The most common thing we are asked by people checking out our website, blog and discussion group is 'Is there a House Church in our area which we can check out or attend'. This is not surprising for three reasons.

1. The first is that people who are thinking through faith and church issues are often no longer connected with other believers and feel very isolated, which can be crippling at times. Naturally there desire is to belong to a community of like minded people which can help them in there journey, and stop the isolation they are experiencing.

2. When thinking about something new, the natural impulse is to ‘check it out’.

3. In Institutional Church we are conditioned to think that we make a change by changing church. Those who have recently left a normal church carry this thinking with them. There paradigm dictates to them that they leave the Organised congregational church they belong to and join an organised House Church down the road. It does not take long for most people to discover this does happen very often.

I think there are a couple of practical and spiritual issues why this happens.

a) The majority of people I know who are meeting in ‘House Churches’ would say that the first one they ever attended is the one they started with friends or family. Both David Allis (of www.edgenet.org.nz) and I both say that the first House church we ever attended was the one’s we started in our homes. It is very hard for a visitor to ‘check out’ a House Church in the same way they can with an Institutional Church. When a House Church is usually under 10 adults, having a complete stranger come and watch them and make a judgement on the group obviously can create a lot of awkwardness and a loss of intimacy and openness. Usually the only way to join or visit a House Church is if you already have developed friendships with a member or members of the group.

HOUSE CHURCHES USUALLY GROW BY RELATIONSHIP CONNECTION UNLIKE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCHES WHICH GROW BY CHURCHED CHRISTIAN VISITORS

b) I believe there are many gatherings happening in every part of the country but because they are not connected with others, are relationship based, are underground (under the radar) and don’t advertise in the paper it is very hard to find them to connect with.

c) Even though our souls cry out for immediate relationship with others, I am not sure that is necessarily a God thing. When God took the Israelites out of Egypt he took them through the wilderness before they got to the Promised Land. Sometimes what we are trying to do is avoid the desert time altogether. The funny thing is that if you looked at the most significant time in Jewish History, it would be those years they spent in the Wilderness. Wolfgang Simson says that for every year you have attended church you should take a month to do nothing, and if you have been in ministry, double that.

SUGGESTIONS

If you want to experience organic church, the only real way is to do it. If you are connected with others of like mind, just take a risk and start gathering together over food, and pray for each other and see what happens from there. There are plenty of people and books which can help you if you want, just email me and I will send you contacts and books etc.

If you just want to learn more, contact us for some literature that you can read yourself.

If you want to be part of a gathering but don’t want to initiate it, the key is to start building relationships through things like our discussion group or if you know people who are doing ‘House Church’ invite them for a meal, get to know them, and in the end before you realise you are part of community.
Remember that God may want you in isolation for a period of time (like the Israelites in the desert) so that he can reconfigure you and change the way you think and relate to him.

Remember we need to grasp that we do not go to church we are the Church, that is the biggest mindset that Christians need to break.