The Visibility of the New Testament Church

Is this the Church that Jesus Built?

The first definitive expression of the church in the New Testament was the house church.  It was the most common and natural structure to develop because of two realities:

• The Nature of the church itself, and
• The nature of the social context in which the church emerged.

The Apostolic church was first and foremost a community, a fellowship of faith, Moreover, the New Testament “koinonia” had a very strong “family” orientation.  Paul called it the “household of God” (1 Timothy 3:15).  The apostle was not making reference to an “estate” but to a  “family”—the church was the assembled family of God.

In this regard, the New Testament church reflected a strong Old Testament rootage.  The people of God in the Old Testament were referred to as “the children of Israel”—they were the children of God.  Moreover, the Old Testament abounds in family-oriented metaphors which describe the people of God.  The home was the center of religious instructions in the Old Testament period, a practice which was clearly carried through into the New Testament era.

The early church was an urban church

 This family oriented New Testament community of faith did not exist in isolation but was influenced by its social context.  It first emerged in the great religious, commercial, cultural, and political urban centers of the first century: Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome.  An urban society is characterized by two fundamental forms of communication:

• Mass Communication which reflects the public sphere of urban life and,
• Personal Communication which reflects the private sphere.

In all expressions of first-century church life, these two forms of communication transpired as the church became an integral part of its urban social context.

Mass communication took the form of mass evangelism in the New Testament.  This is illustrated from;

• Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2), 
• Peter’s Sermon from the portico (Porch) of Solomon (Acts3),
• Stephen’s sermon (Acts7),
• Philip’s mass evangelism campaign in the city of Samaria (Acts 8), and
• Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill (Acts 17). 

Moreover, mass meetings were also related to the ongoing expression of church life.  The earliest Christians worshiped in the Temple (Acts 5:42), and Paul rented the hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus (Acts 19:8-10).

The small group meetings where personal communication took place were parallel to the mass meetings. We read of the early patter of church life growing out of the mass evangelism at Pentecost:

Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of the food with gland and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people (Acts 2;46).  This patter continued according to Acts 5;42:  “And every day in the temple and at home they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.”  In Ephesus, Paul augmented his mass evangelism and instruction (Acts 19:8-10) with personal evangelism in the homes (Acts 20:20-21).

The patterns of mass meetings varied in terms of locale: the Temple, in and around the synagogue, the m arketplace, the open air, and such special public platforms as Mars Hill.  However, in terms of the small-group meetings, one consistent setting seems to have prevailed—the home.

The Home

The homes were the most ideal context for the fullest expression of the ongoing life of the New Testament church.  When Saul was persecuting the church before his conversion, he sought after Christians in neither the Temple nor Synagogue, but in their homes.  Acts 8:3 says: “But Saul was ravaging the Church, and entering house to house, after, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”

From the beginning, the homes appeared to be the place for the most enduring dimensions of early church life.  On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit manifested His presence and power “like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:2).  References have already been made to the prominence of homes in the life of the early Christian community (Acts 2:46; 5:42).

This pattern continued throughout the Book of Acts.  It was in the home of Cornelius, the Roman centurion of Caesarea that Peter came with a special message of God, accompanied by a mighty manifestation of God’s Spirit, in a significant even which symbolized the emerging response of the Gentiles to the gospel.  When the jailer at Philippi responded to the witness of Paul and Silas, “he brought them up into his house, and set food before them; and he rejoiced with all his household that he had believed in God” (Acts 16:34).

The only church congregations described in the New Testament which are designated as haing a specific location besides a general geographic one are those which are identified with specific homes. 

• There was such a house church in the home of Priscilla and Aquilla.  In concluding his message to the Christians at Rome, Paul made special reference to the couple and said, “Greet also the church in their house” (Roman 16:5).
• Another house church was in the home of Nympha.  In the Book of Colossians, Paul sent special greetings “to Nympha.  In the Book of Colossians, Paul sent special greetings “to Nympha and the church in her house” (4:15). 
• There was also a house church in the home of Philemon.  In his letter to Philemon, Paul addressed others besides Philemon, and he made special reference to the house church group connected with Philemon’s home: “To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus, our fellow soldier, and the church in your house” (v.2). 

The homes were the places where the church was best able to have its worship.  They were the places of warm fellowship and meaningful teaching—personal communication at its best.  Much of the spontaneous evangelism which characterized the early church took place within or grew out of the vitality of these house churches.

The New Testament church was in sense a building.  When the Temple and the synagogues were no longer available to them, the early Christians made no effort to erect any kind of physical structure in which to meet.  For their mass meetings, they used whatever was available to them—from spontaneous street meetings to the more planned rental of halls.  For their small-group meetings, the home not only met their need but was the most conducive environment to the continuing function of church life.

The apostolic era set the patter for this dynamic expression of church congregational life, and this pattern prevailed during the first two hundred years of the Christian church.

The Early Christians A.D. 33 – 270

 Until the year 200, the house church was the common structure expression of the Christian Congregation.  There is some evidence that the homes of wealthier members (who were very much in the minority) were used for larger gatherings.  However, the homes of the rank and file became the scene of ongoing fellowship and greatly enhanced the sense of community which characterized the early church. 

The Great Falling Away (Apostasy) changed the divine structure of the Christian community, and the way they worshipped.  The Apostle Paul predicted a time when men would fall away from the truth and the common practices of the Early Church.

The middle Ages

(Dark Ages or the Rise of the Papacy)

A.D. 270 - 1530

The virtual eclipse of the house church in the middle ages had its beginning during the era of Constantine.  With the emperor embracing Christianity, the life of the average Christian and structure of church life were altered radically.  Before this, Christianity had been an illegal religion.  Worship often had to be in secret.  The church was persecuted, and during the reign of some emperors the persecution was extensive and severe.  Just after the apostolic era, the church grew by the spontaneous witness of its people, with church leaders playing pastoral roles.

With the reign of Constantine, and especially later with that of Theodosius, Christianity moved from underground worship in catacombs and house churches to an era of great acceptance and favor.  This paralleled the full development of the bishopric (Papacy) with the bishops in the great cities such as Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Carthage exercising considerable influence and authority.  The power of the church was no longer in its spiritual strength and vitality, but it traded spiritual vitality for ecclesiastical influence and favored, and also for political and social position in the world.

The Roman church gradually gained enormous influence and prestige because of the political importance of Rome and because of the tradition of Peter and Paul being connected with its early life.  As the church came into favor through Christian emperors, it was able to acquire the property of the catacombs, the earlier burial chambers of the Christian community just outside of the city of Rome.

Churches were built over these catacombs.  Numerous large house were also acquired whole upper stories were used as house churches.  In time they were adapted as independent church structures.

The bishop, who had earlier been a strong pastoral figure concerned with the spiritual development of the community of faith, now assumed additional roles as financial and personnel manager, exerting decisive control of the lower clergy such as presbyters (elders), priests, and deacons.  Control of the finances of the churches and the clergy often became an exercise in power because of the vast wealth the church began to acquire under Constantine in the fourth century.  With the government subsidies which the bishops received after Constantine, along with the offerings from increasingly affluent churches, church buildings proliferated; and the house churches which had been the symbol of community and spirituality disappeared from the mainstream of structural church life.

The Constantinian and Theodosian eras witnessed the emergence of a distinct church architectural type known as the basilica which replaced the house church as the meeting place of the people of God.  Constantine built the basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, and with this he symbolized a qualitatively different direction for the church.

The basilica was a rectangular hall with a semicircular niche or “apse” extending out from the small side opposite the main entrance. The entrance opened into the nave with two or four rows of columns depending usually upon the size.  The basilica was the forerunner of the cathedral, the Romanesque style which reached its peak in A.D. 1150 and the Gothic which reached its peak a century later.  This was the church edifice which carried the symbolism of the church as a building and not a people to its highest theological implication.

With the house church being lost to the mainstream of church life, the spiritual function of the Christian home and family took a new direction.  Religious instruction in the home continued as a parallel phenomenon to institutionalize church life throughout this period. 

The house church tradition also found expression in the sectarian groups which the Roman Catholic Church had come to regard as heretical.  An excellent example of these groups was the Waldensians, with whom many evangelicals today would strongly identify.  They desired to return to scriptural patterns of belief and practice and came to oppose the authority of the church hierarchy.  They lived humble lives and met for simplified worship and fellowship in their modest homes.  Donald F. Durnbaugh wrote: “The manuals of the inquisitions which describe these heretics for the purpose of apprehension give inadvertent testimony to the quality of life often developed by the medieval sectarians.

In the period just before the Reformation, another group very similar to the Waldensians appeared in Eastern Europe in what is today modern Czechoslovakia.  They were known as the Unitas Fratrum.  They assembled in homes to hear the teachings of their leader, Peter Chelvicky, in the 1400’s.  To some extent, they were the forerunners of other renewal movements which were to emerge in Europe in the next few hundred years.

The Reformation Period A.D. 1530

Just as the earlier Roman Catholic bishops had taken over pagan temples, purified them, and adapted them for use in the Latin liturgy, so the Protestant reforms took over Roman Catholic churches, freed them from what they deemed Roman excesses and improprieties, and adapted them to the Reform expressions of worship and polity.  The Reform movement, therefore, was almost as bound to the church edifice as the Roman Church.

However, in little-known writings of Luther, the great reformer saw potentials in the house church despite the fact that it was associated with the more radical wing of the Reformation, such as the Anabaptists.  Luther had a vision of the devout meeting in homes to practice their faith in a dept of expression which was difficult to achieve in the mainstream of church life and practice.  This vision seems to have been to ideal for Luther, however, and among his many duties, it apparently did not receive priority.

The house church is best illustrated during this period among the Anabaptist.  They had no church buildings but came together in homes for worship and the development of their spiritual community.  They met usually four or five times a week in their house church assemblies.

  The Beast and His Image

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