Ada Herald - Pastor's Pen Article October 15, 2009

I came across an obituary recently of an accomplished man. He was a military pilot in World War II and a life-long attorney. What stood out to me was another word used to describe this individual: churchman. It’s not a common word anymore. It’s a word used to describe someone who actively loves and supports the church. Perhaps it’s rare because such people are rare.

There’s a growing movement away from organized churches towards more informal, house church arrangements, where a few families gather in someone’s living room to sing and pray and share scripture. One of the scriptural supports behind the house church movement is the way the Book of Acts describes Christians as meeting in people’s homes.

A deeper look at real estate in the first century reveals a different picture than commonly assumed. In Rome for example, only about 3% of the population owned what we might call a home. Most lived in apartments. Those who owned homes were wealthy, and their homes were often large estates with multiple rooms, halls, and meeting places.

As wealthy people were converted, they would become the benefactors of the church in a particular community, opening their large complexes to the church for a meeting place. If you look at the early church at Pentecost, they were gathered in an room that held 120 people. They weren’t meeting in a three-bedroom ranch with a living room that might seat 12 adults.

People leave organized churches for a variety of reasons: the fellowship isn’t deep enough, basic decisions can get bogged down in bureaucracy, or there’s just too much hypocrisy. While the organized church may need reform, it is highly unwise to abandon it. John Calvin wrote that the church is like a nourishing mother, which feeds and guides individual believers through the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments.

It seems strange to have to argue for this point, but organized churches have certain advantages precisely because they are, well, organized. Pastors are trained in original language study and ordained by the church; elders are appointed to protect and guide church members; membership itself is a form of accountability that leads to spiritual growth. Additionally, the organized church provides more opportunities to practice love, because you are forced to rub shoulders with those outside of your normal circles.

One of the great weaknesses of the house church movement is its parochialism. There’s a natural tendency to want to be around like-minded people, and this tendency is multiplied in this movement. The true church becomes not only those who hold the same theology, but the same politics, child-rearing philosophy, food tastes, and vaccination schedules. Such a closed community is a far cry from Acts 13, where the church leaders in Antioch included a childhood friend of Herod’s, a Levite, an African Christian, and a Roman citizen.

A Chinese Christian recently wrote an article about house churches in his native country. He pointed out several weaknesses: church leadership is unstable, meeting times are switched at random, cults infiltrate churches and take control, and the preaching is often of poor quality. The grass may not be greener on the other side. It may, in fact, be better for us to revive the word churchman, to love the local church with all its warts, working to make it a true expression of the kingdom of God.