Back in the 1960s, when I first became acquainted with Christian communities that gathered at least once a week in a private home to worship God, most of them were found in the inner city. A relatively small proportion were located in rural communities, and most of those (apart from the African-American congregations) could be classified as sectarian. The vast majority of house churches in the larger central cities, however, proclaimed an orthodox, Trinitarian statement of the Christian faith. Why did they meet in a private home rather than in a traditional church building? The obvious reason was economics. The constituencies came from the bottom quarter of the income ladder. They could afford neither a full-time resident pastor nor the cost of operating a single-purpose building for religious services.
Equally influential, however, was another factor in ascertaining why these people chose not to affiliate with a congregation worshiping the same God in a nearby church building. One answer: They were self-identified "outsiders." They did not identify themselves with the people who worshiped in those nearby churches. Some identified themselves by the nation in which they had been born and/or a language other than English. Many identified themselves by social class or state of birth or length of time as residents of that neighborhood or skin color or income or education or employment or family or marital status or social skills or kinship ties or a combination of those variables. They knew they would not fit in with the folks who attended that nearby church.
In contemporary American Protestantism, we see many small worshiping communities—and not only in house churches. This is illustrated by the reports of those denominations that ask congregations to report their average worship attendance. What are the most frequently reported numbers? In the very-small-church category, these numbers tend to be 8, 10, 12, 15, and 20. If one looks at the complete array of numbers reported for average worship attendance, numbers such as 8, 10, 12, 15, and 20 are reported far more frequently than any single number larger than 150.
Today a persuasive argument is being made that the natural, normal, and appropriate number of adults in a worshiping community in American Protestantism is seven to twelve. This assumes that a high value is placed on such variables as continuing active participation, mutual support, caring, and intimacy. For example, when the size of a group exceeds seven participants and one is absent, it becomes relatively easy for those remaining to continue without really missing that absentee. One definition of belonging is "You know you belong when you know you are needed." Another is "You know you belong when you know you are missed when you are absent." A third is "You know you belong when they all rejoice when you return." That sense of belonging is central to building a closely knit community. When the number of participants exceeds seven or eight, it becomes increasingly difficult for everyone to share the same sense of belonging. At least a few experts in group dynamics will argue that the magic number is five, not seven.
When the number of regular participants exceeds fifteen or sixteen or seventeen, it becomes even easier for several to feel a more limited sense of belonging. If the goal is to create a continuing group of more than fifteen people with extensive, powerful, and cohesive ties, it usually means the central organizing principle no longer can be simply mutual support or intimacy or caring for one another. That new central organizing principle may be to rally people against a common enemy or in support of a cause or to follow persuasive leaders or to define and emphasize a wall that distinguishes "us insiders" from the rest of the population or to challenge potential participants to work together to accomplish what would be impossible for five or ten to do without help.
If a high value is placed on such attributes as participation, decision-making by consensus, intimacy, egalitarianism, caring, mutual support, and the absence of complexity, the appropriate size for a worshiping community includes seven to ten to perhaps fifteen to twenty adults.
Many of these smaller worshiping communities appear in today's ever-increasing number of house churches. Where do we see a proliferation of house churches in contemporary American Protestantism? One answer is the new wave of house churches created by recent immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Rim.
Unprecedented growth, however, appears to be generated by those American-born Christians in the top quartile of the population in income, born after 1950, and living in suburbia.
It isn't that these Christians cannot afford the costs associated with a single-purpose, set-apart meeting place and/or the compensation required for a full-time and fully credentialed resident pastor. These adults place a high value on the qualities of community that can be found in the small house church. In addition, many clearly prefer to help pioneer the new rather than to help perpetuate the old. A substantial number live in single family homes that are two or three times the size of the typical single family house of 1955, so there is plenty of room for those seven to fifteen worshipers plus children plus an occasional guest. The disappearance of neighborhood institutions explains why several of the constituent households may live five to ten miles from where that community gathered for worship last Sunday. In building contemporary social networks, geographical proximity is less influential than social class, religion, vocation, income, marital and family status, education, age, skin color, ancestry, language, or personal value system.
For many of the participants in these house churches, anti-institutionalism, individualism, and the desire for customized services and experiences are significant motivating forces. For a fair number, sending their charitable contributions directly to a worthy Christian cause, rather than to maintain real estate or pay a clergyperson or finance the budgets of a denominational system, also forms part of the explanation for "why we chose to be part of a house church."
An articulate minority have described another factor. As one man explained, "In graduate school I was introduced to the joy of learning. My work requires me to be a lifelong learner. I do not feel a need for that learned individual, called 'a minister,' to tell me what I should believe."
Finally, what may be the fastest growing expression of this movement consists of those adult Bible study-prayer-mutual support groups that meet once a week in office buildings all across America. Some gather for sixty to ninety minutes before the beginning of the workday once a week. Others meet weekly, with the clearly stated approval of the employer, for a 90- to 120-minute period that begins at noon in a room reserved for them for their time together on that day.
Many of these are nondenominational Christian groups, while a particular congregation sponsors others. Both, however, along with the proliferation of house churches described earlier, are products of what has been described as the Fourth Great Religious Revival in American church history.
Reprinted by permission from the Nov./Dec. 2003 Net Results: http://www.netresults.org/.
