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I am very involved with "cell groups" and have been for 20 plus years. I'm not completely of the distinction between "house church" and "cell group" but I'm here to learn.
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Greetings Paul, Having gone to both, I think I know. This is a speculation ONLY! If your cell group was like the wonderful one my wife and I attended, what you experience in your cell group is what we always experience at our home church, just minus the lecture on Sunday (or Saturday as the case may be )
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There are many listings of differences, and many hybrids that would incorporate elements of both. One key difference is centralized leadership. A true house church is autonomous, with organic relationships with other houses. A cell is part of a more defined network with hierarchical oversight. One thing I'm pretty sure of, and that is that you can't tell which one it is by what it is called, rather by how it is run.
As my thinking evolves and I collect stories, I think perhaps cell structure is good for frontier territory. That's where there is a team setting the agenda, planning the meetings, coaching individual believers closely in the basics. Perhaps once there is a mature, believing community, the apostolic leaders would move to another frontier territory, leaving behind autonomous but mutually encouraging households of faith.
This would be the difference between Jesus sending out the teams of two and calling them back for review, and sending them back out with clarified instructions, and Peter planting a church in Cornelius' house. As a God-fearer, Cornelius was prepared to become a leader of his own household and community pretty quickly. But the Samaritans may have needed a bit more follow-up before the apostles released them to simple epistolic follow-up. (Hey the spell-checker doesn't recognize epistolic? Did I just make that up? Should it be epistolary? Well, look at that, epistolary is a word. Do you think it means "from the epistles?")
Blessings, Laurie Ann
-------------------- You & Me and Jesus. We are enough!
I would love to hear from you about this! There are aspects of the idea of cell church's that I am drawn to- mainly having a larger group of believers to gather together with at least from time to time. I am wondering if it can be done without turning into a heirarchical structure? I also would be leary of people- being lazy as most of us are- slacking in attending small group (what I would call church),and opting to only attend large group meetings where they can be passive and just "be fed". Have you found this to be a tendency in your cell church experience?
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