You should not meet in homes out of a reaction. I would say this is a huge reason, if not the biggest, for the failure of house churches.
You should never meet in homes because you are upset, hurt, mad at, or disgruntled with the people in the traditional organized church setting. But you should meet in homes because you want more than the traditional church system has to offer. You should meet in homes because you have grown in your life with God and now you are ready for true body life.
I believe that if you continue to grow, you will eventually grow out of the traditional setting. You will realize that the Lord intended more and you will want to meet in a way that is more conducive to growth and corporate body life.
As far as the Christians in the traditional church settings, they are precious and loved by God. You are to love them too. If they hurt you, you must forgive. If they burned you, you must let it go. You must be diligent to forgive, truly love from the heart, and embrace them.
You are never to have an elite attitude toward someone in a traditional meeting. Just because you may see some things they do not, does not mean that you are better than them or more spiritual. God will grant revelation and light as He sees fit. They are the servants of God. They belong to God. He is quite able to make them stand. They are your brothers. Accept them.
As I visit traditional meetings in the town I live in, I get to know the people as best I can and invite them over. I will go with them as far and as deep as they are willing to go in the Lord with me.
I don’t like the traditional meetings though. They are usually pretty bad. The meetings are usually full of error and weakness. But, so are many of the house church meetings. There are distractions, error, fleshly agendas, people quenching the Spirit (including myself) anywhere and everywhere you go. We are all incredibly weak, and God puts up with us.
We cannot choke our fellow servant who owes a little money, when we ourselves have been forgiven so much.
Does that mean that we should throw our hands up and give up? No. Does that mean that we should not attempt to walk out what God has shown us as a more Biblical way to meet and live life together? No. We must walk out what God has shown us. We must be diligent to walk in the light that we have. If we mess up along the way, we must correct it.
The people in traditional meetings are God’s children (as far as we can know in any situation who really is a true child of God).
We must visit with them. Those traditional meetings in your town are meetings of the church in your city in which you belong. Even though the meetings themselves are very poor, we must continue with one another as best we can.
We must forgive one another, as this is the very heart of Christianity and of the good news. “But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing”, (Luke 23:34). And in Luke 6:35, “…for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.”
The worst thing you could possibly do is to, out of a reaction to traditional church, meet outside the traditional church exclusively and have a “better than attitude.” This is horrible. If this is the case with you, please stop reading this, and repent now.
After and only after you are very clear and free from traditional church meetings, I recommend that you occasionally go to those meetings. We must always embrace our brothers and sisters who attend traditional church meetings. Don’t use this as an excuse for not leaving the traditional church system in the first place because of fear of what it will cost you. You should be able to worship God with your brothers and sisters and invite them over for supper and various gatherings. Understanding that many won’t come because you are not a member of their church, some will come and you can love them, and perhaps some of them will become leavened from being around you with the leaven of the Kingdom. (I understand and you should understand too, that you will need plenty of time away from the religious system to get free and to get your head and heart straight; Understand that it may take years of being away from traditional meetings to really get clear).
As you do visit the saints in the traditional setting, be sure to always maintain what you are doing with your core group of gathering together without a name, an incorporation, or a 501c3 tax exempt status. This would be you doing your part to be an expression on the earth and in your town of what God intends for His church. In the same way, you must discern the Body properly, and don’t be divisive from your other brothers and sisters in your town who name the name of Jesus. You cannot separate from and not embrace people just because you disagree with their doctrine or meeting style. That would be more of the same of what the denominations and traditional church promotes.
We are not wanting to form a home church denomination, and we are definitely not wanting a group of rebels who hate traditional church people and sit around and gripe about them. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely hate the traditional church system. It’s offensive and horribly against scripture. But I must love the people who are in the system, or else I am a hypocrite and helping no one.
I have definitely seen a lot of Christians who never really have it in their heart to meet in homes and live true body life, but they meet in homes for many different reasons. Many just get upset at organized traditional church, join with a few other upset people, and call it a home church. Really, all they’ve formed is an anti-traditional church. This will go nowhere. If the only bond you have with one another is a common enemy, God will not let it go very far. Usually after these types of people devour the traditional church people, they turn on each other and soon bite and devour one another.
Remember, if people ask you why you are meeting in homes, or why you left the traditional church, don’t say, “Because we had a problem with a lot of things going on there.” Make sure your heart is right and be able to tell people that you are meeting in homes first because it is Biblical, but also because you want more of Jesus in your life.
