Category Archives: House Churches & Institutional Churches

Price asked in a comment, Jay…I find it amusing that you attribute many positive attributes to economy of scale and yet you begin to limit that scale to a certain radius…Why? Price, Let’s consider the analogy I offered earlier. No … Continue reading →

Inevitably, I suppose, I need to address the phenomenon of the multi-campus congregation. For example, we have in Alabama a non-denominational congregation with campuses in four cities. There’s one sermon delivered by one man each Sunday, and the video of … Continue reading →

The early church had elderships over entire cities, overseeing a single city-wide church meeting in numerous houses. The early churches met a congregation of the whole church at times, but the Roman government and Jewish authorities often made that impossible. … Continue reading →

Getting organized We need to talk about just what it is that elders should do. Not what they do, but what they should do. You see, if the early church was led by city-wide elders, what did they do? It’s … Continue reading →

Now, the fact is that neither the institutional church nor the house church model coheres with the First Century model for how to organize a church. In the New Testament, there was but one church in a given city. That … Continue reading →

David Himes wrote in a comment to a recent post, Using your basic logic, Jay, the best economic solution would be for all of the believers to meet in house churches, thus, eliminating the need to pay for and maintain … Continue reading →

Small groups sometimes work well. Sometimes not so well. Let’s start with the criticisms some have. In the Christian Standard, Brian Jones argues that we should “euthanize” small groups. The Achilles’ heel of the modern-day small group movement is simple: … Continue reading →

In the last post of this series, we found that the New Testament church didn’t exist in numerous autonomous house churches all in the same town. Rather, there was one church, under a single eldership, meeting in multiple houses and sometimes, … Continue reading →

The previous post in this series produced an interesting and insightful conversation, both in the comments and in some private emails. Let me add this thought to the mix: Neither the institutional churches nor house churches are organized as the New Testament … Continue reading →

This is going to upset some people, I know, but we need to have this conversation. And so I guess that means I need to start by stating some things that ought to be clear already. 1. I’m not an enemy … Continue reading →