Why House church?

The other day, I came to watch a video about postmodernism and how churches try to change accordingly to approach non-believers.

Some churches dramatically change the sanctuary to be much more friendly to non-believers; like cafes with round tables and a small stage. Some insert movies during the service for a smooth transition toward a message and for raising curiosity. Some ministers visit bars to meet and talk with people there, creating relationships, and to share the Gospel if there’s any chance. Direct and traditional evangelism such as street evangelism, door-knocking, or direct invitation to worship service is less and less welcomed (By the way, I still love to tell individuals on the street “God loves you. He has a wonderful plan for you”. Whenever it’s said, I can tell the words are received into their hearts). More churches change their sanctuary to one like a theater with a large stage and huge audience seats. In some big churches, the praise teams are almost like professional music bands, singing like in a concert.

These days, the messages are also trendy - focused on comfortness, being forgiven, being positive, encouraging, defeating, or strengthening their minds and spirits. General agreement is that the people of postmodernism love to be heard, accepted and welcomed. They want to talk about themselves if it’s comfortable setting, but are afraid to get hurt.

Looking at such appreciable changes in churches, I figure that the general understanding is that we want to build up a sustainable relationship with non-believers first before talking about Jesus. In order to create a relationship, we want to meet them in a friendly environment. This MEET would be indeed a new version of evangelism in postmodernism. Indeed, no wonder why such big churches try to advertise so hard that they offer small groups everywhere and for every diverse group.

. No matter what it is, either a bar or a cafe-like church, or someone’s house, we need that PLACE to MEET them CONSISTENTLY, and hopefully with a delightful and WARM atmosphere. That place should be voluntarily and sustainably provided. With food and love, the atmosphere would open peoples’ hearts more easily.

In this perspective, the house church is just perfect. You can simply invite non-believer to dinner. If you hear “no”, you can try again a week after, and try again until you hear yes. Over the 15 years of experience, we see that once people come to the house church they become used to it sooner or later, and then eventually they put high priority on it.

Why is that? People want to be heard, and the shepherds love to hear them, to know them and thus to find their needs - so that they can pray for. People appreciate the food too. They feel the warm love from the food provided with love. They feel beloved by the shepherds. They learn how to participate in serving others. They gradually change their languages. They observe each other, and are challenged learn from their peers too. There are many more things to talk about House church, but I believe it is the new evangelism in this generation, and I can’t think of any better way than this to reach out to non-believers.