A simple church is also known as a House Church or Organic Church. Simply put, it is a group of disciples of Jesus who live out their faith together in a network of small groups. Simple churches have a simple structure. They meet in homes or other free locations and encourage every member of the church to participate in the ministry and to multiply disciples.
In a previous post, I shared the 9 reasons why our new church plant is a house church or simple church. Yes, we started already. I have also answered the question about children in a simple church.
In this post and ongoing, I plan on editing this post to share the details about simple churches and share how we operate as a network of simple churches in 3 countries.
House Church or Simple Church vs Traditional church in the Home
What makes a simple church different from a traditional church set up in a home? There is a difference. Here are some of the major shifts that you would need to think about.
No 45 mins sermon – In the simple church, the scripture is read and everyone shares what God is speaking to them from the scriptures. This imprints on the mind of everyone, that every disciple of Jesus has the Holy Spirit in them.
Breaking of Bread (Holy Communion) is done at every meeting. This is done in obedience to the instruction of Jesus to do it as often as we can in remembrance of Him.
Food in the weekly meeting (Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner). We eat together before or after the meeting.
Simple and Flexible Program Structure – The order of service or flow of events is quite simple. It varies from church to church but there are some things that always happen in every meeting (Scriptures, Singing or music, Food, Breaking of Bread, and prayers).
Flexible meeting days – In many nations of the world, the weekends are usually the best times to meet. However, with simple churches, some meet at other times of the week because most of the people in the group are unable to meet on the weekend. In some nations, the meet on Fridays, others meet on Saturdays etc. We meet on Sunday mornings in Cornwall.
Non Christian are not invited to church gatherings – This not typical of all House Churches. This is more typical in some Disciple Making Movements. This is the model we have been led to follow.
So how do we make disciples if we don’t invite the lost?
We start what is called Discovery Groups and help the people who are interested in knowing Jesus (people of peace) discover Jesus in scriptures. Every member of the church is encouraged to start discovery groups and as a church, we pray for these people to become disciples of Jesus and get water baptized.
In many places, many members of the discovery groups get baptized together and form a simple church (with ongoing coaching from a pastor in the network). If just an individual gets baptized, them they are invited into the simple church that the person who baptized them is part of.
All disciples are encouraged to make disciple and baptize new disciples – In traditional churches we usually reserve water baptism to the ordained clergy. In simple churches however, we just encourage disciple to baptize new disciple just like Jesus commanded in Matt 28:18-20.
This post is going to get very long. But I’ll stop here right now.
Here are some resources that I used to learn more about simple churches. When God began to speak to me about simple church networks in 2019, I thought it was new. Oh boy, was I wrong? I keep discovering new house church networks that have been doing very well for many year.
Video Resources about Simple Churches
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