“Greet… the church that is in their house. …the church that is in her house. To Philemon …and to the church in your house.” (1 Corinthians16:19, Colossians 4:15, Philemon 1:1)
“So then those who were scattered …made their way to …Antioch.” [where a new church was planted] Acts 11:19
“From Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church. 20 … [I was] teaching you publicly and from house to house.” Acts 20:17
The problems that we read about in the Epistles of Paul, Peter, James, Jude and John, with all the conflicts among members, false teachers, false doctrines, and general disorder of new believers, are the very problems that every healthy, growing, local church ought to have, and will have if it is not spiritually stunted. God has provided all the solutions we need to deal with each of these problems as it arises, right there in the Epistles!
When, over time, whether through denominational structures, seminary training or over-protective church polity, we figure out how to avoid having those problems in our modern churches, it is only by adopting levels of administration and oversight that suppress liberty and sterilize the church environment, making normal biblical problems of healthy church growth nearly impossible to have.
Like a foolish gardener spraying weed killer all over his vegetable garden, we kill all the good things along with the bad. These extra-biblical levels of caution, understandable as they are, inhibit healthy church growth, shut down God-sent revivals and stop the rapid multiplication of new churches that we see in the New Testament.
At the heart of this tendency is a general distrust of the Holy Spirit and His gifts. When a professional clergy monopolize the teaching ministry of the church, and deny nearly all of the men of the church their spiritual heritage as men of God in the church to handle the Word of God in the church, and even in their own homes, we find Christian men failing to grow up in Christ. Reading scripted lessons prepared by the pastor is like riding a bike with training wheels, only in the church, the training wheels are never removed. Men of God need to be given real responsibilities in order to grow into real maturity.
At the Network of Neighborhood Churches we have chosen to encourage our members and their households to enjoy the liberty God has given them under the Lordship of Christ to bear good fruit, by speaking at our “Open Mic,” serving and leading their own households in the Lord’s Supper, organizing and leading evangelistic adventures, and even eventually planting a new Neighborhood Church in their own neighborhood community.
Then, as the apostles did in the New Teastment era, we are prepared to address the “growing pains” that inevitably arise when people are free to do what God has saved and called them to do— but doing so only with the solutions that God has so clearly provided for us in the Bible. Rather than circumventing problems by taking away God-given liberty, we solve church problems as they occur with the tools God has provided for making faithful disciples. In this way, we welcome the troubles that come from our members being alive in Christ and eager to live for the glory of God.
In the New Testament we see new congregations gathering in new cities in the homes of the new believers, often for several months, before church Elders and Deacons are appointed in their church. By teaching the new believers enough sound doctrine to be born again and to begin loving one another in Christ, new church leaders emerge over time. These new, biblically qualified leaders are then be instructed and coached to carry out the reasonable responsibilities of small church leadership. This may include taking seminary classes and attending pastor’s conferences.
But rather than burning out our leaders with undue burdens on their time in church oversight, we craft the job descriptions of each church office in ways that reflect the goodness and wisdom of God. We surround each man with practical support and encouragement, both from within their congregations, and also from the network of churches in their area. Those men who desire to serve God in some full-time, career ministry may do so if their gifts and the needs of the Network of Churches alligne.
With this in mind, we endeavor to guide our numerical growth as soon and as often as is practical into new, modest sized, Neighborhood Congregations in order to better reach and serve each Walking-Distance Neighborhood of our region, rather than guiding our growth into the unlimited expansion of an existing church into an unwieldy “Mega-Church.” This allows us to create an unlimited number of new ministry contexts within which to raise up an unlimited number of new ministry leaders, all linked together as one regional network of Neighborhood Congregations of one large regional Local Church.