I dont see evidence of it, but the folks touting the house church movement say it has taken off. They assert sharply more families are giving up pews and the view of stained-glass windows and choir lofts for the worship of God in family rooms, sitting on the floor or folding chairs and parking in cul-de-sacs.None other that evangelical religious landscape watcher George Barna has become a house churchman. The Barna Group founder talks about it in his latest book on American faith, Revolution. And in St. Louis and Denver this summer, Barna will speak to House2House conferences. He will talk about the new trend in a workshop, An Army of Ordinary People. Barnas research of 5,000 randomly selected adults suggests that 9 percent had attended a house church in a typical week. Barna surmises that one in five adults attends a home church at least once a month. The rarely have professionally trained or ordained leaders, and overwhelmingly they are evangelicals.
The home crowd says its a little-known phenomenon how families are quietly forgoing the churches in their cities and towns for trips to homes for a couple hours of worship, prayer, fellowship and potluck. Once seen as an aberration, it has been moving from a trend o an established worship option, they say.
The list of Valley home churches continues to grow (www.eastvalleyhousechurch.org/Churches.htm). The June on-line newsletter from Phoenix Area House Churches includes a commentary that Home-Grown Churches Becoming Popular. It suggests millions of Americans are breaking from the traditional church setting to recreate the spiritual intimacy of first-century Christian fellowships. It propounds that since 2000, more than 20 million Americans began exploring not only house churches, but worksplace ministries and on-line faith communities. Some folks are remaining in their own churches but supplementing their spiritual life with the typically nondenominational worship gatherings of a dozen or so.
The article quotes a former megachurch member, Greg Windsor, who lamented it can be hard to know those around you in the pews, but that is not a problem with autonomous home churches where prayer time can be effusive and detailed. He asserts that in two centuries of Christianity the original New Testament worship experience has been constantly embellished and altered and distorted like making photocopies of photocopies and getting distortion and loss of sharpness.
House churches are not unlike the home school movement, also driven by dissatisfaction with traditional institutions of education or worship, along with an independent, even maverick, spirit and a longing for the basics. Barna warns that a house church group may find itself can suffer from bad teaching and errant theology creeping into the process.
Clearly house churches meet the needs of some, but like do-it-yourself home remodeling, it falls to the ordinary people, as Barna says to know what they’re doing and move it beyond cozy fellowship, taking turns reading scripture and offering the meaning to others on couches and Lazyboys.
