2. THE HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT
“HCC is non-denominational and an effort is made to accommodate Christians of many backgrounds. The house church movement is an attempt to get away from the institutional church, seeking instead to return to the small gatherings of peoples that constituted all of the churches of the New Testament era” (House Church Central Website).

3. THE HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT
Worshipping In Houses

4. Worshipping In Houses 1) What those of this movement are saying.
“The house church movement is an attempt to get away from the institutional church, seeking instead to return to the small gatherings of peoples that constituted all of the churches of the New Testament era” (House Church Central Website).
“Historically, of course, we know that it was not until the third century that Christians began to erect what we today would recognize as church buildings. Piecing together archeology and history, it appears that the primitive church typically met in a room (sufficiently large enough for probably people) in the house of a wealthy member” (Radical Restoration, F. LaGARD Smith, p 148).

5. Worshipping In Houses 1) What those of this movement are saying.
“…I have no doubt but that moving away from the house-church concept has given rise to a system without scriptural support which has fundamentally changed the form and nature of worship as practiced in the apostolic church” (Radical Restoration, F LaGARD Smith, p. 166).

6. Worshipping In Houses 2) In the N.T. churches met in homes.
“The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house” (1 Corinthians 16:19).
“Greet Priscilla and Aquila…Likewise greet the church that is in their house…” (Romans 16:3,5).

7. Worshipping In Houses 2) In the N.T. churches met in homes.
“Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea, and Nymphas and the church that is in his house” (Colossians 4:15).
“to the beloved Apphia, Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house” (Philemon 2)

8. Worshipping In Houses 3) N.T. churches met in other places.
“So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart” (Acts 2:46).
“But when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them and withdrew the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. And this continued for two years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:9,10).

9. Worshipping In Houses 4) Paul’s implication.
“Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you” (1 Corinthians 11:20-22).

10. Worshipping In Houses 5) The words of our Lord.
“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:20-24).

11. Worshipping In Houses 6) Where did the Jews meet for worship?
“And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people” (Matthew 4:23).
“Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God” (Acts 9:20).

12. THE HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT
Worshipping In Houses
The Lord’s Supper

13. The Lord’s Supper 1) Common meal & memorial feast?
“A Memorial Within A Meal – In this regard, perhaps the most universally-overlooked feature of the Lord’s Supper as practiced in the primitive church is that – from all appearances – it was observed in conjunction with a fellowship meal. That is, a normal, ordinary meal with the usual variety of food. However, unlike normal, ordinary meals, this combined table fellowship and memorial was shared among the disciples for the special purpose of strengthening, not just their physical bodies, but their common bond in the spiritual body of Christ…” (Radical Restoration, F LaGARD Smith, pp. 128 & 129).

14. The Lord’s Supper 2) Paul’s instruction at Corinth.
“Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you” (1 Corinthians 11:20-22).

15. The Lord’s Supper 3) When the Supper was instituted!
“Without question, on the occasion of its inaugural introduction – there in the upper room on the night Jesus was betrayed – the memorial was part of an actual meal being shared, which included bread, wine, and whatever “dish” it was into which Jesus dipped the bread before handing it to Judas (John 13:26-27). That this memorial to Christ’s sacrificial death should have been instituted in the context of a shared meal is consistent with the “breaking of bread” practiced by the early disciples” (Radical Restoration, F. LaGARD Smith, p. 129; under the heading of A Memorial Within A Meal).

16. The Lord’s Supper 4) It was the Passover meal!
“Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it” (Exodus 12:5-8).

17. THE HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT
Worshipping In Houses
The Lord’s Supper
The Role Of Elders

18. The Role Of Elders 1) Jurisdiction of elders.
“The point of all this history is to say, first of all, that no single model of eldership responsibility (whether in the Old or New Testaments) is conclusive on this issue of “jurisdiction.” There is nothing to rule out the possibility that the role of elders in the early church might well have encompassed more than one level of involvement – even simultaneously. Perhaps there were elders shepherding the disciples in each house church, depending upon their size and make-up. And perhaps elder oversight may have been exercised throughout a group of house churches which collectively comprised a larger, recognizable “congregation.”

19. The Role Of Elders 1) Jurisdiction of elders.
“More thought-provoking for us, of course, is the third possibility – that elders in individual house churches might also have come together as a group of city-wide elders to discuss matters of importance to the entire community of believers” (Radical Restoration, F LaGARD Smith, p. 178).

20. The Role Of Elders 2) The Bible teaching on elders.
“The elders who are among you I exhort, I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed: Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly” (1 Peter 5:1,2).
“So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed” (Acts 14:23).

21. THE HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT
Worshipping In Houses
The Lord’s Supper
The Role Of Elders
Role Of Preachers

22. The Role Of Preachers 1) Their view of a preacher.
“And abdicating responsibility for teaching and preaching of the Word by hiring professional “pulpit ministers” (as distinct from full-time elders) couldn’t be more misguided” (Radical Restoration, F LaGARD Smith, p. 189).
“The very concept of worship focused around a pulpit flies in the face of the dynamic, mutually – participatory house – churches in the apostolic age. Houses don’t have pulpits!” (Ibid., p. 211).
“Pulpit ministers may be an invention, but mutual ministry is not” (Ibid., p. 221).

23. The Role Of Preachers 2) Preachers & Elders edifying.
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11,12).

24. The Role Of Preachers 3) Some plant others water.
“Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it” (1 Corinthians 3:5-10).

25. The Role Of Preachers 4) Notice the work of an evangelist.
“I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:1-5).

26. The Role Of Preachers 5) A preacher can be supported.
“Do you not know that those who minister the holy things eat of the things of the temple, and those who serve at the altar partake of the offerings of the altar? Even so the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:13,14).

27. THE HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT
Worshipping In Houses
The Lord’s Supper
The Role Of Elders
Role Of Preachers