Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – Churches in Homes: New Efforts in Reaching Today’s Globalizing/Diversifying World
Extending God’s Kingdom Worldwide
The question we face arises not from whether intervention, involvement and worldwide transformation must consume our lives as believers—but from how to accomplish the task. This writer has long insisted that no single method will prove sufficient. Those who boldly proclaim that one church model or another serves as the footprint for Christ’s Church in the twenty-first century miss the point of the examples that God left across his word for those who live today. God surely has many more ways for us to extend his kingdom and establish his Church worldwide than we have even thought, much less developed and implemented.
Where and how then do we even begin the process? Perhaps the answer comes in the very conditions in which we find the world. For instance, after fifty-nine years of religious repression in China, the year 2008 reveals a vast expansion of God’s kingdom. And where conditions are even harsher, with death stalking at every door knock, Christians and seekers meet regularly in a literal ring around the globe through the heart of radical Islam. Elsewhere, Cambodia now boasts perhaps four thousand evangelical home churches. India claims hundreds of new home churches each week, especially among the people groups most oppressed and intimidated by religionists and governments alike. Home-based churches are reproducing in hundreds of networks in nearly all the former Soviet republics in the rim around Russia.
Across Canada, where we live, isolated families seem less than encouraged to begin churches because they can likely never afford property, a building and a paid pastor. Dozens of tiny existing churches are spending their entire church lifespan feeling like failures because they never obtain all that they believe they need to be a successful and healthy church. In cities, it becomes more apparent every year that an average congregation can seldom afford the buildings and staff that will accommodate the present size of their group, much less future growth.
Sadly, many church and denominational leaders around the world exhibit a negative stance toward the concept of the home-based, lay-led church model. One such leader even declared to me that the home church may be biblical but it will not work, is not practical and is not effective in today’s world.
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New Wave of Churches
However, God seems to be preparing the whole world for a vast new wave of churches that will be simple in organization, effective in teaching and evangelism and flexible enough to meet the needs of millions of people for whom other church models are not practical or possible. For many people, this forms the best model for today’s church.
For others, it may not be so. Yet, many people around the world will never find the Lord through cell or traditional churches. This is not because of a lack of effectiveness of those models in many settings, but simply because the lay-led home church is the best and perhaps the only way that many people will participate in a church. Other popular models are better for many people. The big three types of churches are not in competition. The autonomous, lay-led, home-based church is only one model among many that God has for the nations. It has problems and advantages just like any other model. Additionally, implementing this model demands big shifts in our concepts of “church.”
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