On more than one occasion I have heard a preacher talk about how his church began in a living room of one of the founding members. This testimony is usually given wistfully, almost dismissive of the humble beginnings of the church, as if most in the room (regardless of the room's size) would be surprised that a functioning church body could begin in someone's house. As it is, this is probably the most common way that any given church starts. A group of people begin to build relationships and receive revelations that they're not getting in their current church or churches. They go after these revelations and feel moved to do something different, and so the most obvious and easily achieved course of action is to get together at somebody's home and go after the Lord in this new way.
What I can't quite square is why these home churches don't last. I know why they don't last, of course - because the group grows, the revelation finds appeal among a larger group, and so the body forms a church, buys or rents a building, hires the preacher, and another "church" is born. Never mind that the group meeting in the living room was already a church. While I know that we leave the house because our group grows, I don't understand why the new location has such appeal. Which is more intimate: your living room or your church sanctuary? Which setting has more appeal if what you really want out of church is deep, trustworthy and dynamic relationships?
So to hear a preacher brag about getting his group out of the house is not appealing to me. As soon as you move your church out of the living room you acquire a lot of new difficulties: rent payments, utilities, nonprofit forms, bank accounts, staff. And as the church grows so do the things that have to be managed. Now people you have no relationship with are coming in, and you look for leaders in the larger group who you trust to carry on the revelations you all received there in your house. Then rules come in, some of which don't or shouldn't apply to all people all the time, but which must apply if good order is to be maintained in this growing body. And your youth population is growing too, or you have a lot of college students, or a lot of married couples - you have a subgroup that you feel the need to address with a specific program or meeting time, and you have to hire another staff member.
I think you know where I'm going. I attend a church that probably wouldn't seat more than 350 people at one time and I find myself thinking, This is getting too big. I find myself yearning for living rooms and kitchen islands; hungry for Godly conversation shared over pints of beer or bowls of salsa. I find myself coveting the experience the preacher has apparently overcome, because I'm learning that church at somebody's house is almost always more authentic, sincere and powerful than church in the building down the block.
I have asked myself why I believe this. It's not a requirement that the church meet in a house. For instance, my wife and I met with a group in a coffee shop that was closed on Sunday's. That wasn't a house, but we also spent time with these friends in their houses. The barriers to church were not the church walls themselves because we didn't have a specific place we called "church." This must be why I find church outside of the church walls so important, because when we relegate our church experience to the building on the corner, we relegate our relationships to the times the doors are open. And this includes our relationship with the Lord. We prop up this notion or understanding that church is just another place we go, instead of being a thing that we are. We shouldn't be going to church, we should just be the church.
The answer to my search is not as easy as just dropping out and gathering a group in my living room. I could do that, and if it was powerful and God was in it the group would grow and eventually something would probably have to be done. What I'm not looking for is another "church" experience. I don't want to replicate what goes on in the sanctuary. If it's the same concept - if church remains this thing we attend, not this thing that we just are - then it doesn't matter where it occurs. What we realize when we read about the first church in the Bible is not that they're somehow more authentic because they don't have a building, but that they are sincere in their pursuit of God. They take care of each other's needs, spiritual and physical. They are friends and colleagues; their children are welcome in each other's houses, and welcome to attend any given meeting. I think that what we're so hungry for but can't quite get our hands on is a church experience that we don't have to think of as an "experience" because it's just our life, it's just what we do.
That sums it up: church should be what we are. Because the entire Christian experience is not an experience, it's a lifestyle. It's a life. Church should not be another building that we visit in the course of our lifestyle, like we visit the bank or the grocery store or the school. You don't leave church behind when the Sunday service is over; you can't. The lie of the Enemy is embodied in this notion that church is something that we do and not something that we are, because the Enemy doesn't want us to grasp our true identity in Jesus Christ. If church is a place we go, we can just fake it when we get there. But if church is who we are, we can never take it off and we can never leave it behind.
