There Are More Of Us Than You Think

Today, there is an AP article in the papers on the subject of house churches. Some interesting points I noticed in the article:

According to a religious data-crunching company called the Barna Group, somewhere between 6 and 12 million Americans attend house churches. The Pew Forum finds seven percent of Americans say they attend services in someone's home, and that 9 percent of American Protestants attend ONLY home services.

That means we are not so odd after all. One out of every eleven American Protestants does not do "big church" at all, but only "house church". So, if there are an estimated 60,000 Protestants in my metro area, over 5,000 of us may well fit that profile that my church-going friends find so very odd. That is, we don't have a "home church" whose brick-and-mortar edifice can be attended at the posted hours. My religious peers seem to think that I am one odd duck, as I have regular fellowship in homes, and I don't hold membership in any local religion club.

Another thing I found interesting in the AP article (by Linda Stewart Ball) was how the take that she got from institutional sources was so different from what she heard from people who are immersed in house churches. A researcher connected with the Southern Baptist Convention opined that we are motivated by our desire "for a simpler expression of church". (As though "church" is a given, and it is only the modern complexity that we don't like.) Ask Tony Dale, a brother from Austin whom some of you know, who has been working in house churches for years, and he says, "I'd say the vast majority of house churches we know are Christians honestly trying to live 24-7 for Jesus." It's not about how you organize the church services, my institutional brothers! It's about an organic connection with other people who are living the life we are living for Jesus.

This subtle, but important difference in viewpoint shows up in how the religion clubs try to incorporate small groups into their structure. They see this phenomenon, and so they try to "get some of that". So, they assign people to "home groups", often developing those groups demographically. (One group I connect with is an "older believers" group out of a large local religion club.) Then they provide vetting of leadership, and organization and lesson plans and reporting requirements and attendance checks and all the stuff that many of us find so worthless in the club at large. The club wants the benefit of the small group dynamic without releasing any of their institutional control of its members.

It's too much like a "spontaneous demonstration" in Iran. The feelings may be real, but the overall intent is to accomplish a goal of the organizers. But at least they can organize the buses and have the signs printed up for our convenience.

And frankly, I don't have any hope that will change. Every religion club's main raison d'etre is to continue to exist as a viable organization. So, they will adapt every positive wave in the church to help achieve that goal. This is not to say that the clubs do not have a desire to follow Jesus. They do. But they are not open to following Him in any path that leads to their own dissolution or significant loss of their religious market share.

But I am encouraged by the recent poll numbers. They give the lie to this idea that people stop going to church because they become lukewarm or worse. No, more and more of us are stepping completely out of club membership to embrace spiritual fellowship. And in my opinion, it's time that my brothers in places of leadership in the local church begin to learn from us a bit, rather that looking down on us while simultaneously trying to co-opt our practices for their own ends.