Accountability For a House Church

Accountability is very important to me. I believe that every Christian should have someone that they are accountable to. I believe that every gathering of Christians should have a group or person they are accountable to. I think that we will need Biblical accountability and someone to advise on issues like how to work with tithes and offerings. I don't think that a heirarchy of Christians is Biblical but we do need accountability among the body.

I am an ordained minister of a large denomination and I have been called out of the traditional church environment into the house church. Officially I am an "unassigned" pastor, but I never intend to pastor a traditional church again. We are starting a house church and only have our family at this point. I have talked to the leaders of the church planting department of the denomination and they assume that the house church is simply a phase that a core group uses to transition to owning a building and becoming an "official" congregation. Pretty funny, huh? One thing that I have to give my denomination is that they are very open to diverse forms of church and have welcomed (carefully) some groups that define themselves as part of the emergent church movement. House church is just something, I suppose, our leaders have never considered. As we move forward in this journey I wonder what will happen when, and if, I decide to present the house church idea to my district leaders.

I don't have a problem with my denomination in terms of theology or, at least not necessarily, leadership. What I have been called away from is the organizational structures and forms. The new wineskins that should have contained the new wine that was poured out one hundred years ago when our denomination began. In fact, my vision is to see a house church network that is threaded throughout every district in our denomination.

My desire is to present our church as something somewhat loosely connnected to the denomination. As we grow we will, as a church, decide how this connection will develop. In the book, "Starting a House Church", the authors take great pains to drive home the point that they believe that God will use all current forms to reach the world for Christ. This includes house church, of course, traditional churches, and mega churches. So is it possible to add house church to an existing denomination and not comprimise the effort to return to a New Testament model of community?