What is House Church?

What is a House church? Is it different from the traditional church; is it similar to the cell church? The term house church is actually a misnomer because the group does not necessarily gather in a home. In fact, the place is not at all the criteria. The believers could meet in a hotel, a restaurant, park etc., which has led some groups to prefer terms such as ‘Simple Church’ or church in the home. For the sake of uniformity, I will refer to it as the House church.

Current Models of Church
I will describe two models of church as we see it today, in contrast to the House Church.

1) Community/ Traditional Church- a church with small groups
This type of church is most common which reaches the local populace. You will find this type in all communities of the world. They meet in their own separate buildings or in community halls or school buildings on Sundays in addition to holding meetings during the week. This is across all denomination borders, having its distinctive flavors. The average size would be 50–200 members, and some do grow to 900. The church would consist of people living in the near vicinity and their ministry is limited to the local community in a specified radius.
You could compare this church to the local store down the street, where basic groceries can be bought, it does not offer the range of services that is available at the mall, or neither does it offer all groceries under one roof like the supermarkets.
Other terms would be the traditional or legacy church to describe the community church; Home groups are ‘merely an optional appendage’.

2) Mega Church — church of small groups
The Mega Church can be compared to Wal-Mart of America. To the Indian, it would be the ‘Big Bazaar’ chain of stores found in almost all the metropolitan cities of India. They are large and offer an abundance of choices under one roof. It is well organized and highly structured with a centralized accounting system. Similarly, mega-churches offer that kind of specialized service for various kinds of people under one centralized infrastructure.

3) House Church Networks- church is small groups’
The House Church within a network can be compared to the average store in a shopping mall, If an average store moved out of a shopping mall to stand on its own, it would die in all probabilities within a year. Each store needs other shops to survive. The house church network functions like these shopping malls. The success of the stores is due to the overall infrastructure provided by the network of stores and the amenities provided within the mall. Similarly, a house church like the store in a mall has its unique flavor but its longevity is due to the network of House churches.
House Church Networks is also known as the New Testament –style church.

In the New Testament we see all the above forms of Church existing, though not in any specific building which they constructed. They met in temple courts and in halls such as the Tyrannus hall but that did not substitute or displace the gathering in homes. Gathering in homes was not considered less significant. Both were complementary.

If three gather or 12 gather in a home, why do we fear to call it the church? We use terms such as cell group, a Bible study group or prayer cell; agreed, the group may gather for a specific function but on what grounds can we say that it is not the church.