From time to time, I read messages or articles from HC people are seem to be really anti-organization and against planning.Some IC's do door-to-door evangelistic ministry. Others do 'servant evangelism,' going and passing out colas on the street to start friendships with unbelievers. Other evangelism programs are larger and more organized.
Some HC people don't like this type of planning and organizing. I can understand why. There are a lot of problems with the Madison Avenue techniques of assembly line evangelism. Have people raise their hands, repeat a prayer, and then 97% of them may never get involved in a church. I went to college in Georgia, and I could probably have gone into the average bar and found a dozen drunk fornicators who had repeated a prayer after the preacher.
But, imo, HC people can go way too far in opposing organization. For some, the idea of having officially recognized elders makes them uncomfortable. I even ran across one fellow on the 'net who'd been kicked out of a couple of churches, including an HC, who believed that elders were satanic, and that Paul had it all wrong. I think most of us can see the error of that type of reasoning.
Let us consider the Jerusalem church. It was an organized church. There weren't just merely a number of independent house churches doing whatever they wanted. There was a large city church, with organization, elders, and various other ministers. There was a program to distribute food to widows. Eventually, the church even organized enough so that it could distribute to those who had need as money from lands that were sold were donated to the church. When Paul came to Jerusalem, he met with the apostles and elders. They must have been organized enough to know how these people were. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in the churches to guard the flock. The churches administrated collections of money, and Paul and Barnabas collected it and took it back to Jerusalem. There was organization in the early church. We don't see God condemning this in the Bible.
What about evangelism? I read a few pages in an interesting book written around 50 years ago- _The Bridges of God._ It is an interesting little book on missions which deals with the issue of how to help start a people movement from Christ among a people-group. The book focused on winning whole households and networks of people, not just individuals. I suspect the book had some influence in missiology, since I'd seen the term 'Bridges of God' in an English missiology article written years later that my wife wanted me to translate into English for her.
The author conjectured that the Gospel had bridged across from the Jews to the Gentiles in Antioch through Gentile proselytes, who shared the Gospel with their families. Paul, who had received revelation from Christ, came to that city, and saw an actual model of how the Gospel could be spread first to Jews, then to Gentiles, and participated in a united Jew and Gentile church. Later, the Lord sent him out.
He had experienced a model to work with. Paul seems to have had a pattern or evangelism strategy. Some HC people may not like to think of evangelism in terms of strategy or techniques, but we see Paul following the same pattern. Paul would go into the synagogue and preach the Gospel there to the Jews first, which was the right thing to do. Jews, proselytes, and God-fearing Gentiles would hear his message. Some Jews would repent. Others would reject the Gospel. Then, Paul would turn to the Gentiles. Perhaps he already would have won some to Christ from among the God-fearing Gentiles and proselytes in the synagogue.
New believers often want their friends and relatives to know the Gospel. They might tell their friends and families about Paul's teaching, and he would have more people to share with, in addition to those who listened in the marketplace.
It's possible to get to a point where you think that anything organized, planned, promoted, etc. is evil and 'IC.' It is possible to make decisions based on what is not like the IC, rather than what God wants.
Some people who come up with organization, plans, and strategies may be exercising their gifts of the Spirit. I'd imagine a lot of IC people are those who were discouraged or even hurt that their gifts and ministries found no place in 'the IC.' A church may have either allowed no place for, or just simply ignored, your gift of teaching, prophecy, or just their simple desire to bear one another's burdens. They go away licking their wounds, or just fed up with all the man-centered religion, and decide to focus on the one Man Christ Jesus. They start meeting in homes.
Just imagine this scenario. God sends an HC someone who is gifted in organizing, evangelism strategy, planning, or something else so popular in 'IC.'s. His HC brethren reject or ignore his gift. Some might even accuse him of having whorish Babylonian tendencies. I haven't haven't heard of this scenario occurring in an HC, though similar things may have happened on mailing lists.
HC Bondage? What's that? What I mean is that some people get so bound up in trying to do 'house church' and try to reject anything that remotely resembles the IC, that they can get into bondage.
I know when I first started learning about the way church meetings were supposed to be, planned Bible lessons and things like that made me uncomfortable. The idea of studying through a book of the Bible didn't sound quite right to me, either. After all, I Cor. 14 seems to be talking about a spontaneous meeting. I read a case for spontaneous solos being referred to in the 'speaking to yourselves in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs' verses, and read how the Christians in Tertullian's day would take turns singing solos, and I began to question the virtues of the tradition congregational singing. I even thought it sounded a little fishy when I found out that one renowned HC planter had written HC Bible studies, and that the group he was working with even had a distance correspondence course for those involved in church leadership.
Well, I've studied some other parts of the Bible since then, and now I realize that we are free in Christ. If we want to have a planned Bible study, or even a sermon from time to time, we are free in Christ. If God doesn't want us to do that, we can follow whatever he leads us to do.
I was in a type of intellectual bondage. I couldn't appreciate certain churchy activities because they were 'IC'-hearing someone give a sermon, etc. It was a type of bondage because I didn't realize my freedom in Christ. God does not forbid listening to 3 point discourses on the word of God. A sermon might be the best way to convey a message in some situations. Organizing things is not always bad.
Many others probably have not experienced the same type of quirky bondage that I have struggled with, but some of you may have your own quirks.
I am getting involved with an Indonesian church that is trying to switch from cell church to house church. The cell groups used to do 'IC in a house.' But since then, the few elders that are at the top of the mega-church structure started teaching those in leadership on the cell level to get away from the liturgical format for meetings. They also started making decisions with their 'zone leaders' or pastors or whatever they called the people who led on the congregational or cell level. They are slowly transitioning so the people don't freak out. I don't know if they will ever get rid of the cell structure, or if they will just help two types of ministry, cell and HC.
Well, I've been going to one of the cell groups. It's a really great group of people. We wanted to visit their cell, and every one of the members of their cell group all came over to our house to introduce themselves. I could sense a bond of unity and fellowship between the people.
We just get together and talk. Usually, someone asks a practical or theological question, and we start sharing with one another. Sometimes, small groups of people chat. It's really good at times, and they've ministered to some individual needs and taught the Lord, but it seems like they are too resistant to doing anything 'churchy.'
For example, they don't open with prayer. Maybe that seems liturgical. I don't think we should be legalistic about it, but it seems wise to me to pray at the beginning that the Lord would help us focus on him, and edify one another. Last week, we invited them to have the meeting at our house so that my wife's mother, who goes to a traditional church but needs to repent, could hear a more traditional type sermon. We thought the functional leader would share the gospel. But though we did a 'hymn sandwich,' when it came time to share the word, he wanted to have an informal discussion, which didn't seem to meet my wife's mother's need. We talked about once saved always saved again. I think my wife had asked him to prepare a message on salvation. If we had known, maybe we could have prepped. I think my wife wanted her Mom to hear it from someone else, too. But the conversation went in another direction.
He said, before we talked, that the reason he didn't have a message like that was because they didn't have a liturgical formal service, or something along those lines. It seems like they were stuck in that format of having an informal conversation.
I wish the group would focus more on mutual edification and dig deeper into scripture. Maybe we could study through a certain book. I think they would be resistant to that idea at this point. It seems they don't feel free to do things that are 'organized.'
I think we need to be careful not to avoid being reactionary - making decisions based on 'not being like them.'
Link Hudson
Jakarta, Indonesia
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