House Church - Simple-Strategic-Scriptural
Steve Atkerson and his contributors have the audacity to claim that his radical ideas for church life are normative, not optional. If Atkerson is right, then the mammoth evangelical church structure which is part of our mental furniture doesn't even have a right to exist. His stance reminds me of the cheeky blurb on the cover of Frank Viola's and George Barna's best-selling Tyndale House publicationPagan Christianitywhich states confidentally: Most of what present-day Christians do in church each Sunday is rooted, not in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles. Mr. Atkerson is interested in the Christian church life that happened before the death of the apostles, not in the pagan institutions which afterwards came to be known as the Christian institutional church. He emphasizes and develops a theology of apostolic traditions which I have not seen elsewhere in house church literature. His ideas for church might seem radical, but his theology is very conservative, based in the Christian Bible and the apostles who wrote it.One might object that perhaps because of the scriptural and how-to emphases of the book, that one might overlook more ultimate reasons for doing church in the home, such as union with Christ, intimate relationships with fellow-believers, and personal spiritual growth. Mr. Atkerson responds:This book is thus about wineskins. What really matters, of course, is the wine itself, not the skin... However, if a church genuinely does have new life in Christ, then a careful study of wineskins is critical to insure that the wine is enjoyed to its fullest.This book's critical attention to the ecclesiological wineskin of the New Testament church is what makes the book almost unique. Most house church books talk about relationships, and it's just Jesus, not the programs, and so on. This book provides the balance. This book talks about apostolic patterns, things which we as obedient Christians ought to imitate. This idea is not popular, even among house church folks among whom it should be an article of faith. No other house church ministry that I know of emphasizes like this book does the normative, scriptural nature of the house church idea.As lonely as Steve Atkerson and his contributors may be in the modern world, he stands among giants when he calls for a return to normative New Testament patterns. He quotes an early Southern Baptist theologian J. L. Dagg:"[apostles] have taught us by example how to organize and govern churches... Instead of choosing to walk in a way of our own devising, we should take pleasure to walk in the footsteps of those holy men from whom we have received the word of life . . ."Atkerson quotes Roger Williams, the founder of religious liberty in America and the founder of the state of Rhode Island, to the same effect. He also cites Watchman Nee, the famous Chinese writer and founder of the underground Little Flock movement in Communist China:"We must return to the beginning. Only what God has set forth as our example in the beginning is the eternal Will of God. It is the Divine standard and our pattern for all time . . . God has revealed His Will, not only by giving orders, but by having certain things done in His church, so that in the ages to come others might simply look at the pattern and know His will."The book is balanced and broadly appealing. Family life, and ministry apart from the church (apostles and elders) are given attention.House Churchuses scholarly work outside of the house church tradition. Its authors are geographically diverse (USA, Europe, India). Several have had extensive experience traveling overseas teaching what is in the book. In addition, the book carefully avoids modern theological controversies. --Dan Trotter