House churches/Organic church, your opinion?

[Michael The Disciple]

And would somebody tell that Bishop Jakes with over 30,000 each Sunday and that Joel Osteen with over 45,000 that their numbers MUST be wrong because everybody's going to the HOUSER'S!

No Im sure with the distorted false teachings each one promotes they would have very many in their "Churches".

[Amanah]

Originally Posted by Jay

Please define exactly what you define as a 'megachurch'. I hear that term used, but no one actually defines it. It seems to me then that a 'megachurch' is what I want it to be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megachurch

[Jay]

So in the loosest since of the word, Bros. J and K Godair are pastoring megachurches. Bro. Mangun and Bro. Haney pastor solid megachurches. I was just curious to see the term defined. Thank you

[Amanah]

here is a incomplete list of some megachurches

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...hes_in_the_USA

[Amanah]

Originally Posted by Jay

So in the loosest since of the word, Bros. J and K Godair are pastoring megachurches. Bro. Mangun and Bro. Haney pastor solid megachurches. I was just curious to see the term defined. Thank you

yes I suppose this is true, and those are preachers that I admire.

[Nitehawk013]

Herein is the really frustrating thing about this discussion. You will always have folks liek AB who apparently htink that it has to be an either/or situation. You either think church as to be traditional church or you are a rebel and want house church. I personally think it should be both. Furtehr, I think instead of demeaning one or the other, REAL Godly men would simply work together an duse whatever means were effective in whatever arae inorder to reach folks and grow the kingdom. INstead you have folks who just want to trash the opposite team and say they are wrong and shouldn't be fellowshipped.

As to buildings (going back about 3 pages.LOL) I believe if a church, home or traditonal, wants a dedicate dbuilding then why not try to do it the way God told the Israelites to build Hima house to dwell in? Tell the people God would like to dwell with them in a sanctuary and then leave it on them to give an offering WILLINGLY, not via some theocratic extortion or shake down, and then build with the offering they give. This is what happened in Exodus 25 with the Tabernacle. No tithe was invovled. No intimidation tactics or screaming that people just aren't giving enough. "You people really need to dig deep and sacrifice. Why should you buy that BIg Screen TV when you should be giving it all to the house of God"? Thats nonsense. If the peopel want a "church" building, then ask them and then lay it on them to give to pay for it.

Finally, why do we continue with the line thatthe church building is the house of God? WE are the body of Christ now. WE are the living Temples, the true dwelling place of God. The building is nothign special at all. Take us out of them and they are nothing special. There is nothign anointed or "holy" about a church building unless the children of God are in it.

[Dagwood]

Originally Posted by Nitehawk013

Herein is the really frustrating thing about this discussion. You will always have folks liek AB who apparently htink that it has to be an either/or situation. You either think church as to be traditional church or you are a rebel and want house church. I personally think it should be both. Furtehr, I think instead of demeaning one or the other, REAL Godly men would simply work together an duse whatever means were effective in whatever arae inorder to reach folks and grow the kingdom. INstead you have folks who just want to trash the opposite team and say they are wrong and shouldn't be fellowshipped.

As to buildings (going back about 3 pages.LOL) I believe if a church, home or traditonal, wants a dedicate dbuilding then why not try to do it the way God told the Israelites to build Hima house to dwell in? Tell the people God would like to dwell with them in a sanctuary and then leave it on them to give an offering WILLINGLY, not via some theocratic extortion or shake down, and then build with the offering they give. This is what happened in Exodus 25 with the Tabernacle. No tithe was invovled. No intimidation tactics or screaming that people just aren't giving enough. "You people really need to dig deep and sacrifice. Why should you buy that BIg Screen TV when you should be giving it all to the house of God"? Thats nonsense. If the peopel want a "church" building, then ask them and then lay it on them to give to pay for it.

Finally, why do we continue with the line thatthe church building is the house of God? WE are the body of Christ now. WE are the living Temples, the true dwelling place of God. The building is nothign special at all. Take us out of them and they are nothing special. There is nothign anointed or "holy" about a church building unless the children of God are in it.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by trialedbyfire

I'm not for it, I'm not against it. I've been to many home ministries. Many churches within the DC DEL MD Council of the PAW started in homes and nproggressed to church buildings. My problem is when people get dogmatic and claim that "the true" and "organic" form of worship occured in homes. Yes we know christians in the Apostolic era often held services in homes. Could this be because of persecution and the culture of the day? 100% absolutely. I worship in a building under a pastor. So do 900 other people at my church. I wouldn't try to fit them all in my pastor's house.

I believe that the "house church" in the NT was by design. If done RIGHT, with a priesthood of believers, it works wonderfully. All too often people form "home fellowship groups" and make them just small scale models of the traditional church. It doesn't work that way. For example, many startups that I've seen have "members". That won't fly. This is because a true house church is simply the house of a called elder, or one gifted with helps, opened for fellowship and study to all "Christian believers" in a given neighborhood or locality. It's a way station on the way to the arms of Christ, not an end in and of itself. It's a lifestyle, not a model. When embraced wholly for what it is... house churching works. In fact... the vast majority of Christian believers on the planet house church. As for the first century, persecution wasn't empire wide. In addition, it was sporadic. It appears that the early church didn't house church out of necessity, but rather simply because of function. Review I Corinthians 14. A larger traditional church cannot fulfill the "commandments of the Lord" in that chapter without reinterpreting the chapter to fit the traditional model of church.

Please review the post at this link: http://apostolicfriendsforum.com/sho...0&postcount=19

Here's an interesting article I had read. I wanted to share it here and see if anyone would like to share their thoughts on it. It really convicted me when I first began studying the house church.

================================================== ==

THE HOUSE CHURCH
AND PARACHURCH
ORGANIZATIONS

Since the first use of the word church (Gk. ekklesia) in Acts is found here (2:47), we pause to consider the centrality of the church in the thinking of the early Christians.

The church in the Book of Acts and in the rest of the NT was what is often called a house church. The early Christians met in houses rather than in special ecclesiastical buildings. It has been said that religion was loosed from specially sacred places and centered in that universal place of living, the home. Unger says that homes continued to serve as places of Christian assembly for two centuries.

It might be easy for us to think that the use of private homes was forced by economic necessity rather than being the result of spiritual considerations. We have become so accustomed to church buildings and chapels that we think they are God’s ideal.

However, there I strong reason to believe that the first century believers might have been wiser than we are.

First, it is inconsistent with the Christian faith and its emphasis on love to spend thousands of dollars on luxurious buildings when there is such appalling needed throughout the world. In that connection, E. Stanley Jones wrote:

I looked on the Bambino, the child Christ in the Cathedral at Rome, laden with expensive jewels, and then walked out and looked upon the countenances of hungry children and wondered whether Christ, in view of this hunger, was enjoying His jewels, and the thought persisted that if He was, then I could no longer enjoy the thought of Christ. That bejeweled Bambino and the hungry children are a symbol of what we have done in putting around Christ the expensive livery of stately cathedral sand churches while leaving untouched the fundamental wrongs in human society whereby Christ is left hungry in the unemployed and the disposed.

Not only is it inhumane; it is also uneconomical to spend money on expensive buildings that are used for no more than three, four, or five hours during the week. How have we ever allowed ourselves to drift into this unthinking dream world where we are willing to spend so much in order to get so little usage in return?

Our modern building programs have been one of the biggest hindrances to the expansion of the church. Heavy payments on principle and interest cause church leaders to resist any efforts to hive off and form new churches. Any loss of members would jeopardize the income needed to pay for the building and its upkeep. An unborn generation is addled with debt, and any hope of church reproduction is stifled.

It is often argued that we must have impressive buildings in order to attract the unchurched to our services. Aside from being a carnal way of thinking, this completely overlooks the NT pattern. The meetings of the early church were largely for believers. The Christians assembled for the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer (Acts 2:42). The did not do their evangelizing by inviting people to meetings on Sunday but by witnessing to those with whom they came in contact throughout the week. When people did get converted, they were then brought into the fellowship and warmth of the house church to be fed and encouraged.

It is sometimes difficult to get people to attend services in dignified church buildings. There is a strong reaction against formalism. Also there is a fear of being solicited for funds. “All the church wants is your money,” is a common complaint. Yet many of these same people are willing to attend a conversational Bible class in a home. There they do not have to be style-conscious, and they enjoy the informal, unprofessional atmosphere.

Actually the house church is ideal for every culture and every country. And probably if we could look over the entire world, we would see more churches meeting in homes than in any other way.

In contrast to today’s imposing cathedrals, churches, and chapels – as well as a whole host of highly organized denominations, the apostles in the Book of Acts made no attempt to form an organization of any kind for carrying on the work of the Lord. The local church was God’s unit on earth for propagating the faith and the disciples were content to work within that context.

In recent years there has been an organizational explosion in Christendom of such proportions as to make one dizzy. Every time a believer gets a new idea for advancing the cause of Christ, he forms a new mission board, corporations, or institution!

One result is that capable teachers and preachers have been called away from their primary ministries in order to become administrators. If all mission board administrators were serving on the mission field, it would greatly reduce the need for personnel there.

Another result of the proliferation of organizations is that vast sums of money are needed for overhead, and thus diverted from direct gospel outreach. The greater part of every dollar given to many Christian organizations is devoted to the expense of maintaining the organization rather than the primary purpose for which it was founded.

Organizations often hinder the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Jesus told His disciples to teach all the things He had commanded. Many who work for Christian organizations find they are not permitted to teach all the truth of God. They must no teach certain controversial matters for fear they will alienate the constituency to whom they look for financial support.

The multiplication of Christian institutions has too often resulted in factions, jealousy, and rivalry that have done great harm to the testimony of Christ.

Consider the overlapping multiplicity of Christian organizations at work, at home, and abroad. Each competes for limited personnel and for shrinking financial resources. And consider how many of these organizations really owe their origin to purely human rivalry, though public statements usually refer to God’s will (Daily Notes of the Scripture Union).

And it is often true that organizations have a way of perpetuating themselves long after they have outlived their usefulness. The wheels grind on heavily even though the vision of the founders has been lost, and the glory of the once dynamic movement has departed. It was spiritual wisdom, not primitive naiveté, that saved the early Christians from setting up human organizations to carry on the work of the Lord. G. H. Lang writes:

An acute writer, contrasting the apostolic work with the more usual modern missionary methods, has said that “we found missions, the apostles founded churches.” The distinction is sound and pregnant. The apostles founded churches, and the founded nothing else, because for the ends in view nothing else was required or could have been so suitable. In each place where they labored they formed the converts into a local assembly, with elders – always elders, never an elder (Acts 14:23; 15:6, 23; 20:17; Phil. 1:1) – to guide, to rule, to shepherd, men qualified by the Lord and recognized by the saints (I Cor. 16:15; I Thess. 5:12, 13; I Tim. 5:17-19); and with deacons, appointed by the assembly (Acts 6:1-6; Phil 1:1) – in this contrasted with the elders – to attend to the few but very important temporal affairs, and in particular to the distribution of the funds of the assembly….All they (the apostles) did in the way of organizing was to form the disciples gathered into other such assemblies. No other organization than the local assembly appears in the New Testament, nor do we find even the germ of anything further.

To the early Christians and their apostolic leadership, the congregation was the divinely ordained unit on earth through which God chose to work, and they only such unit to which He promised perpetuity was the church.


Believer’s Bible Commentary, Pgs. 1590-1591

[Aquila]

PLEASE REVIEW THE FOLLOWING POST (thanks):

Originally Posted by Aquila

The Bible (I Corinthians 14:26-38) illustrates that our meetings should have the following elements and guiding principles:

- Everyone being able to bring a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.
- Gift of tongues coupled with interpretation, two or at most three.
- Two or three anointed teachers speak and guide the meeting.
- If a saint attending has a revelation or something to share, whoever is speaking must stop and give them the floor so that all might be able to prophesy, learn, and be encouraged. Meetings are to be discussion based.
- Those who address the group must realize that their spirits are subject to the anointed teachers guiding the group.
- Women (or anyone for that matter) are not to use the time for socializing.
- Those who think they are spiritual Christians should acknowledge that this order is command from the Lord.

If our "form of church" will not allow for these kinds of meetings... we are failing to meet as the Apostle Paul admonished us to meet. It doesn't matter if it's in a house, a park, a coffee shop, a library, a book store, a bus stop, a town square, church building or wherever. The point is that the above elements should be present. They are to be elder guided and interactive meetings where anyone present can address the group by sharing a song, a hymn, a poem, a passage, a testimony, or whatever the Lord leads. If a meeting is too big to facilitate this, it fails to allow for the body ministry Paul admonishes us to have because it is a "command from the Lord" (I Corinthians 14:37).

For example, on any given Sunday when a given pastor is speaking... could I ask to speak and share a word that the Lord has placed on my heart? Could you in turn share what passage has been ministering to you and what the Lord put on your heart? If I had a question could I interrupt the pastor's sermon to seek an answer? Could the entire congregation do any of this? Or would the pastor be upset because he was interrupted and he didn't get to "preach a sermon"? Would there by too many people to allow for such an open and interactive meeting? Would we be relegated to being relatively passive spectators who hopefully learn something? If so... your church is most likely too big to abide by I Corinthians 14:26-38. I believe that home fellowship groups (or house churches) fulfill this calling of Scripture.

It's the BIBLICAL way to do church.

We've had house church (simple church) gatherings at coffee shops (Tim Horton's, Higher Grounds, and Boston Stoker's) in the Dayton Ohio, Tipp City area. Place and building don't matter. The fuction of our gatherings is what matters.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by trialedbyfire

It may be so. I also must question though whether or not this is ACTUALLY what God is doing. I don't believe God is drawing believers away from "institutionalized religion". There is one Lord, and one Faith, and one Baptism. I believe however some of the man made denominations and organizations are being rocked and shaken up. I'm guilty of denominationalism myself. I've often times been in fear that I may not be able to operate outside of the traditional organizational structure.

My whole Christian walk I've been in one of three organizations (PCAF, COOLJC, and now PAW) I know all the politics, the dirty gossip, the structure, the order, the pomp, the circumstance and sometimes I recognize that some of this stuff does hinder God because it exalts man, and God had beat my behind for getting wrapped up in it, because as soon as persecuation befalls the church, it's all over. Like you said alot of these organizations/denominations are compromising and falling away. True believers can't go with them. I'll go that far with you.