Our Church Experiment
Our Church Experiment
How a handful of families are rediscovering the house church
During the fear-filled response to covid, we and our friends were prevented from communing together at church on Sundays. Even when we were permitted back in, we couldn’t worship aloud or even show our faces unmasked.
So, together with three other families from various churches, we started meeting instead in each others' homes. The conditions felt spine-tinglingly similar to the early church, and we are all, now, without doubt, having the most rewarding, enjoyable, and enriching church experience of our lives. An original group member reflects, “We are trying to go back to the original Acts church, where we are there for one another, and truly, truly love one another.”
Our children are flourishing, looking forward to meeting each Sunday, and developing deep, encouraging friendships that extend into the rest of the week, and now even short holidays together. The adults are flexing new leadership muscles that we didn’t even know existed, making lots of mistakes, but developing grace and building stronger ties as a result.
I am writing this to share how we switched from organised church to small, home-based church, and hopefully encourage you to take the same steps if you are led in a similar direction.
How we started
For many years I have felt dissatisfied after traditional church services. Although we tried to faithfully serve and give, our hearts were asking God for change. The idea to host our own services started percolating when the established leaders closed their church doors.
So one day, four like-minded families took the easy decision to forgo zoom church and instead meet (in some cases for first time) in one of our homes. We gathered to celebrate our faith and encourage one another to love and good deeds. What is church, if not that?
What our church looks like
Our “body of believers” comprises a core of 8 middle-aged, professional parents and 11 children, aged from 11 to 19. Other people join us on Sunday mornings, including extended family, and any friends the children bring along.
We generally don’t break out into parents and children. One of the mums shared that, “We have been blown away by our kids - their insights, maturity and perspectives. They teach us things all the time, and we love that they want to be part of the discussions.”
From the first meeting, the format of our church has been fairly consistent. We are not religious about the structure, but generally it seems to hold because it works well for us:
10:30 arrive and catch up
11:00 worship
11:30 teaching
12:30 communion
12:45 lunch
2:00 leave
Obviously people can leave when they need to, but everyone is having so much fun that no one wants to go. I’m not sure we’ve ever actually all left by 2.
10:30 Arrive
We cycle through a roster, with one of the original four families hosting at their home each week, rather than burden the same family with hosting all the time. We are fortunate to all live in large family homes, although distributed widely around Sydney’s outer suburbs. By rotating each week we spread the effort of hosting and travelling. The habit of keeping a roster also accommodates when people are away, and even last minute changes.
A Telegram channel has been set up for the group (our “Ekklesia”) to keep in touch during the week, and it’s an invaluable tool for keeping everything organised.
11:00 Worship
None of us are worship leaders, and no one has even put their hand up to play a musical instrument, so worship is provided by a streaming music service. Someone from the host family selects the songs and plays them, with the lyrics showing on a TV.
Making the technology play the music (ad free), and show the lyrics (large enough to see), has been unexpectedly challenging. The most reliable option so far seems to be using Apple products end to end.
That means subscribing to Apple Music, using Apple TV to queue up the chosen songs, and then playing them, with the lyrics on, through the family TV attached to a quality surround sound system. A lot of grace has been applied to arrive at this suggestion, as we each take our turn at worship and discover the endless traps for new players. I’ve tried and failed so many combinations of technology, and would save you and your new church the humiliation of struggling with such a seemingly simple task.
We all have streaming media, so finding worship music is easy. The choice of songs is the more important challenge. Most of us find it easier to worship with songs we already know and love. So please choose songs that everyone knows. If you have new songs that you can’t wait to introduce, don’t do them all at once, no matter how great they are. In fact, with respect to the more set-in-their-ways adults, I suggest a maximum of one new song when you get asked to lead worship.
The children take responsibility for worship every now and again, with some interesting results. We all have different styles of music, so we go with what the host family has prepared. It is a learning experience about what is good music to worship to, as opposed to music you listen to in your bedroom or in your car!
11:30 Teaching
The host is also responsible for the teaching or other activity. Typically that means finding something helpful on YouTube, and at times we have read a book of the bible together and discussed it after. Not everyone has an ad-free YouTube account, which creates a hilarious rush for the remote when the ads come up.
We have some favourite speakers - Bill Johnson from Bethel Church in Reading comes to mind - but we have heard from many other people (and styles of church) as well. 30-40 minutes is ideal so we have time to reflect and pray together about what was said.
The teaching is still a work in progress. Some of us want to do more bible reading, but perhaps in a way that is a little bit more exciting than reading consecutive chapters aloud together.
Most of us are already involved in some kind of teaching series during the week, so the message on Sunday is not intended to provide bible training or continuity. It is more likely to focus on a relevant issue and reflect the heart of the person who chose it.
12:30 Communion
We have communion together every week, using a vintage communion tray and cup holder, and tiny plastic communion cups. The bread is a freshly broken roll, and the wine is a bottle of King David Sacramental Wine, from local bottle shop. Since Jesus turned water into wine, after the regular wine had already been consumed, we feel comfortable having everyone partake.
Typically one of the host family reads about communion from one of the four Gospels. We also remind visitors of why communion is a significant act performed by believers.
Matthew 26
Mark 14
Luke 24
John 6
12:45 Lunch
Lunch is rostered to a different family, the previous week’s hosts. To keep things simple and delicious, we just eat fresh bread rolls and roast chickens from the supermarket. Someone usually brings a salad or two, and there is tea and coffee, some baked treats and plenty of water too.
After lunch everyone helps pack away and clean up afterward.
Then we socialise again. The children play board games or entertain themselves in the garden while the adults catch up from the week. More recently we are planning family activities together for upcoming holidays.
When our teen and young adult children are all together on Sunday they mostly aren’t interested in computer games or movies. They just want to hang out and do things together. There is a great dynamic between the older and younger children, and I am sure that some of the connections they are forming will last the rest of their lives.
I was reminded by one of our wonderful mums that we hardly ever leave at 2pm, and besides, there is freedom for people to come and go as needed, making it easier to accommodate all the weekend commitments that raising teenage children entails. Here are some more reflections she kindly shared.
“In the past I've never really managed to do any socialising on the weekend because we all have busy lives and our kids are quite busy. I always used to go to church and come back completely exhausted. Isn’t that bizarre? I’ve just found it quite amazing that through house church I feel like I just get all my socialising done and its positive and a beautiful thing. All our kids are together. I’m sure it’s tiring sometimes hosting but I never come home exhausted because its a positive experience and I’ve had my fill. It’s almost has a little house on the prairie feel, and I think that’s because we are all together. The children are not seperate.”
What’s next?
My purpose in writing this is to encourage you, if you are also feeling the pull to a new kind of church expression, and help you to learn from our experience. Please ask questions in the comments and I will seek to answer them as well as I can.
Upcoming experiments include how we manage gifts and offerings faithfully (knowing the power of mammon to corrupt) and also holidaying together as a church family but in very different settings.
If you find this information useful, please let me know by subscribing.