A Sabbath Day In House Church

Whenever you talk about "house church" the first question others ask is, "so what does a house church service look like?". Well the answer is probably as varied as the number of house churches in the world. Like any church service, the characteristics are as unique as the people that make up the congregation. We are still in the transitional stage of our house church and our gathering involves our own family at this point (we are still "nucleic"). We have tried many different things for our times of worship together from worship on hiking trails in the Smoky Mountains that involved a scripture study, singing as we walked and spontaneous discussion. We tried using printed Bible-study materials to help guide our discussions at home (more like a traditional Bible-study)which was probably the least liked of anything we have attempted. The more we drifted into the "old" way of doing church the less effective our service was.

Saturday Evening

The way we "do" church now has sort of evolved from our times of Bible reading and talking around the dinner table. On Saturday evening we started having a time of singing and playing instruments together. This has come from many times of spontaneous singing that occurs in our house. Dad plays guitar and Mom sings and this usually attracts the kids who sing along or drag out the hand-drums or many other percussion type instruments laying around the house.

Sunday Afternoon

On Sunday afternoon we have lunch together sometimes beginning with the breaking of bread and cups of juice and have a more "formal" communion time. Although we consider every meal we eat together to be communion. As we finish our meal we have a scripture reading (at the moment we are reading through the book of Acts). At the conclusion of the reading usually all I have to do is wait. The kids often have a boat-load of questions. The discussion is spontaneous sometimes sticking with the passage read and often drifting to other topics. Almost always we learn and discuss much deeper truths and dig-in fairly well to the scripture passage. We then pray around the table as each person suggests prayer requests within our family or involving friends or more distant family members. The kids (6 and soon-to-be 8 years old)are always ready to share, pray and ask questions.

We do are not trying some Orthodox Jewish Saturday night-Sunday morning thing to make some sort of theological statement. It just worked out that way. The most awesome elements include the spontaneity and the relaxed atmosphere. Nothing formal and stiff, nobody waiting to see what the "leader" will do next. Our worship times are "led" but they are not dictated, it's not just our family but the family of God learning and sharing together. We are looking forward to inviting others to join us and as soon as that happens we will provide an update on how it goes:)