The DNA of a House Church
When the church Jeff Henning served as pastor went through a major division in the late nineties, he began studying cell group ministry. Since 1996, he and his wife have run a house church called Break Bread Ministries in Marietta, Georgia. To Henning, the benefits of the house church compared with a brick and mortar church are like night and day.
“The brick and mortar church has changed,” said Henning. “It used to be a local community congregation in the neighborhood, where the pastor knows the families and would visit the family. In the church today, there is a lot of driving in from other areas; you may not sit next to the same person week after week.”
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Henning, who has a total of 18 adults and 4 children attending his house church, believes a greater bond develops within the house church, and one of the biggest benefits is what he says is a better foundation for discipleship.
“Traditional churches recruit you to come in and then you have to grow on your own; a pastor has to prepare his sermon for different spiritual levels,” said Henning. “By knowing the group, we know the spiritual level, we’re dialoguing about the Word, just preaching sermons.”
In fact, greater satisfaction may be one of the traits of today’s house church, according to some research. Barna followed up their first survey on house churches with a survey that examined the satisfaction level of those who attend house churches. The report, released in January of this year, indicates that two thirds of house church attendees were “completely satisfied” with the leadership of their church, compared to only half of those attending a conventional church. When it came to the faith commitment of those attending, two-thirds were “completely satisfied” within the house church while only four out of 10 were satisfied with the faith commitment of people in their congregation.
“In any city in America today,” said Neil Cole, a church planter for more than 17 years and author of Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens, “you can go to a few churches and park in a parking lot where someone with a yellow vest will direct you to a space. Someone you don’t know will hand you a sheet of paper. You’ll sit down in the crowd of people you don’t know, stare at the back of the head of someone, listen to someone you don’t know give you three ways to improve your life and the only contact you have is a two-minute neighbor nudge where you introduce yourself and that’s called church.
“Deeper substance can only be received when you personally ingest God’s Word for yourself, without someone else ingesting it for you.”
Can small groups be just as effective?
A key question might be whether small groups can meet the same needs that house churches appear to be meeting.