Video Transcript: House To House - Chapter 4 A Biblical Vision for Small Groups and House Churches

This is greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ, Jesus. So they  were not only laboring together in business. And here's a great example of those who are bi-vocational, so to speak, they were in the marketplace. They had a  business. They were working. And he says, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus,  greet also the church that meets at their house, so the church met now they  didn't say the church that met on Elm Street, didn't say the church that was in  the big city in the auditorium. Didn't say the church that is in the building  program. He said, the church that meets in your house. We see this again and  again and again throughout Scripture. Let me just give you a couple scriptures  again, just we can look at these together. I've mentioned earlier. Acts 2 when the church was being birthed. The day of Pentecost came. Holy Spirit was poured  out. 3000 came to Christ in Acts 2:41, 3000 were added to the number that day.  And then what happened? Well, you see right there in verse, chapter 2:46 I'm  gonna read it to you. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and  breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and  simplicity of heart. Just listen to what was going on. There was life. There's a  sense of excitement, there's a sense of relationship. Since the family, they  weren't just going to meetings, this is they were having the time of their life.  Jesus changed them and he changed them individually. Now he's molding them  together into a family. It says they ate their food. They ate together. By the way,  house churches almost always have food. It's not a rule you see in scripture. But you know, it's interesting when Jesus showed up and the road to Emmaus, and  they were talking to Jesus about all they had seen, and they didn't know it was  Jesus. They went. They went into the home, as you remember, they said, Come, they invited him in. They didn't know it was Jesus. And the Bible's clear when  they had food there, and they acknowledged the Lord in front of the food, God  showed up. Their eyes were open. They saw it was Jesus, things happen when  you eat together. And so it says, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity  of heart. They were praising God, having favor with all the people and the Lord  added to the church daily those who were being saved and interesting. A lot of  people don't know this, but the early church just met from house to house, and  in the midst of that, yes, there were times they met in the temple courts. Yes,  that did happen. But basically they met in homes together. They were having  fellowship relationship, reaching the lost together. It was happening at homes, in these smaller groups. Then these groups were then multiplying. This one group  would multiply into two groups and three groups. I remember, I remember many  years ago, meeting a friend, a friend who came to one of the meetings that I  had, who had grown up in in a move of God in Ethiopia, many, many years ago  in the capital city. And I remember clearly at that time she told me the story, and  I've written this in the house to house book. How about their church of 10,000  people? And it was amazing move of God they had in the capital city. And but  they were having wonderful meetings. They were having spirit filled meetings 

and great preaching, all those great things happening. But communism had  come in, and because communism came in they had to close down their  meetings, and they didn't know what to do with their meetings were closed  down. But they remember that Jesus had a few disciples. They remembered  that he told Paul, you know he, Paul was trained. He trained also disciples.  They're all doing the same thing. Jesus Paul made disciples. Did it in small  groups. And they decide they're going to have house churches. They meet at  home. So they had all these 10,000 people all over the city. They had them  meeting in homes, and people said, well, who's going to lead this? They said,  we'll train you. And one by one, they trained leaders. And see it's one thing to  train someone to lead 1000 people, if someone else train someone to lead three people or five people or six people, In those days they couldn't have more than  five or six people, or the government would come in and close them down. So  for 10 years, they did this and and if they had weddings or funerals, they had a  few extra people, they could do it. But other than that, they met from house to  house, they simply went back to the biblical model. 10 years later, communism  falls. It's the most amazing story, because what happened was they had a  problem. They couldn't get back into the building. They open up their buildings  again. But it didn't work. They had too many people. They had grown from  10,000 to 50,000 people. Do you know why? Because they were back to the  New Testament model. Every believer became a minister. They weren't looking  for some holy man behind a holy pulpit in a holy building giving a holy message.  They were saying, we all can minister. God can use any of us. And they began  to see amazing things happen. All these leaders were trained, so they grew from 10,000 to 50,000 people. And I know that doesn't always happen in that way, but I want you to know this is a biblical model, and I'm going to continue to make it  clear that God will honor many different structures. But there is this new  structure as old as the Bible. House churches. People get involved in house  churches, planting House churches, the house churches grow multiply. House  church networks that in many parts the world today, saying literally 1000s and  1000s of people whose lives are being changed, believers doing the work of  ministry because involved in house churches. Now, again, there are many  scriptures I could give you here, but I want to read you a story, a story given by  T. L. Osborn, great evangelist, T. L. Osborn, who saw hundreds of 1000s come  to Christ in the continent, especially of Africa. And he wrote a book some years  back called soul winning, out where the sinners are. And I've read this years  ago. This whole story is just gripped. My heart. And he talks about a story of a  possible conversation with Aquila, obviously, Aquila and Priscilla is mentioned  from Roman 16. He says, This is what I think a conversation would have been  like with them from the book of Acts. Listen closely. Great, great, great story. He  says, Good evening, Aquila. We understand your a member of the church here.  Could we come in and visit for a while? And the Aquila said, sure, certainly come

on in. Let's sit down here and let this visit for a while. So he says, Now, if you  don't mind, he said, we'd like for you to tell us about the way the churches in  Asia Minor carry out their soul winning program. How do you see somebody  

come to Christ? He said that we've read that you've been a member of a church  in Corinth and Rome, as well as one here in Ephesus now. So you should be  very qualified to tell us about evangelism in the New Testament church. If you  don't mind, we'd like to visit your church while we're here. Would that be okay?  Well, Aquila says, sit down. You're already in the church. It meets my home. This is the church. He says, You don't have a church building. He says, What's a  church building? No, I guess we don't. He says then tell me Aquila. He said,  What is your church doing to evangelize Ephesus? What are you doing to reach  the city with the gospel? What's your program? What's your methodology? What are you doing? And he's all, we've already evangelized Ephesus. We've done  that already. Every person in the city clearly understands the gospel. He said,  we just visited every home in the city, and that's the way the church in  Jerusalem, firstly, evangelize that city. Of course, we see that in Acts 5:42 the  disciples there, evangelize the entire city of Jerusalem in a very short time. All  the other churches in Asia Minor have followed that same example. So really, if  you'd be sitting back in that day talking to Aquila and Priscilla about and using  the terminology we use today for what church should look like, they wouldn't  even understand it all, because church for them was people meeting in  relationship, meeting in homes. They were simply house churches. That's what  they were doing. And again, if the way you do house church is more House  Fellowship connected to a larger church, that's fine, but for the purpose of the  training that we're giving here at here in this series of teachings, we're talking  about how to see New Testament house churches released in our generation. A  lot of people don't know this, but the first church building was built in 323 ad  Constantine, who had some type of we believe conversion to Christianity. I  remember learning years ago, he marched some of the soldiers through the sea and said, now you're baptized. We know there's no change of heart. They went  through that would form. Then he built the first big edifice, the first big church  buildings, we call it. And ever since that, we've been building church buildings.  Now I'm not anti church building. I'm not anti denominations, anything like that.  Because I mean God, when people's hearts are turned toward him who use  whatever, I'm just grateful the Gospels being preached. But I believe there's  many of us, 1000s upon 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, probably millions of us, who in these days, we say we're gonna get back to the New Testament. We want to  see the kingdom of God advanced in the same way we saw advanced in the  book of Acts. We're not just going back to the Reformation, we're not going back to sometime in history began Methodism, and I love the Methodist revival and all we learned through that. But we're going back to the book of Acts, and we want  to see it happen again. We want to see the kingdom of God advanced. Speaking

of Methodists. The Methodist understood this well. You know John Wesley.  Howard Snyder, years ago, wrote a book was called the radical Wesley. Here's  what he said. He said, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church. By  the way, there's a few books in my life that have been revolutionary to me  outside the Bible. The Bible, by far, is, is the book of all books, a book called  revival lectures by Charles Finney, with life changing for me, because I have a  heart to see revival in the nations, it's amazing. All he learned about revival over  the years, but the journals of John Wesley have been life changing to me,  because John Wesley experience the things we're talking about. And you know,  the reason they're called Methodist was because John Wesley like that,  because they said, John Wesley and Charles Wesley's brother are using certain  methods. Do you know what the methods were? They were simply house  churches. They called them class meetings, and they bring house churches  together call them societies. And they saw England change. We saw the  industrial revolution that transformed England and the world come out of the  Methodist revival, because they went back to this New Testament methodology  of going house to house, where they were asking people questions for  accountability, where were, where people realize they're much more than a  number, amount of people coming together on a Sunday morning. I quote from  from this book, but Howard, Howard Snyder, he said, John Wesley saw that new wine lesson put in a new wineskins. So the story of West's life in ministry is a  story of creating and adapting structures to serve the burgeoning revival  movement. After 30 years in 1769 Methodism had 40 circuits, 27,341 members  by 1798 seven, years after his death, the total jumped 149 circus, 101 712,  101,712 members. By the turn of the century, about one of every in 30 English  men were Methodist, amazing, and they really were used to transform the world. Let me tell you why this so important. 35 years ago, I met a young man who  came from Kenya, Africa and he came to USA, and he was being trained as a  journalist, but his heart was for his people, for his people in Kenya, and he went  on a journey to learn about small groups and house churches and house  fellowships. And somehow he heard about us. I was a young pastor in  Pennsylvania, and God knit our hearts together. His name is Abraham. On  Monday, Ibram today. His wife Diane, give leadership to all the work that we're  involved in doing in East Africa, hundreds of churches, just hundreds and  hundreds and just multiplied, you know, dozens and hundreds of house  churches and cell groups in that area. But I remember one time when he came  to see me, and after our hearts were knit together, and I was meeting with some  of our pastors. Our church had grown, but we kept planting these house  fellowships and planting them and more and more. And remember, we're  praying for individual House Fellowship leaders, praying for their assistant  leaders, praying for people in the churches in these little house fellowships. And  I noticed he was crying. He was weeping. I thought maybe I said something to 

hurt his feelings. I said, Ibram, Did I say something wrong? He said, No. He  said, My people need this. He said, Here's what happens in my nation of Kenya. He said, an evangelist will come from Europe. He'll preach my people, my  people, my brothers and sisters, will stand up and they'll say, Yes, I want to give  my heart to the Lord. He said, But then a week or two later, an evangelist will  come from America, and there will be crusade, and my same brothers will go  and they'll stand up again, and they'll say, I want to give my heart to the Lord. He said, People have become numbers, and he wasn't minimizing the need for  crusades praise God for crusades, but he's simply saying, Here's what he said.  So my people need a sense of dignity that God can use them. He said, Would  you be willing to help us do the same thing in Kenya. When I go back to Kenya,  he said, I'm going back as a journalist and but after I'm there for a few years,  would you help us? He went back get married, went back to Kenya. Few years  later began to help him. He started a little house group in his home. Led some  neighbors, people to Christ, and then they started a second House Fellowship  and a third and now there's this move of God and wonderful thing. I was just  there three weeks ago, and story I'll tell you later, I don't have time right now, but a story of how these churches have grown and grown and grown and grown and multiplied and multiplied and multiplied. 1000s of people's lives have been  changed in their meeting in these house fellowships throughout that part of the  world. They meet in house fellowships, and then, they come together larger  meetings. But what's happened is his people have found a sense of dignity.  Now, again, I love the body of Christ. I We're Kingdom people. That's what I love about, about this, this ministry, you know? CLI, it's a kingdom ministry. Love the  body of Christ. But you know what I found? I found that I really loved the Baptist  because the Baptists have taught me to win people for Jesus. And I really love  the Assemblies of God because they do such a good job with missions all over  the world. And I really love the Pentecostals because they've taught me, that I  need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I really love my reformed brothers and  sisters, because they have kept us in the Word of God. And I really love the  Roman Catholics, because these precious monks kept our Bible alive. We have  the Bible, this holy scriptures today, and so I mean, we need to have this heart  for the whole body of Christ, and if God has called you to be a leader who starts  a house church network and changes your village and changes your city,  changes your nation, never we met. Never forget that you just one small part of  all that God's doing. Let's make sure we honor and bless the rest of the body of  Christ. We know where we come from. We believe with all of our hearts, with  deep conviction what God has given us, but we're gonna bless the rest of the  body of Christ. Why? Because the kingdoms of this world should become the  kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ. I don't believe house church is better  than some other way. I believe it's clearly something God's doing today. It's  better for some people. It's better to reach certain. Kinds of people need that 

kind of a new wineskin who would not relate to another kind of a wineskin. So  God's grace is on you. And is it if God has called you to be a house church  planter, a house church leader? A house church multiplier? You know there are  these gifts of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher, from Ephesians 4. We'll talk more about that. If you have an apostolic gift, you'll probably be  starting many, many, many house churches. You have a prophetic gift, you'll  hear the word of the Lord. You'll be helping with house church ministry many  places. If you're a pastor, you'll probably be just helping people in the house  church grow in God, having strong marriages and strong lives in Christ and  strong families and seeing them healed and set free. If you're strong teacher,  you'll make sure that whatever happens in the house church is based on the  scriptures and based on on the Word of God, because God is using apostles,  prophets, evangelists and pastors and teachers in these days. So God's  blessing is on you and I this is just a few of the scriptures. There are many,  many, many more scriptures. I could give you many more scriptures that are in  the book. In fact, two of the books I've written on house church networking,  again, we get into a lot of the scriptures here. House church networks, a church  for a new generation that I'd written some years ago. We're talking about house  churches and how to actually be a house church leader. Then I co authored this, took some of this book with my friend Floyd McClung, who served with youth of  the mission for many, many years now, and now birthed a whole other ministry  movement, many, many house churches throughout the nations, and it's called  starting a house church. So God bless you. Look forward to being with you more as we explore what it looks like to be a vital house church leader in the  generation we live in.