There are all kinds of churches in the world today and thousands of different denominations. Some churches, like Roman Catholic churches, have statues, holy water, altars, candles, and prayer beads. They have a priest called “Father” who wears a special outfit. In these churches, people stand, kneel, and sit at special times. They pray to dead people like Mary, Jude, or Thomas.
In other churches like Orthodox churches, people use incense and have icons, which are special pictures that people bow before as they pray. They also have a priest who wears a special outfit, and they have ornate buildings.
In other churches like some Lutheran, Methodist, or Presbyterian churches, there may be a rainbow flag out front, and you might hear a very politically liberal sermon.
In other churches, like fundamentalist Baptist churches, everyone may dress a certain way or even comb their hair a certain way, and they may be very politically conservative.
In many modern evangelical churches, the auditorium may be dark, and there may be a stage in the front where musicians play pop rock music.
All these churches do very different things.
Contradictory Beliefs Among Churches
These churches also believe very different things. Some churches believe in baby baptism, others say baptism should only be for believers. Some say we need special priests, but others say that we are all priests. Some say we should never speak in tongues, and others say we should. Some say we should prophesy, others say prophecy ended a long time ago. There are many different churches today with many contradictory beliefs. Logically, these beliefs and practices can’t all be right.
Who’s right and who’s wrong?
Time-Travel Back to the Apostles’ Day
What if we could travel back in time to the apostles’ time? Surely the apostles knew something about how church is supposed to be done. After all, they were directly taught by Jesus himself. What were the apostolic churches of the New Testament like?
First of all, in those days, you wouldn’t go to a church building. You’d just go to someone’s house. The apostolic church exclusively met for church in homes (Romans 16:4-5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 2). The apostles never built church buildings, and they never told anyone to build church buildings. The first church buildings were built hundreds of years after the apostles died.
What would you have seen in that home when you came for church back in the first century?
You would have seen believers eating a meal together. Whenever the early church met, they “broke bread.” In those days, “breaking bread” meant eating a meal together. Bread was the staple food, and so breaking bread came to refer to sharing a meal. In fact, there is no example of any church meeting in the New Testament happening apart from a meal.
What if there were too many believers to fit into one house? They met in multiple houses. There were thousands of Christians in Jerusalem, for example, but they didn’t all squeeze into one house. Instead, the church in Jerusalem met in homes throughout the city where they shared their meals (Acts 2:46).
Acts 20:7 says that the disciples regularly met together on Sunday in order to share meals. In Jude 12, these common meals are called love feasts.
In Corinth, there were some problems with this, as some people ate all the food and didn’t leave anything for others. Needless to say, gluttony ruins the love feast experience. The solution for gluttony, Paul said, is not abandoning the love feast, but learning how to eat together in a more loving way.
During these common meals, the early Christians had the Lord’s Supper. They ate the bread and drank the cup, which represented the body and blood of Jesus (1 Corinthians 11:23-25).
These common church meals were modeled after the Last Supper, during which Jesus and his disciples ate a meal together and shared the bread and wine/juice. During the Last Supper, Jesus taught his disciples, prophesied about the future, and answered questions. They prayed and sang a hymn together.
The early Christians did church in a similar way. As they shared a meal, they also shared the spiritual food of God’s word. The meal was the backdrop of their meeting. It was a natural picture of what they were doing spiritually as they heard God’s word and nourished each other spiritually.
In the New Testament church meetings, everyone had an opportunity to minister to each other (1 Corinthians 14:26). Just like different people brought different dishes of food to the meal, so different people brought spiritual food to the meal. It was like a potluck meal, and everyone brought something. Each believer has a spiritual gift (1 Peter 4:10), and we are called to grow in our spiritual gifts as we minister them to each other. God wants us to have a church environment where it is possible to grow in our spiritual gifts.
The body of Christ will be built up as each one ministers his spiritual gift to the others (Ephesians 4:11-16). This doesn’t mean that everyone has to speak in the meeting, for some gifts are not for that purpose, like miracles, helps, administrations, healings, etc. And not every speaking gift is to operate within every church meeting. However, church should be a living body where our spiritual gifts are able to function at some point.
Advantages of Sharing Meals in House Churches
Why did the apostles meet for church in homes around a common meal? There are several advantages to meeting for church in this way.
In church, we need to actually know each other and be a real community. Some formats of church (especially those in dark auditoriums) are almost completely anonymous. This is not Biblical. Discipleship can happen effectively when we know each other. Everyone is at a different place and has different spiritual needs. Some need to be baptized in water, others need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Some need the milk of the word, and some need the meat of the word. In a house church, we can bear each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2) because we know what these burdens are.
Accountability is important. In a house church around a meal, we can see each other in a more real environment rather than putting on a show on a stage. Many scandals could have been avoided if the minister was in a Biblical house church rather than on a stage as an inaccessible celebrity. God wants us to avoid hypocrisy. Church is not about putting on a show and impressing others, but it’s about being ourselves, at home, with the family of God.
House churches can avoid persecution and keep a low profile. In many parts of the world, like China, Saudi Arabia, or Iran, house church is the only way to do church. Praise God for the freedom we have in the USA, but we don’t know how long this freedom will last. We must prepare for the future now.
House church saves money because there are no building expenses. Money can go directly to supporting people— servants of God or the poor. House churches can grow and spread rapidly because there is no need to wait for special buildings to be built.
Church is Not Subjective
Most people choose a church based on their likes or dislikes. Some people like the type of church they grew up in, so they go to that kind of church. Or maybe they hated the church they grew up in, so they go to the opposite type of church. Maybe they like incense, statues, icons, pop rock bands, or praying to dead people, so they choose a church that has those things. Or maybe they don’t like those things, so they choose a church that doesn’t have such things.
Church choices are often subjective, based on personal preferences. But church is not our house, it’s God’s house. Church is not up to us, it’s up to God.
Jesus Will Come Back to His Church
What if Jesus were to visit the church today? Would he be okay with everything?
Twice, Jesus showed up to the temple in Jerusalem and threw people out. He made a whip at the beginning of his ministry and threw people out (John 2). (Imagine being chased out of God’s house by God himself!) Again, near the end of his ministry, Jesus went again to the temple and threw people out (Matthew 21). Jesus was zealous for God’s house.
The temple today is the church (Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Corinthians 6:19). Together, we are the temple of God, his house on the earth. God doesn’t live in buildings anymore, he lives among his people.
When Jesus showed up to the 7 churches in Revelation, he rebuked most of them. One of them he said was going to be vomited out of his mouth. Another church he said was dead. He told another church he was going to fight against it. He warned that another church was going to be thrown into great tribulation. He rebuked churches for compromising with pagan practices, false prophecy, and demons.
The church is God’s house; he cares about his house. You care a lot more about something if it’s yours. In your own house, you may want things to be done a certain way. Someone else’s house is up to them, but in your house, you probably have preferences. So it is with God’s house. The design and construction of the church is up to God; it’s not up to us.
The visit of Jesus to the church is not merely hypothetical. It’s actually going to happen. Jesus is coming back, and he’s going to measure all churches by the standard of his word. The Bible is the standard. It’s not our preferences, the traditions that have been followed for centuries, or what the church “fathers” said. The standard is what the Bible says, for the Bible is the infallible word of God that will outlast heaven and earth.
Judgment will begin at God’s house— the church (1 Peter 4:17), and that means we have to take church seriously. Don’t just trust things that have been handed down by people. Measure everything by God’s word and throw out the vain traditions of men. It’s time to wash the church clean from defilement.
When Christ returns, he’s not going to come in a manger as a helpless baby, but he’s coming back as a glorious King and Judge. Everything that is not according to his word is going to be destroyed (John 12:48; 1 Corinthians 3:9-17).
Jesus told us to get ready. He said that his house needs to be prepared. We must be alert. Let’s search the Scriptures and do what they say. We don’t need the many models of church that people have made up over the years. We need the model of church given by Christ and his apostles. Nothing else is going to work, and nothing else is going to survive the blazing, holy fires of the End Times.
by Peter
Lincoln House Churches 