The Top 10 Mistakes We've Made In Our House Churches Over 25+ Years
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Jeremy Pryor: [00:00:00] Hey guys, welcome to the Podcast. We've got a two-parter for you guys. This is from a webinar that we did for [00:00:05] a cohort launch for House for Community. This is our House church slash house community [00:00:10] cohort. So if you're interested in that, please cover one k.org. Uh, so we're gonna break this down into two [00:00:15] parts for you guys.
And so if you're interested. And the distinctives of how we think [00:00:20] about House, church, house community. We've spent, uh, the last 15 plus years really [00:00:25] trying things, some things that didn't work, making lots of mistakes, finding lots of cool, uh, ways that [00:00:30] we can express. This kind of, um, church in our culture [00:00:35] today in the West.
And so we wanna share that with you guys. Uh, in these, in this two-parter. This first one's gonna be [00:00:40] on sort of the top 10 mistakes we made, and the second one is the top 10 distinctives of [00:00:45] our House for Community Blueprint. So enjoy these next two podcasts. [00:00:50] [00:00:55] [00:01:00] [00:01:05] [00:01:10] [00:01:15] [00:01:20] [00:01:25] [00:01:30] Alright, you guys ready?
We're gonna dive in. Top [00:01:35] 10 mistakes, ~uh, ~that we have made in, ~uh, ~I did not order these, ~um, ~[00:01:40] yet, so it was sort of too painful. But, ~um, ~someday I'm gonna order these from least to most common [00:01:45] mistakes. ~Um, ~but yeah, these, these were, these, all, all of these, ~uh, ~we have a lot of memories around, and I [00:01:50] wanna describe these again.
~This is, this is. ~This is the best way I know to, ~uh, ~articulate why I think being a part [00:01:55] of a coaching community and content is so important when you're trying to launch this. ~Um, ~you know, this [00:02:00] is, this is something that I think really we need to try to do together. Alright? Mistake number [00:02:05] one, ~uh, ~that we have made is valuing community over disciple making.
So one of the things [00:02:10] that we're gonna talk about is, it is distinctive here, is that oftentimes one of the biggest [00:02:15] problems when it comes to house churches is they become inward very quickly. There's not a [00:02:20] very clear pathway towards growth. They don't really know how to grow. And so I can't tell you the number of [00:02:25] house churches that I have encountered that have not changed in seven years, in eight years, in 10 years, you [00:02:30] know, ~um, ~they'll ~slow, ~slowly shrink, and then they'll eventually dissolve.
Now, that's not exactly the way [00:02:35] that Jesus set up the church. That's not what you see in the New Testament. ~Um, ~the church is an [00:02:40] explosive movement of growth. And how does that happen? Well, you have to be on mission as [00:02:45] a community. Community comes as a result of mission. Not as a result of just prioritizing [00:02:50] relationship.
It is important to prioritize relationship. But if you wanna see the most, the deepest [00:02:55] communities that exist in the world, they're always centered around a higher mission. That's why when [00:03:00] people come back from war, they, like, ~I, ~I have an uncle who every year he would go and travel to be [00:03:05] with his war buddies, you know, for 50 years after the war because the level of [00:03:10] community he experienced by actually trying to do something extremely difficult, but extremely important, [00:03:15] that is the best way to build community.
And so we really wanna encourage you guys to be on mission. And the mission [00:03:20] that we're going to be really walking you through how to be on as a community is the mission of multiplying disciples [00:03:25] and disciple making in your city. ~Um, ~number two, tar trial and error over coaching and [00:03:30] collaboration. ~Um, ~I already mentioned that this was kind of like maybe one of the biggest mistakes we've ever made, ~um, ~but [00:03:35] was difficult for us to not make because it wasn't clear how we were gonna participate in coaching and [00:03:40] collaboration.
But it's really important to not simply, ~uh, ~go through trial and error. [00:03:45] This is a really, it's, ~uh, ~CS Lewis famously said once that [00:03:50] Jesus says, feed my sheep, not experiment on my rats. And I think about that [00:03:55] oftentimes I'm like, okay, you guys wanna go through a new, new church experiment with me? ~Um, and so, uh, you know, sometimes we do have to try some things we've not tried before.~
But it is [00:04:00] important, ~uh, ~I think try to get coaching collaboration to try to limit the amount of [00:04:05] experimenting that we do on, ~uh, ~on one another. So I have a lot of patience for experiments. ~Um, ~I've [00:04:10] learned that not everybody has a lot of patience for experiments, ~um, ~and say, oh, let's change that. I [00:04:15] guess we, we just, that was going the wrong direction.
Alright. Third mistake is disconnecting from any city [00:04:20] church expression. So sometimes people, ~uh, ~I think they get too idealistic about house [00:04:25] church. And they think that as an expression within the House Church, you have everything [00:04:30] that you'll ever need to grow, everything that you'll ever need to [00:04:35] experience everything that the church was meant to be.
~And ~in the same way when there's a hundred commands [00:04:40] given to the church in the New Testament, that can only be fulfilled in the context of a small community. [00:04:45] There are actually a lot of commands given to the church that are very difficult to do in a house [00:04:50] church environment. ~And ~so because of that, it's really important for us to understand that the city church is [00:04:55] important.
So our ecclesiology, our understanding of church. Here is that [00:05:00] there are the word cia, this word that is translated church in the New Testament. [00:05:05] It's used in about ~three, three, about a third and a third and a third of ~three different ways throughout the New Testament. About a third of the time, ~it, ~it really is referring [00:05:10] to a gathering of people in a house.
~In a house, right? ~So this is where Roman 16, it says, you know, greet the [00:05:15] church that meets in your house, greet the CLE that meets in your house. There's a lot of that in the New Testament, and so [00:05:20] we're gonna be talking primarily about that kind of expression of the church in this six month cohort. [00:05:25] But about a third of the time, the New Testament also uses the word church to talk about the [00:05:30] city, right?
So in the book of Revelation, Jesus is saying, I'm gonna [00:05:35] write a letter to the Church of Laia, the Church of Ephesus, the church of, [00:05:40] you know, Smyrna Tirah. These are church city churches. These are not [00:05:45] simply house churches. ~I. ~We know that in those cities, there were house churches, but ~there were also, ~there was [00:05:50] also a city church expression.
And all of the commands given to the church in Revelation one, two, and three [00:05:55] were not given to house churches. They were all given to the city church. And so it's really important to understand the [00:06:00] difference. And I would say that, that most house churches I know are sitting on a [00:06:05] two year time bomb. In other words, about two years.
They can survive without connection with [00:06:10] a, with a larger city church expression before something happens that they, that's so difficult for [00:06:15] them to endure that it really takes them under. And I think this is unnecessary because if you [00:06:20] were a part of either And that larger expression, could be a network of house churches, ~um, it could be, ~it could be a very friendly, [00:06:25] traditional church that really appreciates what you're doing.
~Um, ~you could be a part of a traditional church and just be doing this as a [00:06:30] house community, but ~that, ~that traditional church really, really values this expression of the church [00:06:35] and maybe even sees it as a part of the expression of the church, one of the churches that we're very friendly with. And [00:06:40] here in, in, ~uh, ~Cincinnati.
They make very clear to their whole congregation that, ~that, that the, ~[00:06:45] the house groups are ~just ab ~just as much a front door to the church as the worship service. I think that's a [00:06:50] beautiful expression, a way of describing it, and it provides a lot of opportunity for people [00:06:55] to really prioritize, ~uh, ~those house expressions, sometimes even above the worship service [00:07:00] expression.
~Um, ~so we're obviously gonna be talking almost exclusively about the House church here, but [00:07:05] from time to time, I'm going to be emphasizing the importance of finding a way to [00:07:10] connect with the city church. What will you do if a marriage ~within your, ~within your church [00:07:15] just blows up? Do you really have within your house, church, all that you need to handle that?
[00:07:20] We've been through a lot ~as, ~as a house church that we ~couldn't, ~couldn't handle without kind of escalating the issue [00:07:25] to ~other ~others in the city who are ~gifted, ~more gifted than we are. Somebody going through a really difficult, ~uh, ~[00:07:30] addiction, things like that. ~Now, ~there may be people and your house search may be able to handle some of those.
[00:07:35] Really big curve balls, but you'll likely get hit with one ~that, um, ~every couple years that is just [00:07:40] above your pay grade and that's okay. ~Um, ~so we really believe in those expressions. The other third of the [00:07:45] time the church is mentioned in the New Testament is talking about all believers everywhere. So when Jesus [00:07:50] is on this rock, I will build my church, my esia.
He didn't mean a house church, [00:07:55] and he didn't mean a city church. He meant all the believers throughout history and in all places. [00:08:00] So those are the three ways of understanding the church. Now the problem is that 99% of the time when people use the word [00:08:05] church in our context in the West, they're really talking about none of those three things.
They're not talking about a [00:08:10] house church, they're talking about the city church, and they're not really talking about all believers everywhere. They're really talking about this [00:08:15] branded church, the thing that's larger than the house, but smaller than the city. Um, but I think that [00:08:20] because that's, that's probably the closest we're gonna get to an expression of the city church in many cases.
Um, so we [00:08:25] have to get kind of creative with how to access more gifts, right? More resources in [00:08:30] the city, and sometimes those traditional churches can be ~a great, ~great partners. ~Um, so, uh, ~we'll talk more about that too. [00:08:35] Alright. ~All right. Um, ~another major mistake that people do, this is probably, ~you know, ~[00:08:40] really common if you're very disconnected from the house church movement, is the honey I shrunk the church, ~um, ~situation [00:08:45] where you basically, like, you just take the traditional worship service, [00:08:50] shrink it down to living room size, and just ~do it in, do it, ~do it in a house.
So you've got a sermon, you've [00:08:55] got, you know, three points in a sermon. You've got a worship, you know, a couple worship songs, ~you've, so ~you're doing everything but [00:09:00] just ~at, ~at a ~very smaller, ~much smaller scale. The problem, of course, you guys, is that that actual worship service is not [00:09:05] described anywhere in the New Testament.
And it actually, ~you know, ~does make sense if you're gonna do worship service [00:09:10] like that to do it at scale. But if you're doing something, ~uh, ~in a house, you [00:09:15] have an incredible opportunity to do something that I just call restoring First Corinthians [00:09:20] 10 through 14. So we actually have four chapters in the New Testament that [00:09:25] describe in detail what actually happened in these [00:09:30] gatherings.
~Man, ~it's so encouraging to me that they exist. ~So, ~and I've studied these chapters and they're so [00:09:35] helpful. We're gonna spend a lot of time in these chapters during this cohort. But one of the things you guys have to understand about this, [00:09:40] so what was going on in Corinth was that they kept screwing up ~the way that Paul, ~the traditions that Paul had given them, and these [00:09:45] traditions are just the rhythms or the basic ways that he wanted them to gather.
And [00:09:50] because this kept, they kept screwing it up. Paul basically had to retell them everything. Thank God. It's [00:09:55] like a hugely to our advantage because now we have in the New Testament an incredibly [00:10:00] detailed description of what they did when they gathered. And so I love [00:10:05] studying these, these, ~uh, ~chapters. In addition to these chapters, ~um, ~there's about seven or eight [00:10:10] really, really helpful documents ~that, that were, ~that we still have from the first a hundred years of the church, from about [00:10:15] 50 AD to about 150 ad.
~Um, ~I spent a lot of time studying those seven or eight documents. [00:10:20] They also reveal a lot about how the early church gathered many of those who re wrote those [00:10:25] documents. People like Clement, who was directly discipled by the Apostle John and [00:10:30] others. ~Um, man, they, ~it's really helpful to know what they did, how they did what they did.
So the first and second century church is really important for [00:10:35] us to understand how they gathered. ~And, um, ~so we have the best description, I think is in first Corinthians, but [00:10:40] we have lots of places to go to try to understand ~what are the, ~what are the unique ways that we can take advantage [00:10:45] of being in a very small community.
Um, instead of just hunting, I shrunk the church. [00:10:50] Okay. Um, another thing that churches constantly struggle with when they do things [00:10:55] in the home is they, I. Kind of waffle between keep, keep the kids away and kid [00:11:00] chaos. And this took out one of our house churches, one of our house church expressions. ~Um, ~we just [00:11:05] tried so hard to, ~uh, ~integrate the children but didn't really know how to do that well.
[00:11:10] And eventually, ~uh, ~it just burned everybody out and just took so much value out of what we were [00:11:15] trying to experience as the church. And then you lurch to the other extreme and you keep your kids away and you're [00:11:20] like, what are we doing here? Like, I thought we were a family. Like, I wanna experience this with my kids.
~Like, and ~so ~we have a, ~we [00:11:25] have lots and lots of tools for how to handle this, but most times when I talk to [00:11:30] house churches, they're doing one of these two things. And I think these are both mistakes. They either keep the kids away or they [00:11:35] absorb way too much kid chaos and they don't really understand how to integrate the kids into a house, [00:11:40] church, ~um, ~expression.
~So we really, really are passionate about doing this. ~We wanna coach you guys how to do that. ~Another thing that happens a lot, ~another mistake is [00:11:45] prioritizing jaded adopted kids versus bio kids. ~Now, ~by kids here, I don't mean your children, I [00:11:50] mean people that your family, your household may be discipling and inviting into the house church [00:11:55] who are adopted kids versus bio kids.
So an adopted kid in a [00:12:00] house church setting. This is just an analogy of course, I'm just saying by analogy, when you're a [00:12:05] house church, ~they're gonna, ~there's gonna be two kinds of people that are gonna join. They're gonna be people that are going to be [00:12:10] kind of at maybe your level of spiritual development.
~Um, you know, or they, ~they will be people that have [00:12:15] known the Lord ~have, are, ~have been churched a lot ~and there ~are kind of disillusioned or, ~or, uh, kind of ~discontent with the current [00:12:20] kind of church and they want to join, ~um, your, ~your house, church expression. And I think there's gotta be room at the table [00:12:25] for some people that are like that.
But sometimes what I find [00:12:30] is a church is made up entirely of jaded people that are kind of [00:12:35] like frustrated and there are no bio kids. And by bio kids there, I mean new [00:12:40] believers, people that, that you are, you are bringing into the kingdom that you are [00:12:45] discipling. ~Um, ~and they may be, they may be believers, but people that they're there because they are [00:12:50] being influenced and care about being close to you and your household or your disciple making.[00:12:55]
It's not really about church model when you get people together at a, in a house church that [00:13:00] only are there because of the model, right? Most people that go to a worship service, [00:13:05] they're not necessarily there just because of the model, but sometimes that happens with house churches and [00:13:10] it can be really hard on the house church because oftentimes what happens is there's so much fighting [00:13:15] and so much criticizing about how we do church ~because that's what brought us together and, ~and not very much emphasis on the mission to [00:13:20] go and make disciples.
So, ~uh, ~what we'll talk about maybe getting that balance correct. I think that. [00:13:25] There's there, it's gonna be great to see some people come in that are discontent and need, need a [00:13:30] place. But I also think, man, we really need to make sure we're making disciples. The people, some people are [00:13:35] there just 'cause they're seeking the Lord.
'cause they love Jesus because they, they love you and wanna be close to you and your [00:13:40] family and they wanna follow you as you follow Christ. Misunderstanding the hosting households, ~this is, ~this took us [00:13:45] many, many years to figure out there, there's a really dynamic position [00:13:50] that I, I underestimated for well over a decade in our house, [00:13:55] church, ~um, ~trial and error journey.
And that was how incredibly [00:14:00] critical the hosting household is. What that [00:14:05] position really is all about in the New Testament. When it says, when Paul is saying things like, Hey, ~greet, I greet the church that meets in your house. ~I greet the church that meets in your [00:14:10] house. He's speaking directly to a hosting household.
~That, that, ~that position is really critical [00:14:15] all through the book of Acts. Paul, I. List the household that is hosting him. These [00:14:20] are, you know, GAAS, Crispus, Philemon, ~you know, ~Peter's case, [00:14:25] Cornelius. These household leaders are really important. Their houses are really [00:14:30] important, their physical houses. ~Um, ~and so I wanna talk a lot about ~how, and a lot in our, the, the, the six months, a lot of the time we spend in the beginning is~ preparing your [00:14:35] household.
I think the number one reason why we struggle with [00:14:40] having, ~uh, ~house churches is because we are trying to put the [00:14:45] weight of the House Church on a fragile Western [00:14:50] nuclear family instead of a household. And these households are really important. The New Testament, you [00:14:55] had this thing called the household, which was a pretty, ~uh, ~strong [00:15:00] unit.
~Uh, ~oftentimes 15 to 20 people would live in a single household. There would be ~a, ~a head of that [00:15:05] household. ~The, this Pot trusts familiar, um, the, ~the father of the house. ~The bait of, ~in the case of ~in, in ~the Jewish world. [00:15:10] And these households were used to doing a lot of productive work [00:15:15] together. They usually, ~uh, ~had an economic engine at the center of the household.
They had [00:15:20] employees ~that they, ~that they were, ~um, ~that were a part of their household. ~Um, ~servants and others. ~They, ~they [00:15:25] oftentimes were already, even before they became believers in Jesus, ~they were ~the center of a [00:15:30] spiritual community. ~Um, ~every household in the Roman world was expected ~to, ~to worship the gods.
~Um, ~[00:15:35] and the household was actually the center of Roman worship. ~Um, ~it wasn't [00:15:40] the, ~uh, ~temple. And the same thing within the Jewish world. ~Uh, ~Passover [00:15:45] Sabbath dinners, most of the rhythms ~of the, ~of the Jewish life that are [00:15:50] described in the Old Testament were done ~in, ~in the household. And even when they would go on pilgrimage festival three times a [00:15:55] year to the temple, they would do it as a household.
So. This is such an important position. ~Uh, ~we need to really [00:16:00] elevate and explain how that position works and equip you guys, if that's your calling, [00:16:05] to prepare, prepare yourself to be a hosting household and what that [00:16:10] means. ~Awesome. All right. ~One of the mistakes, this is something recently I've really thought about this last year or two, is that [00:16:15] house churches tend to be easy to join and hard to leave.
They say that's true of cults [00:16:20] as well, by the way. Easy to join, hard to leave. ~Um, ~so it's really important to [00:16:25] invert that. I think. I think, and this is very counterintuitive for Christians, ~um, ~but I think this [00:16:30] actually works way better for house churches. They actually should be hard to join and easy to leave.[00:16:35]
We'll talk to you guys about how to make that happen. ~Um, ~so like in our case, you know, we only kind [00:16:40] of let people join our house church once a year. Oftentimes ~they'll, ~they will ~be, you know, they'll ~be thinking about it for months, ~uh, uh, ~[00:16:45] beforehand. We will have meetings with them. ~It's a, ~it's a one year commitment.
They make a covenant for a year to spend with [00:16:50] us. ~It's, ~it's just, it's pretty challenging to get in. ~Um, and, uh, ~but every time when a year's up, it's like you [00:16:55] can, you know, completely fine to leave at that point. No, no problem at all. ~Um, you know, ~[00:17:00] and so a lot of people that do house church, they're just so embittered, [00:17:05] so disappointed when somebody leaves.
~Um, and, uh, ~but they're very, very, very quick to, uh, invite people [00:17:10] in. And I think that can create a dynamic within a house church that's really difficult to manage. [00:17:15] And there's some basic things that you can do that can really reverse that challenge, ~uh, ~that we've learned. [00:17:20] I think another thing that house churches tend to be is ~radically, uh, ~radical sort of [00:17:25] democracies, ~you know, bureaucracies, ~they just tend to ~like, ~not ~like, ~like leadership roles.
They want everything to be a [00:17:30] consensus. ~Um. ~Some of that's fine, but I think that sometimes the way that that actually occurs is [00:17:35] that we resist really clear leadership roles. We'll tell you guys what some of those should be. We, [00:17:40] in our opinion, these aren't heavy handed leadership roles, but I do think it's important there'd be [00:17:45] clarity around these roles.
And we've resisted this, ~uh, ~in different iterations of our House church [00:17:50] expressions and wanted there to be more equality. ~Um, ~I do think it's really important for everyone to [00:17:55] participate and to really avoid consumerism, but that doesn't mean we should not have a clear [00:18:00] structure to the house church. ~Uh, ~I think that it will do better if there's, ~um, you know, some, ~some clarity there.
And [00:18:05] the last one here is the importance of sharing the hospitality burden. ~One of the things that's so important, ~one of the advantages you wanna [00:18:10] take full advantage of in a house, church. ~Like, ~we want to eat meals together. We wanna spend time [00:18:15] together. We want there to be an informal, organic, relational connection between [00:18:20] people in the house, church, but man, that requires one massive thing called [00:18:25] hospitality.
~And, uh, that can be just crushing for, uh, for a particular hosting family that's bearing most of that burden. ~And so you have to get really good at requiring [00:18:30] people in your house, church to clean your own kitchen. Are you comfortable with that? ~Uh, ~you [00:18:35] got to say, Hey guys, it's time to clean the kitchen.
Here we go. ~All right. You're, you know, ~and you gotta give people roles. You gotta give people some [00:18:40] training, ~you know? ~But this is a big deal. Like ~you should, you should have, ~when there's a house church meeting at your house and everybody [00:18:45] leaves, you should be excited about how clean your house is. ~You know, you, you should not be like, oh my gosh.~
How many more weeks do we have [00:18:50] to do this? Like, I gotta spend another hour cleaning after these people leave. No, no, no. [00:18:55] That's not gonna work like that. You're gonna burn out. So, ~um, ~and it's not good for your church. Like they, they, they, [00:19:00] it's not good for them to say, but that they can, that can happen oftentimes.
Just that's the muscle memory they have. They show up [00:19:05] at a church, they leave their coffee cup somewhere, somebody else picks it up. It's no big deal. ~Um, ~you know, there's staff [00:19:10] or there's facility people or there's volunteers everywhere. But, ~um, ~man, that doesn't work for house churches. So we had [00:19:15] talk about that.
That can really burn you out. Alright, so those are the 10 mistakes. [00:19:20] [00:19:25] [00:19:30] [00:19:35] [00:19:40] [00:19:45] [00:19:50] [00:19:55] [00:20:00] [00:20:05] [00:20:10] [00:20:15] [00:20:20]