too much effort goes into searching for, placing and training leadership. When a home church accepts the idea that a trained pastor must be installed to lead a congregation, two strikes against that church exist. It probably cannot survive, at least as a reproducing home church. The only way that these small churches can possibly survive, thrive and reproduce is to share all the leadership among themselves within that church. And, in everything they do, it must all be so basic and simple that they can actually do it. To expect to someday have a “pastor,” as we conceive of that position, will set that church up to feel incomplete until they get one.
The greatest difficulty that exists in establishing, growing and reproducing home-based churches centers on the professionally-trained pastor-types. I am one of those and I have struggled with the idea that lay-persons can invite friends into their home, start a church with that group, win people to the Lord, lead the ordinances, teach and train each other and reproduce other similar churches with the capability of the same growth and reproduction. This reality may often appear more than many of us professional religionists can bear.
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