Category Archives: Church Trends

House Churches & Institutional Churches, Part 7

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

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House Churches & Institutional Churches, Part 6

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

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House Churches & Institutional Churches, Part 5

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

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House Churches & Institutional Churches, Part 4.1 (Economics, Christ’s Church, and Unity)

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

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House Churches & Institutional Churches, Part 4

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

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House Churches & Institutional Churches, Part 3

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

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House Churches & Institutional Churches, Part 2

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

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Regarding Tornados, House Churches & Institutional Churches, Part 1

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

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Lies About Christians: Are We Really Losing Our Young People?

We are continuing a series considering the excellent Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media, by Bradley R. E. Wright. Chapter 3 asks whether we’re really losing our … Continue reading

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Lies About Christians: Is American Christianity on the Brink of Extinction?

We are continuing a series considering the excellent Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media, by Bradley R. E. Wright. In chapter 2, Wright considers the much ballyhooed … Continue reading

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