Dale Partridge - Real Christianity #106： What is a Biblical House Church？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, where each week

00:00:13.140 I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral questions. This is

00:00:19.100 a 100% listener-supported audio ministry of relearn.org. And for those who don't know,

00:00:25.720 our mission at relearn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical,

00:00:31.860 confessional, and missional house churches. For more information, just visit relearn.org

00:00:37.600 forward slash house. Are you guys curious to learn more about how a biblical house church

00:00:44.900 works? Have you ever wondered what's the difference between, say, a Bible study and a house church

00:00:51.040 or a home group? Have you thought about joining or planting a house church in your area,

00:00:58.000 but you just don't know where to begin? Well, we're going to be discussing all of this and

00:01:03.020 more on today's episode, but before we dive in, I'd like to make just two quick announcements.

00:01:08.860 The first is about supporting our ministry financially. Some of you guys might know

00:01:15.420 relearn.org offers a growing library of articles, videos, podcasts, sermons, and PDFs that are

00:01:23.260 completely free to the public. We just built a brand new and beautiful new website. So go ahead

00:01:28.520 and check out relearn.org if you have not seen it. We also offer paid courses on church planting,

00:01:34.100 marriage addiction, et cetera. But that said, none of these are free to create. It all costs

00:01:40.400 money and time. And as of now, we really do need your help to meet the demands of our annual budget

00:01:47.460 and to serve those who need these resources but can't always afford them.

00:01:53.860 If our ministry or this podcast has been impactful to your spiritual growth,

00:01:59.560 would you prayerfully consider supporting relearn.org financially? You can do this by

00:02:04.820 just making a $10 per month, you know, reoccurring donation or a one-time donation maybe of $100.

00:02:13.160 But these donations really do keep us in ministry. We have probably 200, 300 people that just give

00:02:21.980 $5 a month or $20 a month or $50 a month. And if this interests you and you would like to support

00:02:27.640 the work that we're doing here, you can make a tax-deductible donation by just going to

00:02:31.740 relearn.org forward slash donate. Again, that's relearn.org forward slash donate.

00:02:38.340 The second resource that I want to talk to you about just briefly is something I think will be

00:02:44.180 helpful with today's episode. A lot of people are curious how traditional church doctrine

00:02:51.180 works in a house. What does it really look like? If you want to learn more about that, I wrote,

00:02:57.960 along with our Theological Advisory Board, a copy of a little book. I don't even want to call it a

00:03:04.320 book. It's like a booklet. It's less than 100 pages. It's titled House Church, The Doctrines,

00:03:09.620 Convictions, and Liturgy of a Biblical House Church. It's a living document, meaning that

00:03:15.240 it's constantly growing and changing, especially here in the beginning phases of our ministry.

00:03:21.160 But it's a great resource for many people who have been a part of our ministry so far. You can go

00:03:27.560 and get that at relearn.org forward slash house. Just scroll down and you'll see a copy of it

00:03:32.320 there. All right. So we're going to dive into today's question. It's from Jared and he's from

00:03:37.660 Chicago, Illinois. And he asks, Dale, I know you're a house church planter and pastor. And the idea of

00:03:46.360 Christians gathering in homes is becoming more intriguing to me these past several months. Tell

00:03:53.080 me, what does an average house church gathering look like? Do these types of gatherings have a

00:03:58.740 certain structure or is it more organic like a Bible study? All right, Jared, thank you for

00:04:04.820 writing in. Well, in light of the coronavirus pandemic and the increasing political hostility

00:04:12.500 here in the West that we're seeing, some of you guys may have seen there's more and more church

00:04:17.720 hostility. People are yelling at people going into churches. People are burning down churches.

00:04:23.840 People are rioting in front of churches. So there is an increasing hostility that's going on

00:04:29.940 in the West around church. And more and more Christians are asking this exact question.

00:04:37.100 In fact, our free PDF, The Basics of Biblical House Church, has been downloaded

00:04:42.300 over 2000 times in the last 90 days. Uh, so more and more people are for sure, uh, finding an

00:04:49.720 interest in the idea of house church. Um, and it's my experience that the home schooling world has

00:04:57.580 really paved the way for our comfort for home churching, meaning that it's, we've done things

00:05:03.680 at home for schooling that that's not that different. So maybe we can do it with church as

00:05:07.480 well. So I think there's a correlation there. If you ever read my article, Jared, or anybody that's

00:05:12.820 listening on the predictions of how the coronavirus might change the local church forever, you can do

00:05:19.080 that. And I think it would be a really good resource for you. It's at stjustins.org forward

00:05:24.420 slash coronavirus. And that's just stjustins.org forward slash coronavirus. I'll put a link in the

00:05:31.760 show notes there for you as well. That's our companion ministry. We've had about 25,000,

00:05:37.160 maybe even 30,000 people read that article since I wrote it in April. And so far, every prediction

00:05:43.820 has been generally accurate, but only time will tell if the long-haul predictions reign true.

00:05:50.100 But it's a good read for those that are interested. But to answer your question, Jared,

00:05:54.600 what does an average biblical house church gathering look like? Well, let me begin first,

00:06:02.400 and I'll get to your question, but let me begin first with expelling a few negative claims about

00:06:06.600 house church. When many people, especially pastors, hear the term house church, they usually think of

00:06:12.660 a group of angry, church-hurt, anti-traditional church folks who are disorganized, lack doctrine,

00:06:20.520 and sit in a circle with their Bibles and an acoustic guitar. And I know that for two reasons.

00:06:25.740 First, I talk to a lot of pastors and that's generally their perspective when I tell them

00:06:31.740 that I'm a house church planter. They're very hesitant with the idea of house church.

00:06:38.480 And I have to usually explain my way of why what we're doing is actually biblical and that we're

00:06:44.260 actually quite unified with them. Second is that was actually my experience for some time.

00:06:50.520 10 years ago, I became really frustrated with the institutional church, particularly the megachurch, because I lived in Southern California. I even became part of a house church of church-hurt people who were lacking sound doctrine and had a sense of spiritual elitism, meaning that we thought that our way of doing church was the right way or a better way or the best way of doing church.

00:07:18.780 And that is the kind of position of a lot of house churches out there.

00:07:24.020 And it's not right.

00:07:25.340 It's not healthy.

00:07:26.640 That season for me was both prideful and wrong.

00:07:30.240 It was not healthy.

00:07:31.980 It was divisive.

00:07:35.980 And God has humbled me over the years to appreciate the mosaic of expressions within the church.

00:07:44.520 We have to remember, guys, that the church is big.

00:07:47.600 And if you haven't read a book on church history, that'll show you how big the church is.

00:07:54.480 There's a book called Church History in Plain Language.

00:07:58.100 It's a really great book.

00:07:59.360 It's 600 pages, but it'll give you a full breadth of the church, a great place to start.

00:08:05.200 But, you know, there's diversity, you know, in these interpretations of secondary and

00:08:12.640 tertiary issues.

00:08:13.300 But the Protestant church of the Reformation, what I would call the biblical church, is unified in the gospel.

00:08:18.880 And that's the core of what I want to talk about right now.

00:08:23.840 Unity is critical when you have size.

00:08:27.720 It looks massive.

00:08:29.100 And you might have some different interpretations, again, on these secondary and tertiary issues.

00:08:35.080 But as long as you're unified on the core essentials, that is what's important.

00:08:40.160 I think of a quote from St. Augustine who says, in essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity. So basically, in the essentials, like the gospel, the trinity, the doctrine of God, the state of man, the hypostatic union, etc., we must be unified. Those are essential. Those are big blocks of the Christian faith.

00:09:06.440 In non-essentials, think eschatology,

00:09:09.960 paedo versus credo baptism,

00:09:11.820 style of church government,

00:09:13.060 the institution of the sacraments,

00:09:14.200 how that's supposed to be done.

00:09:16.440 These things, we can celebrate the liberty

00:09:19.320 and latitude in the church.

00:09:21.580 But then he says, in all things, charity,

00:09:25.840 meaning that whether you're unified or diversified,

00:09:30.140 we must be loving about that stuff.

00:09:33.640 And I think the lesson of this whole concept is really that we can be unified without being

00:09:37.980 uniform. And we need to remember that as we look at different denominations. Now, personally,

00:09:43.300 I have a conviction that biblical house church, due to its size and intimacy, produces a very

00:09:49.660 fruitful and mature congregation. That has been my experience. Is it better or right? Of course not.

00:09:56.180 Um, um, it's no, that that's not, that's not my claim that it's better or right.

00:10:02.300 Um, do some Christians thrive in smaller and more intimate church environments? 0.51

00:10:07.300 Absolutely.

00:10:08.480 Um, are there large biblical churches that are fruitful and mature as well?

00:10:13.100 Absolutely.

00:10:13.900 I think about, you know, John MacArthur's church or John Piper's previous church or Tim

00:10:17.460 Keller's church, right?

00:10:18.580 These are, these are healthy churches.

00:10:20.000 So my point is this. Biblical house church is not supposed to compete with the traditional church. It's supposed to complement it. It's not better or different church doctrine. It's simply a different location and smaller expression where that church doctrine is walked out.

00:10:40.640 And size really does change things, right?

00:10:44.000 So, you know, in a house church, it's less of a monologue and more of a dialogue.

00:10:48.820 It's less consumer-centric and more contributor-centric.

00:10:52.720 It's less visitor-centric and more committed-centric.

00:10:56.380 It's less outreach-focused and more discipleship-focused.

00:11:00.080 So there's some things that do change in the walking out of that ecclesiology, that biblical ecclesiology.

00:11:07.260 it's the same ecclesiological convictions, different location. And so we can be unified

00:11:13.480 with the traditional church and be complementing to it, not competing against it. But we need to

00:11:20.880 be clear that we are a biblical house church movement. And I'll explain what that means in

00:11:26.480 just a minute. But again, Jared, you're asking, what does it really look like at the ground level?

00:11:31.480 So to be honest, if you go to a biblically grounded church now, like a traditional church, it probably looks very similar to that, just in a different location.

00:11:45.620 Any biblical house church that's in our relearn.org house church network, which is still very small at this point, is what's called a confessional church.

00:11:56.360 That means that these churches adhere to certain historic statements of faith and standards

00:12:03.740 for church practice, which is really helpful because you can bring identification to what

00:12:09.100 these churches believe because house churches don't have a website where they can post their

00:12:13.780 statement of faith and church doctrines that they adhere to.

00:12:17.720 So knowing that any church that you would maybe find in the future, which we don't have

00:12:23.360 a church locator at this point. But in the future, you would know that these churches are

00:12:29.380 in alignment with these certain statements of faith, which is very helpful. And what that

00:12:37.220 means really is that we have elders and deacons at these churches and ecclesiastical convictions,

00:12:44.780 biblical order, worship, prayer, pastoral preaching, giving, the Lord's Supper, and even

00:12:50.560 an order of worship or liturgy. In other words, a biblical house church is not a Bible study or

00:12:58.120 small group. It's a full-functioning church that just happens to meet in a home. But it doesn't

00:13:03.700 want to just meet in a home. It actually intends to stay in a home because part of the DNA of a

00:13:08.700 house church is the intimacy and the size, the closeness that can be accomplished in a small

00:13:15.140 community like that. If the church grows, it multiplies into another biblical fellowship in

00:13:21.280 the local area, which again is slightly different than just getting a bigger building and a bigger

00:13:25.200 building and a bigger building. So for us, a typical house church gathering looks something

00:13:32.600 like this. We get together at 10 a.m. on Sunday, and we rotate houses every few weeks to share the

00:13:40.460 blessing of hosting. Um, you know, we have, uh, anywhere between, you know, seven to 10 families

00:13:49.080 is pretty common in a house church with a few singles. Um, so we, we fellowship for the first

00:13:53.780 30 minutes, just kind of hanging out. Hey, how's everybody doing? And we start our meeting at 10

00:13:58.300 30. Uh, we have a printed out order of worship that we follow again, kind of like a program

00:14:03.780 that you might have at your church. Um, I call this our free worship liturgy because it offers

00:14:09.020 us a schedule of the day, but our size still offers us the flexibility of it being adjusted

00:14:16.160 on the fly. And by that I mean we're not militant to follow the schedule perfectly, and members are

00:14:22.860 actually free to suggest additional songs or share something edifying that might be prompted by the

00:14:27.940 Holy Spirit as we work through the liturgy for the day. But in our order of worship, we begin

00:14:34.660 with prayer. Then we sing a few hymns, and we do other more modern songs that are scripturally

00:14:42.380 accurate. We pray for the government and the persecuted church. And again, all these are

00:14:49.380 shared roles. So it's not just the pastor speaking. It's actually an orderly yet interactive and

00:14:55.020 engaging meeting of the saints. So it's kind of distributed responsibility of sharing these roles

00:15:00.880 of doing these things. Next, we read one chapter aloud from either the Old Testament or the New

00:15:07.040 Testament. And we discuss that a bit. We move into what's called our open meeting. And this is

00:15:12.900 typically, this is based off of 1 Corinthians chapter 14, 26 through 40 or so. And this is

00:15:20.320 typically about 20 to 30 minutes of open discussion for prayer requests, personal revelations,

00:15:26.660 testimonies, praise reports, maybe even a mini teaching from one of the men in the room.

00:15:31.780 And so that's the space right there. It's very fun. It's probably the best part of the meeting

00:15:37.120 because we get a chance to see what's going on in each other's lives and pray for one another.

00:15:41.320 Then one of the elders will preach an expository sermon verse by verse from a little podium that

00:15:50.540 moves with the church. So if we move houses, it just comes with it. And then lastly, one of the

00:15:56.640 deacons or the elders will lead the congregation through a time of personal reflection, a little

00:16:00.760 time of silence of prayer and repentance prior to communion. And we'll do communion together as a

00:16:07.220 church, and then we do announcements, we close with prayer, and then we have two to three hours

00:16:13.100 of fellowship over a potluck. And this is, again, just a wonderful time of connection

00:16:17.520 and a really beautiful time of fellowship where we get to do life with each other and talk with

00:16:23.800 each other and get close. So again, this is not a Bible study or a home group. Lots of churches

00:16:29.560 I've noticed lately call their small groups house churches. That's quite misleading. That's not what

00:16:36.020 our ministry is doing. Every church that will be in our house church network is led by a 1.00

00:16:44.640 theologically trained and qualified, according to 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, elder slash pastor.

00:16:49.820 um and if you um you know if you're interested in this and this is like hey we want to check this

00:16:56.460 out or and you're just an average christian but you know you're mature you've read your entire

00:17:00.860 bible um you may be served in the church at some other capacity and you might be interested in

00:17:06.700 planting a biblical house church we offer a really great one-year training program at st

00:17:13.340 justins.org. You can check that out and we would love to talk to you. So hopefully that answers

00:17:21.080 your question, Jared, and hopefully that gives everybody that's listening a basic understanding

00:17:24.880 of what house church is. I'm going to leave you guys with two resources that you can find on the

00:17:30.060 post page for this episode at relearn.org. This is episode 106 titled, What is a Biblical House

00:17:36.960 Church? The first resource is, again, I mentioned it earlier, if you're uncertain with kind of what

00:17:42.420 might happen with the Western church over the next few years, consider reading my article,

00:17:46.900 How the Coronavirus Might Change the Local Church Forever. I linked the article for you

00:17:52.360 there in the show notes. The second is our free PDF ebook titled The Basics of Biblical House

00:18:00.080 Church. Again, that will be linked in the show notes as well. And if you guys are a regular

00:18:07.240 listener to the Real Christianity podcast, first, we want to thank you. We're right about to pass

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00:18:26.860 review, that would be very helpful for us. Also, if you haven't yet, follow us, our ministry on

00:18:32.440 Instagram by just going to at relearnhq on Instagram, and we would love to have you following

00:18:39.480 along with us there. Hopefully this was a helpful episode for you guys. My name is

00:18:43.640 Dale Partridge, and we will see you next week.

00:19:09.480 ebook titled the basics of biblical house church by visiting relearn.org forward slash house lastly

00:19:16.060 do you have a theological question you would like answered on the show submit your question at

00:19:20.560 relearn.org forward slash question thanks for joining us on this episode of real christianity

00:19:25.840 we'll see you next wednesday

Dale Partridge - August 12, 2020

Real Christianity #106： What is a Biblical House Church？

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