Discerning God’s Design: Where Conversations about Church History Go Wrong

Many of the house churches we know were more or less started when a group of Christians were looking at their Bibles and said to each other, “Wait…where does our idea of church as a Sunday morning preaching service come from?” Of course, that initial curiosity (or concern) then brings with it some much more complicated questions surrounding the earliest church. Most especially:

How much should the church of the 21st century look like the church of the 1st century?

But to answer that question, we have to grapple with others:

How much of what we know about the lives and actions of the 1st century church was a product of divine inspiration for the Church at-large? How much was a product of divine inspiration for those specific people and their specific role in history? How much was simply a product of their time and culture?

Inherent in these questions is a desire to discern what the Lord’s design for the church is–and how, or if, our own practices align with that design.

Discerning the Lord’s design for the church is at the heart of pretty much everything that we write and produce here at Why House Church? But claiming so begs yet another question: How do we discern the Lord’s design?

One temptation in our results-driven world is to make discernment a game of metrics, to consider first how many disciples are made. On one hand, that makes sense; the Lord desires all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:3-5), and effectiveness in gaining disciples is deeply important. Yet on the other hand, we can’t always assume or know the genuineness of others’ faiths; Jesus taught that there will even be those who do mighty works in His name that are still workers of lawlessness (Matthew 7:22-23).

There are also quite a few other aspects that people bring into the discernment process for measuring how our practices align with the Lord’s designs for the church. We’ll talk about a few of those and how they can bring the conversation off-track. But for this article, the foundation we’ll use is hopefully the obvious one: scriptural precedent. What do we see in scripture that tells us about God’s hopes and expectations for how His people will live and believe? As we seek to answer all these questions, we’ll focus on understanding what the original authors believed to be important for the heart of the church as a whole, rather than just the representation of what the church of their time did.

For example, just because some of the earliest Christians went into the synagogues to preach about Jesus doesn’t mean that Christians today should do the same thing. At least, not unless we also find ourselves in similar situations, where educated Jewish Christians are invited to speak. However, on the other side, many of the commands to love, serve, teach, and exhort one another don’t reflect just a temporary, specific circumstance. Instead, the authors communicated these things as part of how being a disciple of Christ shapes Christians’ hearts and relationships with one another.

With that foundation in place, let’s take a look at that very first set of questions and consider the historical and cultural impacts on the earliest church. As we do, we’ll consider how those impacts may have been within the bounds of the Lord’s design, as well as how they may hinder His people from reflecting His purposes.

In asking how the church became what it is today, the easiest first assumption to make is that Christians must have been looking towards institutionalization from the beginning, but persecution stood in their way.

To that end, the official policy of tolerance and end of persecution of Christians under Emperors Constantine and Licinius (through the Edict of Milan in 313) certainly shaped Christian practice moving forward. As much as martyrdom is an honor, we can all celebrate that the Emperors were no longer burning Christians as torches for their gardens as Emperor Nero did, according to early-second-century historian Tacitus (which our team learned about from Dr. Craig Keener’s introduction to 1 Peter in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament). Often, the conversation around Emperor Constantine, his declared tolerance of Christians, and his shaping of the church take a heated center-stage in discussions about how the church became an institution.

Unfortunately, some of the loudest or most famous house church voices (yes, namely, Frank Viola) put an undue emphasis on quite a few questionable historical arguments and stances.

Sometimes, this can make us base our understanding and beliefs on false pretenses. Other times, even probably-correct understandings still become a distraction from the more important questions of how to discern if we are following the Lord’s design for the church. That said, taking the time to both of those concerns can give us insight into how the church can adapt to different times and cultures without leaving behind the purposes of the Lord.

There are three popular but questionable claims often made from “organic church” advocates we want to address upfront. Those claims are that 1) Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was not genuine, 2) Constantine brought many pagan rituals into the church, and 3) there were no dedicated spaces for Christian gatherings before Constantine began championing the religion.

As to Constantine’s conversion, there are many reasons to believe his conversion was genuine.

This is despite his deathbed conversion or potentially mixed-pagan stances on certain theologies, which understandably cause confusion and concern. This Britannica article about Constantine spells out a quick, digestible explanation for why Constantine’s conversion would have made sense in their time and culture, even though it may seem odd to us in the modern day. Again, though, as mere men, we cannot necessarily know or judge the faithfulness of someone’s heart.

Because of all of this, it’s difficult to actually discern much about the Lord’s will for the church just based on Constantine’s faith. If we throw out all the changes of the church simply based on doubt of Constantine’s conversion, we stop considering the Lord’s designs for the church before we even actually begin.

The second issue, whether or not Constantine brought pagan rituals and patterns into Christianity, is much more complicated.

On one side, many argue that pointing the finger at “paganization” is useless. After all, just because something comes from a non-Christian source doesn’t mean that is inherently wrong. Nor does it mean that the Lord cannot use it or even did not ordain it. While we agree with that, that also doesn’t mean that bringing in the patterns of outside religions is safe, either. Most simply and importantly when it comes to the question of when it is and isn’t okay for Christian practices to look similar to non-Christian practices, we would point to Romans 12:2 (ESV):

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Not being conformed to the world comes through testing and discernment. Again, we come back to holding our practices up to scripture. Again, if we throw out any changes with Jewish or pagan roots based on their background alone, we stop considering the Lord’s designs for the church before we even actually begin.

That said, there are certainly practices (including, most notably, set liturgies and separate priesthoods) we see the “organic church” scene throw out this way that we believe the church is healthier without. However, when the discussion becomes hyper-focused on demonizing “paganization” rather than testing through scriptural precedent, we miss opportunities to more fully and specifically seek the Lord’s heart and will on an issue.

Then there’s the question of dedicated buildings and spaces: a topic that often receives the most practical limelight, but one that also pulls us away from the most important questions.

While there weren’t any “basilica”-like buildings before Constantine’s influence, there is at the very least archaeological evidence that Christians were altering their homes to accomodate larger gatherings. This is, hopefully, unsurprising since many house churches today do the same.

Beyond this, some evidence points to church members even giving their houses or other property they owned fully over to the communal use of the church, no longer living in those spaces themselves. Given the references in Acts to the church sharing all things (Acts 2:44-45, Acts 4:32-37), including property or the money from sold property (which is the background for the story of Ananias and Sapphira), this idea fits with what we know biblically of the early church. This article describes a handful of archaeological remains found that point to dedicated Chrsitian spaces for gathering in some form, though it doesn’t take into account the actual sizes and specific uses of those spaces.

But this is where the “argument” about the structure of the earliest church often loses its most important focus–and where many “organic church” advocates now plant their flag on shaky ground.

We could take the time to break down every archaeological remain found, but to what end? Are we arguing about the place of buildings in church practice because of a scriptural precedent, or have we made an assumption about buildings as a spiritual issue before even searching the scriptures? The ability to have buildings for the earliest church was limited by the restraints of the time, but we see no scriptural argument against it.

Ultimately, we don’t believe the church building is the issue at hand. Right now, many great things happen in communal Christian buildings. The Church uses these spaces to care for the orphan and the widow, to host ministries for others in need, and simply to come together to know the Lord better. Church buildings or other designated Christian spaces are often used for good, holy purposes.

The reasons we believe that house church structure would better empower all Christians to live out the biblical precedents for the church have nothing to do with the physical buildings. Rather, we believe the house church structure removes barriers to following many other scriptural precedents that reveal the Lord’s design for the church. Our concerns, rather than with the building, are with how our idea of “church” has become centered around a service where, even with the best intentions, the structure is arranged so that:

Very few people are actively spiritually engaged in edifying one another.
A few people are highly elevated to a separate class above the general people of God.
Bettering and loving one another in a way that truly reflects how Christ loved us become “extras” to the faith.

In particular, these structural concerns are concerning because the system is set up this way despite the indwelling of the Spirit in all of God’s people.

That’s not to mention the general intellectual empowerment of believers in literacy rates, the availability of scripture, and access to scholarship. All of these can open doors to ways for the church to approach scripture that would be difficult for the 1st century church to have imagined in their world where perhaps 10% of the congregation was even literate (statistic found from Dr. Craig Keener’s comment on Luke 4:16 in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament).

Since we dove into those concerns and the scriptural precedents behind them already in our Choosing House Church article series, we won’t readdress them in fullness here.

However, we don’t believe having a dedicated building or space causes any of these concerns. We can even envision a future where the main purposes of church buildings become 1) caring for those in need in our communities and 2) active and participatory equipping and training of Christians. While we don’t believe designated Christian spaces for regular, large gatherings are particularly part of the design of the Lord for the church, we do believe the Church can follow His design within those spaces.

We also don’t believe all structures, orders, or systems are inherently against the Lord’s design for the church. However, we do believe that some of the current core institutions of the church in modern American Christianity make it more difficult to follow the design closely.

That’s why we would point all our fellow Christians, no matter what their current church experiences look like, to refocus the conversation. The question is not, “Did a false Christian emperor drag Christians into buildings and paganize the religion?” nor is it, “Were Christians headed towards larger gatherings and designated spaces, anyway?”