Eight streams of house church
The global house church movement has many faces. Wolfgang Simson observes eight streams of house church:
1. Regular house churches: groups of Christians that meet in homes. We see both single groups and organized networks, some of which have websites and are resourced by leadership/ministry teams.
2. Off-the-grid house churches with ‘Out of Church Christians’ that intentionally do not want to be known, listed or be on anybody’s radar. We find out about them by accident or through opinion polling or sampling, the kind of research George Barna does.
3. Business groups, either house churches within a company or those connecting folks in the business world.
4. More and more traditional churches are changing their home groups or even transitioning their whole lot into house churches.
5. Inside the Roman Catholic culture there is a surprisingly large amount of ‘small churches’ that are intentionally set up to cut out the middle layer of clergy and directly connect the people with Jesus and the Bible. In many cases, these groups are supported by bishops and cardinals.
6. Many historical churches, like the Anglican Church, develop ‘small missional communities’.
7. Insider movements. A staggering amount of under-the-radar house churches are emerging within religious megablocks like the Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, New Agers and even within certain cults. But they choose to stay within their religious culture for effectiveness and to build bridges of God. One example is a former Hindu priest, fully painted up and in his safran dress, who now very effectively plants house churches amongst Brahmins in India.
8. Media-birthed house churches, initiated by television, radio or online community facilitators.
Source: Wolfgang Simson
Published in Joel News International
