On House Churches

I was walking through the kitchen this afternoon, and looked over and saw a cookbook from Grace Baptist Church of Juliette, GA. I had forgotten that the folks in our failed house church/plant had produced that. Leafing through the recipes and looking at the names, I remembered the sweet fellowship and genuine love we had for each other. It was deserving of the name Grace.

The church started in the worst possible way - as a split off of Dames Ferry Baptist. That church served as my introduction to pastoral ministry. As a newly minted bivocational pastor, I accepted a pastorate in a church that changed pastors the way Paris Hilton changes limos. A church whose baptistry served as a place to store Christmas decorations. We had to take a blowtorch to get the water flowing.

Still, there was success early on as I worked hard and the Holy Spirit smiled on us. Dames Ferry grew. It doubled. Those who came hadn't always been there. They were fellow Christians, but they weren't family. And that combined with my pastoral inexperience led directly to a troubled parting.

In hindsight, I should have walked away and not looked back. But a group of people who really wanted to see God continue working in that community called me and I accepted the opportunity to be their pastor. We met at first in a house down the street from Dames Ferry. We called ourselves "Grace".

Our journey lasted two years together. We went through some vision issues, got absolutely no help from the Georgia Baptist Convention even though we rose to 42 people and had an offer to give us 3 acres of land. The convention said we had to have 5 acres before they'd help. We eventually got the opportunity to share space with Juliette UMC but by then we were just playing out the game.

What I learned...

In that rural environment, house church didn't work. We couldn't get people to come to the house and worship. The folks we had were winsome people, and generally speaking outgoing. But we had a stigma - maybe a double one from the split.

Some problems cross church structure lines. Leadership is an issue wherever. Conflict can occur regardless. In fact I was shocked to find that one family who had always been abused by the powers that be in the former church quickly became abusive of others at Grace.

In that environment, having a building and a denominational affiliation would have helped a great deal. But we were in an associational environment with an "Area Missionary" who had three associations and frankly was terrible. He had to have been someone's brother in law. We were trying to do something that wasn't done - plant a new church. Then amp that with the whole house church deal. Maybe he thought we were moonies.

I'll tell you this, I still love those people dearly. Every week when we met, it was awesome regardless of how few we were. I wish we had made it.

Could it work today? In some places I think it could. But is it the cure-all?

No.