defining the house church movement characteristics of the movement: man centered –they believe...

IS IT ARADICAL

RESTORATIONOR

RADICAL DEPARTURE?AN EXAMINATION OF THE HOUSE

CHURCH MOVEMENT AMONG CHURCHES OF CHRIST

Defining the House Church Movement

• What is not Meant:– We are not using the term to encompass

every group of Christians meeting in a house, for that practice is both historic to Christianity and authorized in God’s Word.

• What is Meant:– To speak of the “House Church Movement” is

both accurate and misleading at the same time.

– While it is true than an identifiable movement exists towards this practice, there are many different forms of this approach.

– The movement arose in rejection of organized (“institutional”) congregations.


• Characteristics of the Movement: Man Centered– They believe smaller groups are essential for true worship

and fellowship and see this as a fundamental difference between themselves and those they call “institutional churches” (organized congregations with church buildings, full-time preachers etc.)

– They stress that house churches were the pattern established for the church in the New Testament.

– They reject any name or description to identify their gatherings.


• Characteristics of the Movement: Man Centered– They define the essential size as limited by the number

who can eat a common meal together which they see as the true source of “fellowship.”

– They incorporate the “communion” or “Lord’s Supper” as a part of those meals.

– They tend to accept and welcome a broad range of doctrinal diversity and religious practices among brethren. They say that house churches must be “relational” and “social” rather than “doctrinal” in their thinking and practice.


• Characteristics of the Movement: Man Centered– They seek out a casual atmosphere in dress and

action.– They reject declarative preaching and teaching.– They reject having “full-time preachers.”– They reject any “office” or authority whereby man

has a leadership role.– They denounce weekly contribution.

Is It A Real Problem For Us?

• Ethos House Church, Nashville, Tennessee

• Group from Franklin church of Christ

• CABG – Bowling Green, KY

• Christians in Tampa - Tampa, Florida

• Churches playing with idea strongly in Arkansas.

It should beRecognized

that theHCM is

StrongestAround

Colleges

Methodology of the HCM

• Unbiblical concepts of grace/unity and a destruction of doctrinal distinctivenes.– “HCC is non-denominational and an effort is made to accommodate

Christians of many backgrounds…Infant baptism was a hot button for the historical Anabaptists and Baptists. It was seen as the very symbol of church-state collaboration, and many of the early confessions anathematize the practice without mincing any words. Modern house church theologians, however, are not nearly as dogmatic on this issue--some are, and some are not...” (HCC).

– “Asking questions is a great way to get answers and to feel a part of the group. As a by-product, diverse answers are OK too. Although every church usually has a particular answer for most questions, a good church realizes we are all still growing in knowledge and maturity in God’s Word. A good church recognizes the value in diversity and thrives on it”


• Is this “special pleading”?– “No name calling”– “But if you

disagree with me you are formalistic, legalistic, pharisaical, unfeeling, inactive, traditionalistic, stale, unspiritual, etc.”


• Diluting of Local Church Commitment– “It’s a church without a name, without a building… without

a program, without even an address… being more like Jesus does not mean being a super-involved church member… ‘If a believer spends two whole days of each week at church, surrounded by other believers, Karen asks, then when does that believer have time to interact with, much less impact, non believers?’ ‘If you go to worship Sunday morning and Sunday night and you spend those times listening, then that means you have to set up another time during the week when you can have some interaction with other believers and really learn and grow. That’s a huge chunk of time. But if you make all your time with other Christians chunky, meaty, the real stuff, then you have that much more time to hang out with non-Christians…”


• Diluting of Local Church Commitment– SCOTT THORNHILL EXPLAINING NEW WORK

TO START IN BOWLING GREEN, KY (Presented May 3, 2003 at Smith’s Grove, KY Church of Christ, where Scott had preached for several years; explanation of why he was leaving Smith’s Grove to begin the new work)The new work starts May 18, 2003 in Bowling Green, KY. These remarks give “my vision for the new work.” “We’re not going off the deep end.” “We wanted a Smith’s Grove type work in Bowling Green....now what does that mean?” “We’re going to continue what we started doing here but “take it to another step …


• Diluting of Local Church Commitment– “Now, what is an assembly going to look like....I don’t

know? I am not too sure. It may be very fluid for the next several months...for the next several years.” We plan to meet Sunday afternoons around three or four. “The reason we chose that is because Sunday mornings you get up–I mean the alarm clock goes off–you are scurrying around the house trying to get breakfast cooked and kids dressed and everybody rushes out to church and Sunday mornings are just so hectic and the two assemblies just do not seem to fit our society at this point....


• Dismantling the Local Church– Stereo-typical presentation of all churches of

Christ in order to restructure those congregations.

– F. Lagard writes, “Before real progress can be made, we will have to undergo a pivotal paradigm shift in the way we perceive even the notion of “church” itself…Our concept of the church typically tends to suggest organization, complete with hierarchy and dogma. By contrast, the early church…was far closer to being an organism—less dependent upon formal structure and more spontaneous in action”


• Dismantling the Local Church– “Our typical pattern for church organization

closely follows the blueprint of both Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastical structure” (60). (Assertion without proof).

– Odd language for a man who is arguing that we have “city-wide elderships” along with the possibility of “statewide and nationwide networking” (252) – nothing can be considered more of a “typical pattern for church organization” which “closely follows the blueprint of both Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastical structure.”


• Dismantling the Local Church– Binding of “House Churches”

• FLS: “Piecing together archaeology and history, it appears the primitive church typically met in a room sufficiently large enough for probably 40-50 people in the house of a wealthy member” (148).

• His favorite words and phrases are: “apparently, it seems, from all appearances, as I attempt, perhaps, it is possible, assuming, it wouldn’t necessarily mean, fairly compelling, reasonable interpretation, it appears, we are not specifically told, I suppose…”

• The reality is that the N.T. Church met in many different venues: the Temple Porch (Acts 5:12); upper room (Acts 20:8); a room in the temple (Acts 2:46); a house (Acts 28:30); a synagogue (James 2:2; Acts 18:26-27); a school (Acts 19:9).


• Dismantling the Local Church– Distortion of the Lord’s Supper

• Radical Restoration of the Corinthian Concept (I Corinthians 11:17-34).

– “The Lord’s Supper gave meaning to their table fellowship and their table fellowship gave meaning to the Lord’s Supper” (133).

– Scott Thornhill about CABG: “Someone recently gave a good invitation. “Sharing something like that while we are partaking of the emblems together and we may take in greater quantities of that. So, that is the Sunday assembly, with a potluck afterwards, every Sunday.”

– FLS writes,“The question is not so much whether there ought to be a kitchen in the church building, but should the church be in the kitchen.”


• Dismantling the Local Church– Attack on Scriptural Elders

• “There is nothing to rule out the possibility that the role of elders in the early church might well have encompassed more than one level of involvement—even simultaneously…Perhaps elder oversight may have been exercised through a group of house churches which collectively comprised a larger, recognizable “congregation.” More thought provoking for us, of ocurse is the third possibility—that elders in individual house churches might also have come together as a group of city-wide elders to discuss matters of importance to the entire community of believers….Nothing necessarily precludes “Jerusalem’s elders” from being gathered from among elders in a multiplicity of house churches” (178).


• The New Social Gospel (Gal. 1:6-9).• Emotionalism

– “Wednesday night service is an “informal, spontaneous, very uplifting time. I think all the assemblies ought to be like that. One of the things that is difficult is the way the furniture is arranged....It is hard to share....That may be a step too much, to get folks some chairs out and to be interacting with each other where you could see each other, like a living room setting would be. That may be too much of a step but at least trying to go down toward that more informal sharing assembly on Sunday mornings” (Thornhill, CABG).

– FLS and HCA desire to turn our worship assembly into a camp-like retreat.


• The New Social Gospel (Gal. 1:6-9).• Emotionalism

– This will not produce substantive spirituality, but superficial emotionalism.

– The HC Movement is promoting divisons in local churches, perverting the Lord’s Supper into a common meal, etc.

– FLS’s vision is: A nameless church without preaching, but full of eating common meals and informal banter, that discards the bible plan for leadership and acts of worship.


• The New Social Gospel (Gal. 1:6-9).– Man Centered, Rather than Biblically God Centered

• “I would like to meet in a multipurpose building if you can maintain that living room atmosphere....The way the structures are set up, and the pews are set up, that we come, we sit, put on our proper clothes, and that interaction is not as comfortable as it is when you come over to my house....But I do not think you have to meet in houses but I do believe you have to have that kind of atmosphere…I am still the Scott you have known for ten years, not some radical left wing person that is going to start some love feast Pentecostal group…At this point a man got up and gave an extended testimony about how the Lord had helped him through difficulties in starting a new business.” (Scott Thornhill re: start of CABG).


• The New Social Gospel (Gal. 1:6-9).– Man Centered, Rather than Biblically God Centered

• The Social Gospel is not merely about the use of the treasury, but it is about the focus of the teaching and preaching as well as an appeal for palatable and comfortable Christianity over and against true reverent worship and discipleship.

• We need to hear sermons about the family and home (Sunday morning series) however when the motive is to hear those things to the exclusion of distinctive doctrinal sermons so as to be more palatable to the unsaved we have bought fully into the social gospel.

Groundwork For HCM AmongNI Churches of Christ

• Denial of Brethren– No doubt, some will defend the

modified HC by saying it differs from that seen above from denominationalism or even that which is proposed by FLS.

– But let there be no mistake about it---the similarities will most likely outweigh the differences. The variations will be slight, but the concept will be the same.

– But why is this movement found attractive by some?


• Many brethren have been drinking more at the fountains of denominational thought than from the

Word of God (I Timothy 4:15-16).

?


• The desire for a more social gospel

• The growing desire for a more casual atmosphere in the worship assembly

• The rising disrespect for Biblical elderships

• HCM provides the perfect environment for doctrinal deception.


• Mind-set of those who are dissatisfied with the designation “church of Christ” are enamored by this movement.

• Lack of balanced contextual preaching – preach on grace

• Mind-set of those who minimize the value of in-depth directive preaching and teaching give a helping hand to this movement.

• Lack of involvement and activity as a congregation can aid this movement.

defining the house church movement characteristics of the movement: man centered –they believe...

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