Spurred by my friend, John Armstrong (his thoughts, his questions) I have been offering some ruminations on house church over the past few days (part 1, part 2, part 3). We attend a house church in San Francisco, something that we backed into rather than pursued from any idea that house church “gets it right.” So this has been a good opportunity for me to reflect theologically on what we’re doing.
In this final post in this series I want to address a few lingering questions and concerns.
First, what claim can a house church lay to being a church in any sense? Without institutional order, without laying on of hands, the ability of anyone to start one whenever they want, in what sense is his part of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church”?
As with many of the concerns I addressed in the third post, this is a concern for Protestantism in general. That’s not a true answer, of course, especially if it’s being asked by a Roman Catholic or Orthodox Christian! But I keep coming back to this point, which I think should not be too readily dismissed: every problem raised for house churches is a problem for evangelicalism or Protestantism more generally.
In this case, we lay the same claim to being a church as any other Protestant church: we tell the same gospel story of the saving value of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are united to that same Jesus by baptism and supper.
House churches in the U.S. tend to exist within, and are a product of, Protestant church culture. We have the same strengths and the same weaknesses.
Another example of how this is true: Shouldn’t we have more commitment to work within the existing structures rather than the dissatisfied running off to try these new experiments?
Ideally, of course, the answer is yes! But to raise this as a problem for the house church is to overlook that the only reason we have a culture in which people might leave an institutional church for a house church is because we created a culture (beginning with the Reformation) in which people might leave an institutional church for another institutional church that already exists or create one of their own devising.
Which, of course, is related to the issues of what kind of accountability is there for orthodox teaching? And that, of course, is the quintessential Roman Catholic argument against the infinitely multiplying, infinitely differentiating sects of Protestantism. And, I have experienced that most institutional churches look askance at the teaching of the churches down the street, which have clearly strayed from the way.
The point is that inasmuch as house churches might vary in their teaching from the church down the road they are doing nothing more and nothing less than the other institutional churches are. House based churches are microcosms of the larger ecclesiastical landscape, no more and, surely, no less, susceptible to various errors than our other Protestant 
brothers and sisters.
Being part of this larger world is not simply a factor when it comes to ways that a house church might lead the fold astray. It is also an important part of why they can thrive and be healthy. One commenter asked, Where are the songs going to be written that your kids will sing in 20 years? Who is going to pay the pastors who get study leaves to write the books that will instruct your people?
My working assumption is that house churches exist as part of the world of American Christianity that actually exists. I’m not advocating an abandonment of the institution, I’m not suggesting that this is the future. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we (like those who attend institutional churches) benefit from what’s being done all over the country and all over the world due to the information technology that links us to each other’s work.
So yes, we will continue to thrive as part of the Christian culture that reaps the benefits of what the few exceptional institutional churches are doing–just like the rest of the institutional churches benefit from the songs that come out of Nashville and the sermons that come out of Manhattan, Grand Rapids (the epicenter of progressive culture), the Twin Cities, and the rest.
On the other hand, these same information technologies are making it increasingly possible that a song written by one of my house church members could very well be sung around the world. We sing it. We share it on YouTube. We tweet the YouTube video. Unless your church has a producer or widely recognized musician staffing it, that’s probably as likely a route to canticle immortality as occasionally writing songs for your own large church’s worship.
House church, for me, is not a statement that the institutional church has gotten it wrong for 1954 years (ever since it started misreading Romans and needed me to come and unlock it). It stands within and is a participant in the broader world of North American Christianity. But as a voice from within not tied to the institution, to its power, to its retirement accounts, etc., it does have the potential to ask questions that might make the institutional church more healthy if its willing to take them up.
And, vice versa, if the house church will keep listening to the challenges raised by the institutional church it will have its sights set on a healthier way forward as well. Thanks, John, for helping us to that.
