Choosing House Church, Part 3: A Royal Priesthood

In this article series, we’re taking a look at a few scriptural precedents for what it means to be the church and how the house church structure empowers Christians to follow these precedents.

In part 1 of this article series, we first addressed the elephant in the room: the fact that asking, “Why house church?” inherently raises another question: “Why not the institutionalized church?” We explain in more detail there how we love our brothers and sisters in Christ who attend institutionalized church. Our desire for all Christians to have the foundational support that the house church structure provides stems from our love for them–not from hatred, division, or competition.

Then, in part 2, we dove into the first and most foundational scriptural precedent for the church: that the church is a body in which every part has a purpose and a function. We talked about the ways that the house church structure supports Christians seeking to live this out and the ways that the institutionalized church structure hinders us from doing so.

With that foundation set, we’re ready to dive into our second scriptural precedent:

The church is a royal priesthood.

While this article certainly won’t be a holistic deep dive of everything surrounding what it means to be representatives of and priests to Christ, there are a couple key passages of scripture that we want to look at. We’ll start with the most obvious: 1 Peter 2:4-5 and 9 (ESV):

“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ..But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

The entirety of the church being the priesthood of Christ is one of the single most distinguishing factors and changes between the Christian faith and the Israelite faith (as well as the surrounding pagan faiths). When the curtain was torn in the temple in Matthew 27:51, it removed the need for a separate priest class. Instead, we all have access to the Father without the elaborate sacrifices of the priestly class, because the Spirit now dwells in his people as His temple, as Ephesians 2:18-22 (ESV) says:

“For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

When all become priests, there’s also an unprecedented equality not only in our access to God but also in our responsibility. We see this play out in a few ways, including keeping our own bodies holy as the temple of God (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). But in our elevated status as God’s children and priests, the work doesn’t end there. We are also empowered to be fellow laborers of God (1 Corinthians 3:5-9) who serve as His ambassadors in the work of reconciling people to Him, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:16-20 (ESV):

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Or, perhaps to put more simply, we are all called to make disciples, as Jesus commands in Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV):

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The house church structure more readily prepares all believers to serve as priests, ambassadors, and coworkers.

Some of the ways the house church structure more readily allows for an embodiment of the priesthood of all believers are more obviously apparent. Others require a deeper understanding of what healthy, mature house churches look like and where they naturally lead their people.

To start with the more obvious structural difference for house churches: there is no priest class separate from the “laity,” the common or non-clergy believers. While there are typically leaders (at least once a house church grows and matures), the distinction between them and the rest of the church is minimal. Much of this has to do with the expectations of mutual relationship and edification in the house church–including leaders. We’ll talk a little more about in Part 4, Known By Our Love.

But much of it is also due to the leadership structure itself. House churches typically don’t require leaders to have special education (though we honor fruitful, relevant training), we don’t give leaders special privileges, and the leaders don’t carry an unbalanced or disproportionate responsibility for the health of the church body. 

That’s not to say that house church leaders are not held to high standards or that they are not “keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” as Hebrews 13:17 puts it. The difference, though, is less in the demotion of leaders and more in the elevation of all believers. When every part of the church body has a part to play and is given the space to work well in their part, then each part bears some responsibility for the health and function of the temple. That includes not only their own part but also considering how their own part affects others; if the eyes aren’t watching out, then the feet may unwittingly walk into dangerous territory. 

Then there’s the less apparent ways that the structure of house church more readily prepares its people to be priests, ambassadors, and coworkers of God. While house churches don’t require specific specialized trainings for leaders, their gathering times more inherently prepare every part of the body to be able to understand and faithfully use scripture to equip God’s people for good works, as Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (ESV):

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Even in the youngest and most immature house churches we’ve seen, there has been space and room created for all to not just listen to how a leader understands the scripture but to seek deeper understanding of it together. People ask questions, give thoughts, and sharpen one another as a foundation of the churches’ times together. While the fruitfulness of that varies and develops as churches grow and mature, there is a deep and universal ownership of each member over their own understandings and faiths. In developing that ownership, body members are equipped to more accurately and fully represent the kingdom of God and Christ’s character when they go out as his ambassadors and seek to reconcile the lost.

Because of that, there’s also no push for “attendance counts” in house church gatherings.

Although we always desire to see the Church grow, there’s no pressure to bring nonbelievers into church gatherings to make sure that they can hear from the professional Christians in order to be converted, taught, or discipled. Instead, every part of the body is expected to go make disciples and teach them to observe all that Jesus commanded. They’re expected to bring the gospel with them as they go out in the world, rather than to bring the world back to an event so the world can then receive the gospel.

When we invite people into church gatherings, then, it’s not to make sure the priest class has an opportunity to convince those people to believe in Jesus. Instead, it’s to bring them into the body of Christ so that they have the opportunity to be properly jointed with all of the body members that can affect their functioning and faith. And as those disciples are trained in maturity, every part of the body plays their role in that training, not just the leaders.

Christians in institutionalized churches often desire all of this, too. But the institutionalized structure inherently makes it more difficult to live out.

We’ll start, again, with the more obvious reason. While most Protestant churches don’t explicitly call members of their clergy class “priests,” there’s a large gap between clergy members and the laity in institutionalized churches. We see that gap hurt both the leaders and their congregations in a variety of ways. 

For one, that gap puts undue burden and responsibility on pastors, who wind up carrying at least the large majority of the weight for their people’s discipleship, counseling, and other care. They’re expected to fill the roles of eyes, hands, feet, mouth, nose, and so much more all on their own.

That leads to alarming rates of pastor burnout and depression.

We give these men and women, who have passionate hearts for the Father and His people, an impossible task that undermines the design of the church body. In doing so, we set them up to fail in many ways.

Not only does the overemphasis on the clergy’s responsibility set pastors up for burnout, it also stunts the growth of the body members who could otherwise be filling those roles. In Ephesians 4:11-16, Paul writes that it is “when each part is working properly” that the church grows to build itself up in love towards “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Each part can’t be working properly if we’re consistently using another part to do its job. If you walked everywhere on your hands for a long period of time, not only would your wrists hurt way more than your ankles would have had they done the same job, but your ankles will also grow weaker and won’t hold you as well when you do try to walk normally.

Just like we mentioned the benefit of the setup of house church gatherings inherently involving full participation, we also want to address the hindrance of the setup of institutionalized church services. In part 2 of this series, we talked more in-depthly about the barriers created by how the large majority of body members only have true space to consistently function in “parachurch” activities like small groups and bible studies. In large part because of that, there’s also a lower rate of Christians who are actively taking ownership and spending time being trained up and equipped with the scripture. That hurts them both when they try to edify one another in their “parachurch” activities and when they go out as ambassadors to create disciples.

Then, even for those who are being so equipped, the norm is to bring those new disciples to a Sunday morning service. There, they’ll only be able to be edified and sharpened by a select few, most (usually) of whom are part of the elite priest class. Then, maybe, they may also choose to join other para-church activities where more body members function. But the cultural norm of these activities as optional “extras,” rather than foundational necessities, then hinders those new disciples from being trained up to be coworkers, ambassadors, and priests themselves. 

Then there’s the scariest part of the gap between pastors and laity…

Scandals in church leadership. 

There is absolutely a lot more to each situation where a church leader experiences a breakdown, confesses failure, or is caught in sin. There is often a common denominator, though, of the over-elevation of the leader from the rest of the church. They aren’t known closely enough by their church body to be effectively supported, edified, or held accountable by other body members.

Often, they’ve even become separated to the degree where they become almost unapproachable by the laypeople–except for when the people need the leader to take care of the people’s needs. Unfortunately, the institutionalized structure inherently puts so much pressure on leaders to be absolutely perfect because so much lies on their shoulders–much of which should be distributed across body members.

In this, leaders often become more-than-human to their congregants, which means they also become less human to them. This is, again, part of why rates of depression and burnout among pastors are so painfully high. But it’s also how we often miss that something is off with our leaders: because we forget to look at them as another body member who needs to be checked on, watched over, corrected, taught, and encouraged. When we don’t empower and equip every body member to be a priest, then the temple suffers—including the people we most consider priests.

While every person living as a priest and ambassador of Christ is more scriptural, it’s also more challenging for the majority of the body.

We’ve heard quite a few people mistaken the outgoingness and outspokenness of Christians in house churches as just a common “personality” factor. They think house church must be a “fit” for those who are more comfortable sharing their thoughts, opinions, and experiences (both within church gatherings and with nonbelievers). But the truth is that for most of us, it’s difficult and uncomfortable. The personal stakes and responsibility are much higher. But we also know that we will reap according to the labor we perform as God’s fellow workers, as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:8-9 (ESV):

“He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.”

Everything about why we choose to practice our faiths in house church settings comes back to this foundation of the church as a priesthood of ambassadors for Christ. But it’s also more complex than that. Next up, we’ll take a look at the idea of how the ambassadors of that priesthood are known as disciples of Christ by our love for one another in part 4 of this series, Choosing House Church: Known By Our Love.