1.   On church meeting size:

Successful Pastor:  So you believe in that house church idea, huh?  Your people must be so segmented that they can’t really get a sense of the idea of the larger church as a whole, can they?

Neighborhood House Church Proponent:  Well, that depends on the leadership, and how the elders of all the different churches cooperate with each other to schedule occasional joint meetings or holiday celebrations or festivals or whatever.  It certainly doesn’t have to happen every Sunday morning.

SP:  But God’s people like to get together—it gives them a sense of being a part of something really grand and important. 

HCP:  Yes, I agree they need that on occasion; but don’t you think it’s more special if it happens less often, and makes more of an impression when it’s not the routine same old same old?  After all, the Jews had feast days only a few times a year …

SP:  OK, OK, I get your point.  But you know that our church has cell groups, too.

HCP:  Yes, I know that; but do all your people go to one?

SP:  Well, no, of course not; but they all know we have them, and I’m constantly urging everyone to participate in them.  But not everybody’s going to be interested or take the time to go.

HCP (with mild sarcasm):  It must be really easy.  You know, show up Sunday mornings, sit close to people that you don’t know and they don’t know you, being lost in a crowd, not having to talk to anybody except when the pastor up front gives the greeting cue … I guess you can fulfill your duty to God to just show up and you don’t really have to come out of hiding and do anything about it.

SP:  Hey, look, we don’t want to embarrass anybody or turn them off by making them feel uncomfortable—especially not visitors.

HCP:  But, are your members real Christians—has God done a work in their hearts?

SP:  Well, sure they’re for real as far as anyone can know …

HCP:  So why can’t they find the commitment in their hearts to make the time?

SP (beginning to raise his voice):  Look here—don’t you go judging my people!  You don’t know what’s in their hearts...

HCP:  …and neither will anybody else in the world if they don’t start demonstrating a little bit more commitment of some kind.

SP:  Hey, you can’t think that everybody is going to be at the same level of commitment.  Can’t you see that some people aren’t going to have time for that?

HCP:  People will make time if something is important enough to them.

SP (beginning to gesture):  But it’s more important to people that they have big things, you know?  They like the big choirs, and they like for their kids to have a nice place with plenty of room, and to have options for fun activities—things a big church can provide.

HCP:  So they’re not going to find God the way Elijah did.

SP:  What do you mean?

HCP:  Oh, you remember the story from the Old Testament—when the great wind came, and then the earthquake, and then the fire; and then after all of those things, God finally showed up—but in the still, small voice.  And as He said to Zechariah later on, it’s not by might, and not by power, but by the Spirit.  So being big isn’t important if God is really there, even when it’s in the small things. 

2.   On orthodoxy and leadership responsibility:

SP:  So do you really think this house church thing of yours can keep itself from turning into a hundred little personality cults all over town?

HCP:  Of course it can stay free from that and maintain its fidelity to the Word, as long as we put into place proper Biblical structures such as networking together and establishing true apostolic leadership.  That way everybody’s watching out for everybody else. 

SP:  But it would be all too easy for a church, or even a whole group of churches, to get off track.

HCP:  You mean like so many of the cults that have started right under the noses of the denominations, and then flourished to the point that they are considered denominations, too, by the outside world?

SP:  Hey, you know that stuff is just going to happen anyway. 

HCP:  And the system as it is now didn’t, or couldn’t, put a stop to them.  You know, I think I would rather trust a more personal way of doing things, like the neighborhood house churches, to put a stop to that sort of thing—the denominations we have today sure didn’t do their job in that respect.

SP:  But people, just by their very nature, are going to be attracted to a strong leader; and it’s our job to see to it that those leaders are solid and sound in their theology.  It’s because the people are called sheep in the Bible, and they’ll follow a shepherd because they’re like sheep. 

HCP:  Sheep, yes—lemmings, no.  Sure, some are always going to be like that, and that’s why we have our Jonestowns and our Heaven’s Gates.  But leaders who realize that the things that you just said can be true sometimes will be more prone to exploit their followers for their own ends than to take their Biblical responsibility for them.

SP:  My point exactly. 

HCP:  And Paul’s point, too, in First Corinthians, where he spent so much space in the first chapter counseling them not to segregate into groups according to the leaders, as in, “I of Paul, and I of Apollo, and I of Peter, and I of Christ.”  You see, by giving them that warning, he was telling them to stay in unity and not let the personality thing happen to them.  Ultimately, it’s up to each believer to stay on top of what he or she believes.

SP:  But if people are in the bigger churches, that’s less likely to happen. 

HCP (shaking his head):  I can’t agree.  It would be more likely, and I think so for two reasons: first, a pastor of a big church is going to be seen as one of those strong leader types, and it can go to his head, as we’ve seen all too often lately.  Second, because of the impersonality of its large size, a big church is more likely to let some people slip through the cracks and get into believing whatever they feel like believing, contrary to whatever sound doctrines may be coming from the pulpit.  A neighborhood house church defeats that tendency through developing relationships, such as by raising up its leaders through careful mentoring, by staying in contact with other churches in the area, and with local apostolic leadership.

SP:  So what happens if one of your house churches won’t network with the others? 

HCP (shrugging his shoulders):  I have no doubt that at first, while the transition is first starting and the neighborhood house churches are getting started, that there will be a lot of maverick leaders and churches out there that won’t want to get into what they would consider a format that they think is too much like the old denominationalism that they just got through leaving behind.  This is where a new generation of local apostles would have to come forth and start overseeing this whole system.

SP:  You keep talking about apostles—do you think we still have those today? 

HCP:  Oh, sure.  They’ve been around all along; it’s just that more recently we’ve been calling them “missionaries” instead.

SP:  But missionaries can’t write Scripture.  It takes someone with Apostolic authority, and we know that the Bible is complete, so … 

HCP:  No, I agree that the Bible is complete, but it’s not an apostle’s job to write new scriptures.

SP:  Then he’s not really an apostle, then, is he? 

HCP:  He may not an Apostle, (doing quotation marks with his fingers) with a capital “A,” who planted the Church with a capital “C.”  Those Apostles were the first generation, and established the Church as a whole.  I’m talking about apostles, with a lower case “a,” who are planting local churches—with a lower case “c.”  I guess to keep it clear we can say “local” apostles as opposed to General or First Century Apostles.

SP:  So you’re having “local” apostles that have authority over some small group of local churches, but not writing Scripture. 

HCP:  Right, just like in the New Testament—and they’d be under the authority of the elders in their own churches, and be primarily over the churches they helped to plant.  That in a nutshell is the basic activity of an apostle—someone who is sent out to plant and oversee new churches; that’s what missionaries and the local and General Apostles all have as a common thread.  And they’re the ones who keep our beliefs in line.

SP:  So, how is that so different from what we have today? 

HCP:  What we have today, with our denominations and all, has no roots in the New Testament; the system I’ve just described is pretty much nothing but New Testament. 

3.   On tithing and giving:

SP:  You know, it takes money to spread the Kingdom of God. 

HCP:  No, really, it doesn’t.  All it takes is committed people.

SP:  Sure it does, but the money needs to be there, too.   You’ve got to keep up your meeting place, pay your staff, cover your expenses—you know, all that sort of thing. 

HCP:  But that isn’t spreading the Gospel.  That’s maintaining your outrageous overhead for all the unnecessary institutional structure you’ve placed around the work of God.

SP:  Oh, right—I see where you’re headed with this.  If the message is free, why pay for the wrapper, right? 

HCP:  No, no, it goes deeper than that.

SP:  So I guess your house church people have some excuse to not obey the Lord in the tithe. 

HCP:  Hardly.  We teach from Scripture that everybody should give as they purpose in their heart, and that God loves a cheerful giver, and that the New Testament standard for giving God your finances is not ten percent, but a hundred!

SP:  A hundred percent tithe? 

HCP:  A hundred percent of our money is under God’s control.  Another thing we find in the Bible is that if someone doesn’t see to it that his family is provided for, that he is worse than an infidel.  With good financial management, that surely wouldn’t take all of it, so the remainder is for God to direct us to distribute as He sees fit.

SP:  So that would mean nobody in your church takes up any offerings. 

HCP:  Well, maybe on special occasions for special needs; and some groups will do a collection for poverty relief or some other charity on a weekly basis if they all agree together on a project or something.  But as far as who gives what or how much and where, that’s between God and the individual, or what you might call the honor system.

SP:  But does anyone give ten percent? 

HCP:  These folks are pretty generous.  I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess most of them give more than that on average, especially when the need is there.

SP:  So what do you do with Malachi’s prophecies from God admonishing us to “not rob Him in the tithes,” or with Jesus’ command to tithe in Luke chapter 11? 

HCP:  Who did He give that command to?

SP:  Well, he said it to the Jews and the Pharisees, but He meant it for everybody. 

HCP:  Yeah, I remember—“and not leave the other undone.”

SP:  That’s it. 

HCP:  And the Pharisees were under the law and were students of the law, right?

SP (pausing):  So you’re going to tell me that the command to tithe was fulfilled, along with the law, on the cross, then. 

HCP:  Well, according to the law, the tithes went to the Levites in support of the system of sacrifices and burnt offerings and such that Moses commanded; that’s where their “storehouse” was.  And since those priests couldn’t possess property of their own, and also had a tabernacle and then later a temple to keep up, that was how the priests had to be supported financially.  Later, with that whole system done away with as far as the Christians were concerned, they could now show their generosity by giving directly to other needs.  And later, when the apostles’ council convened in Jerusalem to decide on how to deal with the increasing number of Gentiles coming into the churches, tithing was not one of the burdens imposed on them.

SP:  A lot of the time, the New Testament era Christians used the local synagogue as their meeting house.  If they didn’t support that with a tithe, they wouldn’t have been allowed in.

HCP:  Well, we can’t assume it was a standard New Testament practice, since it’s never mentioned in Acts or in any of Paul’s writings, except in references to the past.  Besides, even the Jewish Christians didn’t get to use the synagogues all that often after times of persecution began. 

SP:  But they still took a collection on the first day of the week.

HCP:  Yes they did, and the purpose of that was to send relief to poor believers in times of famine that might be going on elsewhere.  The only exception I know of is when the church at Philippi gave an offering to Paul to help him with his “affliction,” as he mentions in chapter four of that book.  You see, that’s where the New Testament’s “storehouse” was, and that’s what all the cheerful giving was about. 

4.   On ministry in the church meetings:

SP:  I suppose your meetings are really informal, since you don’t use a book or hymnal or any kind of bulletin or program. 

HCP:  Well, I suppose that informal is one way to put it, but my problem with using that term is that it refers more to man’s way of looking at it.

SP:  What term would you use? 

HCP:  To be honest, I don’t really know.  I think I would need something that suggests that reverence and order would be maintained, and that unity should be kept as part of the overall attitude, and that the elders would have just enough authority to put a stop to anything disruptive or really heretical while still being sensitive enough to allow for any spontaneous input from whoever has something to contribute.

SP:  Do you think, then, that everything done in any of these meetings ought to be spontaneous and, at least to some degree, improvised? 

HCP:  Not everything; there may be a few elements planned beforehand and agreed upon by the leadership, but certainly not all of it.

SP:  So whatever happens is cleared by the leadership first? 

HCP:  No, no, not necessarily.  Sometimes there’s a particular direction or “theme” to a meeting, sometimes there isn’t, and sometimes it doesn’t become obvious until after a meeting has been in progress for a while.  If the leadership has some idea beforehand of what that theme will be, they may accommodate by having a few ideas in mind or events in place.  But sometimes they won’t, and everybody can just adapt as it goes along.  But the more I read about the pattern given in First Corinthians chapters 12 through 14, the more I see that having a group of leaders doing it all, or directing it all, was not the case.  But they were there to step in if correction was needed or if order had to be restored.

SP:  Well, I’m still not clear on what’s formal about it and what’s informal. 

HCP:  And that’s why I don’t particularly like that terminology.  Not only is it a different kind of meeting, it’s also a different way of looking at meetings.  The main similarities are that we’re all in a group and we’re all honoring the Lord together.  But how we go about that may change drastically from one meeting to the next.

SP:  You know, you’re bound to run into problems getting new people to understand this.