Update from Joel News – Unstoppable House Church Movement

JOEL NEWS INTERNATIONAL 2 DECEMBER 2009

1. Global: House church movement seems unstoppable

200 Christian leaders from 40 nations met in New Delhi, India, Nov 11-14th, 2009, to explore the scope and significance of house-based discipling communities and emerging house church movements worldwide. Known best from the history of the underground house churches in China that report by now an estimated 100 million members, a similar phenomenon has emerged in the last 15 years in numerous nations outside of China. Conference reports indicate that, from very small beginnings, in many nations fairly sizeable house church movements have emerged, including on the continents of Africa and Latin America.

Missiologist Wolfgang Simson from Germany, author of ‘Houses that change the world’, states in a report of the Delhi summit that in his estimation the number of house churches in Europe have already reached or surpassed 10,000. Australia could have up to 10,000, and New Zealand up to 6,000 house churches. Research in the US by the Barna Research Group (published earlier in Joel News International) shows that between 6 and 12 million people are attending house churches, making house churches one of the three largest Christian groups in the country. In the case of Bangladesh or India, with many hundreds of thousands of house churches, the various networks of house churches have already become the largest Christian movements in their respective countries.

“Prayer walking and the breaking of curses placed on the land has, in a number of areas, resulted in unprecedented harvests.”

“But it is not about setting up house-based worshipping communities alone,” says Dr.Victor Choudhrie, one of the conveners of the summit. In India, many house churches are beginning to change not only the spiritual climate, but begin to model the wholistic life in the Kingdom of God at the village level, demonstrating God’s ability to restore families, health and even to ‘heal the land.’ Dr. Choudhrie stated: “For example, constant prayer walking and the breaking of curses placed on the land has, in a number of areas, resulted in unprecedented harvests and other agricultural breakthroughs, demonstrating tangibly the blessing by which God is able and willing to upgrade and empower everyday life.”

In addition to that, the development of house churches in many nations is experiencing such a fresh and positive response from people growing up in Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist communities that, compared with recent missions history, this could only be called historic. Many participants expressed the observation that “the house church movement is growing up” and is beginning to make its own very significant contribution to fulfilling the Great Commission of Jesus to disciple all the people groups of the world.

“There is a strong call to return to ‘the Gospel of the Kingdom’, the original message of Jesus.”

“Possibly the strongest emphasis at the Delhi Summit was the call to return to ‘the Gospel of the Kingdom’ in contrast to various truncated pseudo-gospels that have left many outside and even inside traditional churches with straw in their mouths,” says Wolfgang Simson. “This raised great hopes that even in the churched nations of the cultural West, a reevangelization and recalibration with the original message of Jesus will breathe new life into dim situations, and lead to a new level of genuine discipleship, authenticity and even authority in cultures that mistakenly thought they can safely close the chapter on Jesus.”

The participants at the summit agreed to encourage more trainers and catalysts, and started to seek God for appropriate next steps and strategies towards the planting of millions of new house churches in the next few years.

Source: Wolfgang Simson

2. Global: Eight streams of house church

The global house church movement has many faces. Wolfgang Simson observes eight streams of house church:

1. Regular house churches: groups of Christians that meet in homes. We see both single groups and organized networks, some of which have websites and are resourced by leadership/ministry teams.

2. Off-the-grid house churches with ‘Out of Church Christians’ that intentionally do not want to be known, listed or be on anybody’s radar. We find out about them by accident or through opinion polling or sampling, the kind of research George Barna does.

3. Business groups, either house churches within a company or those connecting folks in the business world.

4. More and more traditional churches are changing their home groups or even transitioning their whole lot into house churches.

5. Inside the Roman Catholic culture there is a surprisingly large amount of ‘small churches’ that are intentionally set up to cut out the middle layer of clergy and directly connect the people with Jesus and the Bible. In many cases, these groups are supported by bishops and cardinals.

6. Many historical churches, like the Anglican Church, develop ‘small missional communities’.

7. Insider movements. A staggering amount of under-the-radar house churches are emerging within religious megablocks like the Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, New Agers and even within certain cults. But they choose to stay within their religious culture for effectiveness and to build bridges of God. One example is a former Hindu priest, fully painted up and in his safran dress, who now very effectively plants house churches amongst Brahmins in India.

8. Media-birthed house churches, initiated by television, radio or online community facilitators.

Source: Wolfgang Simson

About jackie

I worked with a mission that was reaching out to the Nuchatnulth people here on the West Coast of Canada. Had not training. Then I took Perspectives on the World Christian Movement which taught the Biblical, historical, cultural and strategic perspective of missions. The result is an understanding and passion to see every tribe and tongue worship before the throne so Jesus can return. I've had the privilege of seeing a church planting movement in Central Asia from the perspective of a sender/supporter/intercessor. My vision is to see many more church planting movements among the 6,647 remaining unreached people groups.