Simson, Wolfgang | House Church Book

The House Church Book: Rediscover the Dynamic, Organic, Relational, Viral Community Jesus Started
Wolfgang Simson

Paperback: Barna Books, 2009, 208pp.

Introduction

Wolfgang Simson’s The House Church Book is, as its title implies, a book about a particular model of church: the house church. For those of us interested in living the Word, one of the richest benefits of this book is that the house church model is especially amenable to cultivating the four key practices: radical kinship, table fellowship, participatory worship, and active disciplemaking. Simson sees the house church as an alternative to traditional forms of church rather than as a supplement to them. This approach is based on a detailed explanation of what a house church is and isn’t. The House Church Book was published in 2009, and drew upon many years of Simson’s experience, reaching back to well before the turn of the century. 

Simson begins with an historical account of how the New Testament house churches of the first century morphed over time into the traditional congregations that we know in the twentieth and twenty-first century. The key turn in the history that Simson recounts is the Roman Emperor Constantine’s establishing of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire in the early fourth century. “The church needed to be ‘fit for a king,’ and his company,” Simson writes, “which meant meeting in cathedrals rather than shabby houses. Thus, the great divide between clergy and laity not only emerged, but was also sanctioned, institutionalized, sealed, and protected by the state” (19). 

In contrast to the traditional congregation with its Constantinian history and the related legacy of professional clergy and extraordinary church buildings, Simson wants to recover a first century way of being church that gathers in houses. He writes: “The house church is a way of living the Christian life communally in ordinary homes through supernatural power. It is the way that redeemed people live locally, the organic way disciples follow Jesus together in everyday life. Since the redeemed no longer belong to themselves, they adopt a corporate – rather than a private and individualistic – lifestyle. House churches emerge when truly converted people stop living their own lives for their own ends, and begin living a community life according to the values of the Kingdom of God, sharing their lives and resources with those Christians and not-yet-Christians around them” (31).

Following the example of the first century house churches, the house church model that Simson describes provides a rich context for cultivating the four key practices of the Live the Word initiative.

Active Disciplemaking

Discipleship is the fundamental aim of the house church, and particularly, the small size and intimacy of the house church play a key role in cultivating discipleship. Simson writes: “Discipleship was never really meant to be one to one; it is a function of community. Next to the Holy Spirit, peer pressure may be the strongest teacher on earth, as parents of teenagers will agree. The house church allows for a redeemed use of peer pressure: living out a healthy and loving accountability with each other, learning new Kingdom values from each other, and helping each other to live out this new lifestyle. No one is left to handle individual and secret struggles alone, and each therefore quickly matures'' (10). Simson also highlights the capacity of the house church to disciple and cultivate the gifts of those that are often marginalized in traditional church settings including the disabled and the elderly. One striking idea that he offers in this regard is encouraging and equipping “people who are housebound to develop their homes into house churches'' (126). 

Participatory Worship

The house church, as Simson describes it, is a non-hierarchical community, where all members are equipped to participate in the life and worship of the community. “Like the [ancient Judaic] Temple,” Simson writes, “the house church has a flat structure. The various tasks are not executed by people within a hierarchy, but by those who are uniquely gifted for particular ministries, people who are relating to each other as redeemed friends and submitting themselves to each other. In the New Testament, there was no inferiority or superiority among the members of the church, but equality. No one was more important than others (I Corinthians 12:21-25), but everyone simply had to fulfill a different function within the body” (84). 

In the house church, the nature of worship is also broader, allowing for the gifts of all members to bloom and bear fruit. Simson notes that: “true New Testament worship has much more to do with Spirit-filled obedience (Romans 12:1-2) than with music and singing ‘worship’ songs. Our worship must center on the unquestioning readiness to lay aside life, limb, possessions, family, house, friendships, evangelical respectability – everything – to see the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14)” (127).

Table Fellowship

Table fellowship is also central to the house church. “Christians meet to eat,” writes Simson, “When Jesus taught people, it usually involved meeting them in their homes, eating and drinking whatever they offered. Typically, the teaching occurred right at the table surrounded by children and visitors, not just after a meal or in an artificial setup. Similarly, the house church is a table community, sharing real food. The Lord’s Supper was a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning, not a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning” (34). Simson goes on to emphasize that eating together with those who, in the world’s understanding of status, we might not have reason to associate with, is a key marker of the household of God, the reconciled community that God is bringing into existence.

Radical Kinship

Some aspects of the practice of radical kinship have been identified in the three practices above, including the non-hierarchical status of the church community and diverse members sharing food as family members in table fellowship. Simson also highlights the ways that meeting in a home (versus a church building) opens the doors for kinship with those of other faiths and those who might be alienated from Christianity by the ways that traditional Christianity has aligned itself with the power systems of the state. For many Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, entering a church building itself is a spiritual, cultural, social, and philosophical problem. As relational family-style house churches develop – similar in style to the extended family culture from which these three religions have come – a more welcoming and less taboo environment is created, helping people raised in other faiths to learn about Jesus Christ in an appropriate fashion” (121).

Because of its capacity to cultivate these key practices, the house church as Simson describes it, is a compelling model for what church might look like. Simson’s focus on house churches as a radical alternative to the traditional churches he critiques might impose a barrier for some in those traditional church settings. However, there are many fruitful ideas in this book that are worth exploring in our churches, whether traditional, house church, or otherwise.