Over five years ago, I helped plant a new worshiping community called Little Flowers Community in Winnipeg’s downtown West End neighborhood. Over these past five years, we have met every Sunday evening for a shared meal (which is an expression of our open table) and worship. We meet in our duplex on Furby Street where we sit in the round for fellowship, prayer, reading of Scripture and discernment—with a strong emphasis on being a multivoiced church.
In the last year, we have begun to see that our increasing size as a group has been creating some challenges for us. While the space is getting too small for us (i.e., this past Sunday saw nearly 40 people come, requiring that we gather outside in the chilly weather), the other dynamic this raises is the loss of intimacy that a smaller group provides. Further, many people in our community live with mental illness where the loud, close-quarters can become too much. And so, in response, we have been moving toward multiplication. As of next month, we will be meeting in two homes in our neighborhood, with one collective celebration gathering a month.
Given that we are multiplying and doing so into another home, many people have commented on the fact that we are a house church. While it is true that Little Flowers Community has always met in homes and is currently moving forward in that direction, the truth is a bit more complicated than that. For many people, the expression “house church” carries with it some very specific practices and/or assumptions about what is “best” and “right” for church. Those assumptions are not always true of our church.
On one hand, we all very strongly value the intimacy and personal hospitality that happens when we gather in a home. There is an openness to the realities of life that you do not get in a more neutral building. Further, we have found that many people we connect with, while willing to enter a “traditional church building,” significantly alter their behavior (not always consciously) on the basis of those locations. Thus, much of meeting in a home appeals to us, especially given our context.
However, we are not opposed to meeting in other settings, be they a public park, a store front or a typical church building. It is entirely possible that it will be in the best interest of our church in our community to do so (while it also may not be). God is far too big to be limited to one “right way” of doing things. Not only are there many fully acceptable ways of doing things, even the less than ideal ways are not beyond God’s capacity for redemptive use for His loving purposes.
In addition to the reasons already given, there are some fundamental reasons we have chosen this path. As we developed as a church, we adopted a set of 12 foundational convictions that give shape to how we organize ourselves together as a church and in the context of our community. One of those values says:
Our commitment to Christ, community and mission requires that we be aware of and cautious with any commitment, recognition or resource which might divert us from our primary vocation.
When we first addressed our growth, we considered meeting in a building where we could better accommodate larger groups. However, as we began considering the costs (both economic and otherwise), we realized that we would eventually be pressured to compromise on our other values. So while that might have been the simpler solution, the commitment to a resource such as a building would draw us away from our primary vocation and the way in which we felt called to live it out.
We are committed as a community to a high degree of organizational simplicity, especially with respect to growth, activity and leadership.
While we are not anti-complexity, we are opposed to adding any unnecessary complexity that would compromise our values, even for the sake of efficiency. It is not a rejection of the necessity of organization or degrees of complexity, but rather an intentional discipline of moderation and (when necessary) restraint. Added complexity is inevitable, but we manage it carefully so as not to be ruled by it. We try to add only the complexity that will benefit us without compromise and abandon complexity when it no longer serves.
Therefore, while affirming of much in the house church movement, we do not identify ourselves as part of it. We do not know what the future will hold for us, but we have found these guiding values (and the other 10 not listed here) to be incredibly powerful in protecting us from the dangers of hierarchy, paternalism and mechanistic institutionalization.
Any questions? Thoughts? Concerns? Let’s chat!
