What A Home Fellowship Might Look Like
The Body of Christ was intended to be a family. The term “born again” should clue us in to that. A believer is the literal offspring of God the Father. We are born into God’s family. Being children of the Father makes us all brothers and sisters. The word “fellowship” is the Greek word “koinenia”, and it means “having in common.” What we have in common as God’s children is being a part of the same family!
So when we gather together, it is nothing more than a family gathering.
Today I am offering you a look inside my home. The video below shows you what a typical home fellowship in my home looks like. Right now it’s just my wife and I and our five children. But we would love to have you come fellowship with us! It is unfortunate that the miles between us makes it impractical. I ask that you pray that God will help us to be able to find other likeminded believers in our area who would come and fellowship with us. I ask that you pray that we would be able to take the gospel to the people around us who need to hear it, so that they too can be a part of God’s family!
~ Andy
“And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers…And all that believed were together, and had all things common;”
~ Acts 2:42-44
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
Thanks for sharing something this personal, Andy, even though we are family in Christ. God bless your family.
At time marker 23:20 is where most couples lose it; where the husband takes “charge” and messes up. That’s what happens when there is no real foundation. Deferring to the wife and vice versa is a wonderful thing and there is no “boss:” mentality from either side. The second a husband-wife relationship becomes 51% to 49% (either way) the relationship becomes lopsided, no matter who we think we are, or how rich, or how powerful in society. And the second a couple’s life is not under the leadership and direction of Christ, trouble has already entered.
Home fellowship will make inroads as time goes on, I’m sure. The institutionalised church is simply a business with an ego-inflated CEO (a “pastor”, whatever) and a board of people (elders who think their words are God’s words) making decisions for you, invading your privacy, and milking you dry in all ways possible. That ain’t fellowship. That’s dictatorship; the very antithesis of freedom in Jesus Christ.
Do you see home fellowship as a family alone experience? Or are you thinking in terms of a neighborhood setting? Also, if a mother is having home fellowship (divorced, widowed, or beaten to a pulp, whatever the case), don’t you think that is a wonderful thing? I think it is; some of the most memorable verses and biblical lessons that I remember came from my mom. And I think a woman doing home fellowship is a blessing that will return many blessings in the future.
Thanks again for sharing.
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“Do you see home fellowship as a family alone experience?”
No, I do not see this as a family alone thing (family in the “earthly” family sense, because we are part of God’s family). Here is what I see happening. Read the book of Acts and look at what happened. You already had a “synagogue” model in place: small groups of Jews gathering for instruction. Those who became followers of the “the way” either remained in that synagogue in the hopes of persuading the others, or, when they were no longer welcome, they would “synagogue” in other locations. Acts says the believers met “daily” and from “house to house”. That doesn’t mean that everyone went to “church” every day. It means that you had various groups of believers gathering spontaneosly throughout the week. And when they would gather, typically they would share a meal (which would include the breaking of bread, ie. remembering Christ’s death) and they would have a time of studying scripture and prayer.
Home fellowship is not “church in a house”. It is a desire to reproduce the model as seen in the book of Acts. So right now, it’s just me and my family because there are no like-minded believers around us to fellowship with. But home fellowships will grow the same way they did in the book of Acts: reaching out to those who are enslaved to the orthodoxy of the institution and persuading them to come out from among them, and reaching out to those around us who are unsaved. In either case, that is a HUGE mission field!
When the home fellowship movement gets rolling again after its almost 2000 year hiatus, you will once again have groups of families not gathering exclusively on Sunday but several times throughout the week. It wouldn’t always be the same families gathering either. Just whenever they could. But when they do, it would be an informal dinner setting, perhaps like a pot-luck. There would be a time of singing and bible study and prayer. So in a sense, it is just like one big extended family who get together whenever they can.
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I was hoping for an answer like that. Yes, I agree. Spontaneity on meeting anywhere, anytime and in an informal dinner setting are important aspects, etc.; “church in a house” would be no different to “church” as it is at present. What would be the point? It would be tyranny on a smaller scale (talking institutional).
For some reason, I think that the real persecution of born-again Christians may actually expedite home fellowship.
Fellowship and “church” are opposites. Goodness me, just thinking back at those hypocritical days…
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“‘church in a house’ would be no different to ‘church’ as it is at present. What would be the point? It would be tyranny on a smaller scale (talking institutional).”
We’ve been there! We tried meeting with about 4 or 5 other families who had also left a church and were “meeting” together having their own fellowship at the home of one of the families. When we got there, that’s exactly what it was; “church in a house”. Men wearing suits, women wearing dresses (and some with hats), seats arranged in a semi-circle with a music stand at the head to serve as a “pulpit”. It was no different that being in the institution; only the setting had changed. They did have a “discussion” time at the end of the “sermon”, but the understanding was that you were supposed to use that time to share how the “sermon” blessed you that day, or how there might have been an application of it you experienced the previous week. Silly me, I actually thought they would want to discuss things during “discussion” time, so I asked the teacher one week about something he said during his lesson that confused me because he seemed to contradict himself (yes, I asked that in front of everybody, about 30 or so people including the children!) It did not end well. Needless to say, that was the last time we ever darkended the doorstep of that house. We have had our own family fellowship ever since!
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