How does church growth and expansionism work in this scheme of things you are pushing then? Do you actually want to just stay numerically small?

It is certainly the case that the church of which I am a part hasn’t grown numerically in the way we would have liked to see, and for the simple reason that we very rarely have anyone come to know the Lord. Not for want of trying mind you, it just seems to be the way it is. So don’t think we are against the idea of numerical growth, that would be ridiculous anyhow. It’s just that we don’t actually see many people converted, and even when we do there does seem to be both a fairly high falling away rate and people responding to the lure of the more immediately tantalizing trappings of surrounding institutional churches. But when we do get to the point as a church when we have more people than can comfortably be in one house (we aren’t completely without faith for it, you know), we wouldn’t take the route of just finding bigger places in which to meet. Once you can’t have all present participating significantly or have a meal together, then the church has become too large for the proper outworking of the simple fact that it is an extended family of God with Jesus at the centre. Then it is time to become more than one church.

This doesn’t mean, however, that people are just arbitrarily selected to leave and then sent out to start a new church. (Drawing names from a hat, perhaps? Heaven forbid!) No, the division would obviously be on the basis of shared strength and maturity. You would want to see an equal balance of the spiritually strong and weak and the mature and less mature in the newly formed church as well as in the original one. Indeed, it’s not actually that the original church sends people out to form another church at all. Rather, the original church becomes two separate churches, yet remaining very much involved with each other on the basis of shared relationships and past friendship, but without any loss of individual church autonomy. Indeed, things like midweek Bible studies and prayer evenings could be attended by those from both churches in so far as space continues to allow and given that everyone isn’t necessarily present for such midweek activities. However, gatherings on the Lord’s Day would occur on the basis of each newly formed church meeting independently in different houses, each maintaining their separate identity and autonomy before the Lord as did the original church from which they both came. Yet the interdependence born of continuing shared relationships and friendships means that the two churches will also, in some regards, move as one.

However, as more and more churches are thus spawned (and please God may such be the case) then it eventually becomes more and more impractical for those in them to all meet together in each others houses for the corporate midweek activities such as Bible study and prayer. At this point the churches involved would have to decide whether to carry on all together in such things and hire a larger building for them, or whether to break down into two or three smaller clumps of churches doing things together whilst remaining in peoples houses. The key is each church going with its own consensus, in relation to other churches, as to which route they wish to take. It really is wide open. But what must be emphasized here, and I really do mean emphasized, is that each of these churches remain autonomous and have their own leadership (recognized by each respective church), and are therefore quite free to decide things for themselves and be free of unwarranted interference from the outside. In other words, there is neither hierarchy within individual churches (eldership, as we have shown elsewhere, is functional and not positional, and is not in any way in authority over the church), nor over the churches corporately. Men with gifts and callings (apostolic workers, pastor-teachers, evangelists etc) that can be of benefit more widely than merely to the church they are personally part of will also be recognized by other churches, and can be utilized by being invited to work among them. Such men will obviously play a part, as the Lord leads, in facilitating multiple churches working together to do things which individual churches could not do on their own. But again, what must be clearly held in mind at all times is that such men do not have authority over the churches, but merely function as servants to, and facilitators of, any churches and believers who consider they have something to offer and who therefore invite them in. Absolutely fundamental to any biblical understanding of what churches ought to be like, and how leadership functions within them, both individually and corporately, is that it is this approach alone, if practiced faithfully and carefully, which prevents both the emergence of just another denomination, even a house church one, and of hierarchically minded leaders trying to incorporate such churches into their own little kingdoms over which they want to lord it and have authority. And of course the beauty is of this biblically prescribed way of doing things is that even if some churches do eventually decide to go down the wrong road and create an hierarchy and have some big leader at the top, then they are perfectly free to do so yet without necessarily contaminating those which that see such a move for the folly it would be. Once you realize that in a biblical church any leadership (eldership) is accountable to the church of which it is a part (just as are those who aren’t elders), and that any ‘trans-local workers’ (the term I use for the above mentioned gifts and callings to which Paul refers in Ephesians chapter four) are accountable to whichever church they happen to be serving in at any given time, then the necessary biblically prescribed safety measures are firmly in place. And of course the primary danger from which this protects us is any idea that, when it comes to church life, there are those who have authority over others.

In Christian churches authority lies solely with Jesus, and that authority comes primarily through the written Word of God. Once it has been established what scripture says about something then it has also been established what the Lord is saying about it. Conversely, anything that runs counter to scripture is, by equal definition, not what He is saying. However, our great need, and this is yet another example of biblical concepts striking at the very heart of our unbiblical approaches, is that we study and seek to understand the Word of God very much more as a corporate exercise as the gathered church, rather than just leaving it to certain individuals. The only hierarchy that operates within a church (though scripture makes clear that this is not the case regarding society at large, the family unit or the work place) is Jesus and everyone else. It is most definitely not Jesus, then apostles followed closely by prophets and teachers, then elders next in line with the poor old Plebs, the rank-and-file, at the bottom of the pile. No, it is just Jesus and everyone else. Of some importance here is the fact that Jesus taught that when a matter of church discipline arises it be taken to the church corporately and not just the elders (or any other leaders around.) Concerning church government we see in scripture that churches decided things corporately as opposed to just being directed and told what to do by leaders. Consensus, the opposite of hierarchy, is the biblical order of the day.

So we are not anti-expansionist in any way. Indeed, we continue to both pray for, and work toward, numerical growth. Any concerns that this house church stuff equates to being some inward looking cozy navel-gazing affair really is somewhat wide of the mark. Of course, that isn’t to say there aren’t house churches around here and there that are just cozy little coteries of the elect, but then what has that got to do with us? I remind the reader of my preference to think in terms of biblical church rather than house church. Whereas biblical churches will indeed meet in houses, it is far from being the case that mere house churches are necessarily biblical in any other regard.