Newsletter Vol.1, #32—July 31, 2005

Matthew 6: ⁶But you, when you pray, enter into your room. And shutting your door, pray to your Father in secret; and your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly. ⁷But when you pray, do not babble vain words, as the nations. For they think that in their much speaking they shall be heard.

HOUSE CHURCHES

Morris Bowers

During the time he was at Boston, Jerry Jones wrote a series of articles on house churches for the Boston bulletin. The series was later collected into a booklet, The Use of Houses in Early Christianity. In the introduction, he shows that there have been apostasies from New Testament teaching and first century practices. We can agree to that much. One item he thinks needs to be restored is the practice of “house churches.” However, there can be no “restoration” of anything in regard to “house churches.” To begin with, they did not exist in the first century .

The view of this movement is that house churches make up the “metropolitan church;” they are individual units of the whole. Alvin Jennings, page 81, says: “We have observed that in Rome, Ephesus and Colossae, the church consisted of several groups that assembled in private houses of the brethren.”

The Boston faction has carried this, in doctrine and practice, to its ultimate level in organizational structure. Jerry Jones says, page 5: “The use of the house churches became an important part of the efforts of the Boston church to reach the urban area with the gospel. The term house church was chosen to describe this part of the evangelistic thrust of the Boston church. . . . The phrase ‘house church,’ ‘house assembly,’ house meeting,’ or house gathering’ could have been used. In Boston, ‘house churches refer to parts of the whole, meeting in certain geographic areas of the city,”

That last sentence isn’t fully correct. It should read, “in Boston ‘house churches’ refer to parts of the whole, meeting in certain geographic areas of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and possibly other states.”

House churches are not just Bible studies in someone’s home. Jones tries to leave an impression that these are “house churches” just because the people meet in a private dwelling. To them, they are house meetings, house gatherings, house assemblies, or, as they prefer, house churches. However, these groups would be “house churches” even if they didn’t meet in a private home. As Juan Carlos Ortiz said: “These cells can meet in a home, in a park, in a restaurant, at the beach... anywhere and at any time,” Call to Discipleship, page 78. As Ortiz named his basic groups “cells,” regardless of where they meet, Boston made “house churches” the name of theirs. That is what they call each group, regardless of where they meet. It is the name of a particular kind of small group. “House church” is not just a home Bible study, nor is it an autonomous congregation, with its own elders, carrying out the work and worship of a local church.

Each house church is an identifiable group of people. The people have a special relationship to one another in their particular house church. Boston has one house church composed only of unmarried people. The people who make up each particular house church are members of it. They are identified with it, even when not in assembly at the designated place. Each house church has its own special overseers: the house church leader and his assistant. They are responsible to the leaders above them for that group; some authority of elders has been delegated to them by the central elders. Each house church leader is specifically identified with a particular house church and no other. Each house church engages in specialized activities that are peculiar to “house churches.” They do this in keeping with rules established by the metropolitan leaders. Each house church has a geographical location and is identified by that location. All of this makes house churches specialized entities, having their own identity, name, organization, and function, but without being autonomous.

Each Boston bulletin lists their house churches under sectors and zones. They have such names as Merrimac, Cambridge, Lowell #1, Lowell #2, Bridgwater, Milford, etc. There are 61 of them. Each has a distinctive name, address, a place in their own particular Sector and Zone, and a particular house church leader.

ARGUMENTS FOR HOUSE CHURCHES

by Maurice Barnett

(1) House churches are mentioned in many places in the New Testament. It’s amazing how these people can read “house churches” into scripture. For example, Acts 8:3 says, “But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house, and dragging men and women, committed them to prison.” They tell us that since Saul laid waste the church, but entered into every house, that these were “house churches” that he entered. What an imagination! The distributive meaning of the word church here only views the Christians throughout the city. Saul went to each home of these Christians, arresting those who lived there.

They also find house churches in Acts 20:20, where Paul said he taught them “publicly and from house to house.” They read that to be “from house church to house church.” They are as bad as Adventists who automatically read “ten” every time they see the word “commandments.”

Alvin Jennings gives the classic example of doing this, page 84. He says: “We know that in some cities there were a number of house churches. When Paul wrote in I Thessalonians 5:27, he urged that the letter be read ‘to all the brethren,’ suggesting the existence of more than one assembly in Thessalonica.”

This is the only “evidence” he can present for house churches in Thessalonica. This is how they “know that in some cities there were a number of house churches.” What an imagination!

(2) There were no “church buildings,” as we know them, in the first several centuries, only private homes for places of assembly. They tell us that churches in the first century not only did not own property, they could not own property. So, they had to meet in private homes in small groups, as “house churches.” Holly, page 10, introduces a paragraph with all caps, saying: “gradual elimination of church owned real estate. (No church owned property authorized in the New Testament either by precept or example.)”

He then proposes using house churches, and rented property for general assemblies, However, we could as well say: “No rented property authorized in the New Testament either by precept or example.” Holly, and others who agree with him, show how little they understand Bible authority. The same “precept or example” that authorizes a church renting property will authorize its owning that property. Hebrews 10:25 authorizes several options under generic authority, one of which is owning property. Holly makes rules where there are none. At least Jennings, although he contradicts himself, admits that a church can own, rent, or borrow a place to meet, page 83. Jerry Jones also allows church ownership of property. Jones says, page 41:

‘There is nothing wrong with a group of disciples owning a building, but it must never become an end in itself or a distraction from the mission.”

For the sake of argument, we might grant that churches in the first century did not erect “church buildings” as we know them. That still wouldn’t prove they had to have what current advocates see as “house churches.”

We will also grant that disciples in the first century used private dwellings to meet in at times, though not exclusively. Perhaps whole congregations, being small, would meet regularly in such dwellings. To find that a local church used a private home as a place of assembly is not the same as what we find in the present metropolitan church structure. We will even grant that, at times, a few disciples in a congregation privately met together for prayer or study. We do the same things today. However, we do it without reorganizing the church as Boston has done. Simply, the conclusions of this movement do not follow from their premises,

To keep the record straight, we cannot say that there were no special “church buildings” in the first and second centuries. Following is a statement by Graydon F. Snyder in his book Ante Pacem, Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine, page 67. He is talking about places of assembly, especially private homes as “house churches:”

“There is no literary evidence nor archaeological indication that any such home was converted into an extant church building. Nor is there any extant church that certainly was built prior to Constantine. Consequently, we have no evidence regarding the intentional structure of a Christian meeting place prior to the ‘peace.’ But there are homes that were restructured to accommodate the Christian assembly. Such buildings, now called the domus ecclesiae, or, in Greek oikos ekkiiesias, Must have been extraordinarily frequent as the size of the church catholic grew. It is amazing that we do not have more remains of such house churches. In reality, we do undoubtedly have the remains of such house churches but cannot recognize them. To be continued…