In the beginning: the “house church”

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In the beginning: the “house church”

August 11, 2008 by kevinburt

I came across an interesting article by a minister in the Disciples of Christ. In it he points out that the ancient “house church” was nothing like the typical “house church” one thinks of today, the latter being a very informal affair in someone’s living room, while the former was a rather formal affair of up to 100 people in a public room called an atrium.

11 Responses

on August 21, 2008 at 3:32 pm | Reply H West

Fascinating! Thanks for this. It’s something I’ve always wondered about as I was curious about house churches before I encountered Orthodoxy.
on August 25, 2008 at 5:04 pm | Reply W. E. Messamore

This is especially important to note in a time when many Christians believe that all they need is to do Bible studies at each others’ houses, and that this bears the closest resemblence to the early Church.
on August 26, 2008 at 4:54 pm | Reply What House Churches Were Really Like « This Is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

[...] Architecture of the Ancient House Church [H/T: kevinburt] [...]
on September 12, 2008 at 12:57 pm | Reply edwincrozier

The link is broken. Where can I find this article?
on September 12, 2008 at 7:12 pm | Reply kevinburt

Edwin,

I have corrected the link. Apparently, the host site changed something last week, but now it appears to be working again.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

warmly,
Thomas Kevin
on September 16, 2008 at 2:00 pm | Reply edwincrozier

Thanks
on October 2, 2008 at 3:39 pm | Reply Ariah Fine

thanks for sharing this link
on October 17, 2008 at 9:43 am | Reply Abba Poemon the Ubermensch

This is an excellent summary. Thank you for posting!

Pax Tecum
on October 27, 2008 at 11:56 pm | Reply theoldadam

Worship in a house would be great…if that’s all you had available.

I am blessed to be in a congregation that has a wonderful sanctuary building that is set apart for the special practice of worshipping God, church funerals, baptisms, church weddings, and specil events that revolve around our mission of spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ.
The building has stained glass windows, a baptismal font, a lecturn, a pulpit, an altar, pews, a prayer chapel, a sacristry, a vestry, a pipe organ, an area for the choir.
There’s nothing stopping us from worshipping over at Pete’s House…but why would we want to?
on January 25, 2009 at 5:47 pm | Reply Columba Siluoan

This is excellent! My wife and I recently completed a Financial Peace University class at the local “house church” in our neighborhood, led by some Twenties and Thirties couples who all originally come from a Southern Baptist Church.

Of course, this class was held on Thursdays, so it didn’t conflict with our weekly attendance of Mass at Saint Marks.

But I’ve been puzzling over how to slowly let them know that they aren’t doing things the way the ancient Christians did, in spite of what they think.

My prayer is that someday, these earnest people could be won over to Holy Orthodoxy. But it would be a long, drawn out process, I’m sure.

How do you get good Southern Baptist folks from a “house church” to take the trip to Holy Orthodoxy? I think it’s going to be a long time finding the answer to this question.

I guess my wife and I can start with “Poker Night” at the House Church on Saturday evenings once-a-month. We’ll have to hang out with all of them socially over a long period of time to make any kind of a dent.

But this article will come in handy someday.

Pax Christi,

Christian Cate
on May 2, 2009 at 10:53 am | Reply Michael

I suppose my parish is a house church. We do not own our own building so my parish priest’s basement has been converted into a chapel. Our iconostas is made of MDF and the space is tiny – too tiny, in fact, for our purposes, but we manage. The prayers that we pray and the hymns that we sing are the prayers and hymns of the Church, the faith that we teach (and try to live) is the Faith of the Church, and we do what we can. It gets very hot and stuffy at Nativity and Pascha, and it was packed during the last visitation of our archbishop when sixty people came, but we managed.

I think that, whatever we do in the future, I would be very upset if we were to completely cease use of our little house church. It is a beautiful place, imbued with the prayers of the faithful for about 13 years now.