We just finished reading a house church book, which I introduced to our staff a few months back, to compare and contrast with the Houston Seoul Baptist Church model implemented and popularized by pastor Young Gi Chai.
Titled “The House Church Book: Rediscovering the Dynamic, Organic, Relational, Viral Community that Jesus Started,” by Wolfgang Simson (©2009), it is sort of a post-dissertation publication of his earlier writing, “Houses that Changed the World.” And this should peak some interest in the church pastors here in North America, because it is a burgeoning movement across the globe. Seoul Baptist Church for one, which started to implement the House Church (mokjang) model since the early nineties, has grown about fourfold (from 600 to about 2400) in the last three decades with her English speaking counterpart that stands as one of the healthier churches with a strong presence in Houston, Texas. And outside of the Korean Immigrant Church scene, Francis Chan, the darling of the Master’s Seminary, established and well-known author and leader, and the founder of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley shocked the evangelical world as he had stepped down to join (or start?) a house church movement that seems to be like the one that Simson describes.
The House Church that Simson advocates as the New Testament Church, is that of an “acephalous organic gathering in homes.” He attests that the early church model was like this. And although not easily verifiable, he cites statistics from around the globe, mainly from the global south and the east. And from what he describes, if I am not mistaken, I remember attending a Sunday gathering at such a “House Church on X Street.” Although it was significantly larger than how he describes the optimum number to be no larger than a dozen. The gathering to which I had been, was well over twenty, plus with children. To my surprise there was no preached sermon message, and lo and behold, they stopped gathering after a few years. It might have been a worthwhile experiment but perhaps they did not follow the "biotic principle" of launching new gatherings, multiplying new home churches. According to this model, if it grows beyond the threshold ideal size of the unit, it may decline or dissolve.
If we had to examine Simson’s book from a spectrum of differing positions, his view is for a radical- returning to the roots of the first church of the New Testament. So he is vocal against the aspects of church today that are criticized by both believers and unbelievers alike. The weekly Sunday service he contends, is an extremely cost-ineffective, resource hungry event that in the long run might even be wasteful. We have grown to love our tradition, to love our worship more than God, the very personal object of worship (a very astute observation)! Being that Simson is of German background, while I read his work I cannot help but to think about the last musings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his notions of “Religionless Christianity.” Simson does not mention him but the fruit of such searches are embedded into this vision. I might go as far as to say, that Jesus' intention was not to start a new religion, but rather a Kingdom Culture. Did I go too far? Simpson would probably say "nein."
This book is for mature Christians who cannot ignore a deficit in the current routine of how we are being church. Is there a way to revitalize how we gather as believers, as they did back in the New Testament? Simson writes with Spirit led fire. There is however, a caveat that goes out to those who might pick up this book and misread it as if the current church as she stands in her organized structure to be illegitimate. What Simpson is advocating is in principle, an anarchic ecclesiology. And ideologically, anarchy works within the framework of cooperation. Might I add, Holy Spirit led cooperation. That is exactly what the New Testament Church was, although I would contend that the church in Corinth, Rome, Ephesus and Thessalonica, as well as the Church of Jerusalem and Antioch, were a corporate body in their regional oneness. They were hardly a network of acephalous groups, they had episcopes who oversaw the welfare of the larger body. But this return to church in her primal form, will certainly have great advantages where social hierarchies like castes have cast long shadows of injustice, or in areas where the prevalent political ideology is communism.
Do I recommend it? Yes, for mature Christians seasoned in critical reasoning. Why? To light your fire for His Church, as we submit to Jesus who said “I will build my church:” The One Church, the sole Bride of the One and Only Christ. It has great missiological applications right here right now, in North America, and great theological implications across the world.
