Years of sitting in traditional church has not prepared us to do church in the manner described in the New Testament. We have been taught to come. To sit. To watch and listen to what others have prepared. Someone described it as “sit, soak and sour.”

How do you know if you’ve been to church? Is it when you go to a meeting in a building with a pointy top? When a preacher gives a sermon? When there is a choir/worship team that sings? When you get dressed up in your Sunday clothes? When there is a bulletin and an order of service?

Roger Gehring in “House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity” demonstrates that the concept of household (oikos in Greek) is a critical and significantly under-appreciated element in understanding the meaning of “church” in the First Century.

The New Testament ‘church’ was a worshipping household like that of Cornelius, Lydia, or Crispus, and was called an ekklesia, a word that does not mean what we understand ‘church’ to mean.

I want to share with you the picture of a house church in Portland, Oregon led by Rich and Kimberly Hagler (See below). Here are some of the important values that I see portrayed in what they call “the Isaiah 61 House Church”