House Church:es Small But Potent
If you have not read Part 1, go here first:
Picking back up with our speaker that I mentioned in Part 1, I would like to share with you an amazing statistic he shared with us today. He has been speaking to us about house churches: how to start them, how to raise up leaders, how to see them thrive long term and how to evaluate their health. Being interested in how effective this particular model is, I raised my hand and asked him (after 3 days of hearing him talk about planting house churches) to tell us more about his own movement. He is a very humble man and had volunteered very little information about his “success” beyond letting us know that the average house church in his movement is 35 people in size (which is actually quite large for a house church!). I was hoping to hear that he had 10 or 20 churches started.
His answer stunned us! He told us that he began planting house churches in 2005. Last month, February of 2012, they evaluated their movement and found that there are currently about 18,000 house churches in their movement! Notice, I did not say 18,000 “people” but 18,000 CHURCHES. If you do the math (18,000 X 35) this means that there are 635,000 followers of Jesus as a result of their movement that began only 7 years ago! Their goal is to have 100,000 house churches planted by 2016. He was quick to add “now, this is only a drop in the ocean compared to the need.” He left us to our own conclusions…but I am sitting here blown away. I hope you are too! Of course this is happening all over the world and his report is only one of many such reports I have heard, but somehow having this somewhat soft spoken man in our class for 3 days share this with us was amazing!
Keep in mind that they fully target those who do not yet believe. They are local and indigenous (i.e. this man is an African man who was not raised in a Christian family) and are reaching those who are not followers of Christ. Their movement is self-replicating and doesn’t require any strong leader to keep it going. Our speaker could stop working today and this movement would, in all likelihood, continue to thrive and multiply long into the future. Why? Because he has raised up indigenous leaders and the movement is not dependent upon him. Can you see why we are excited about planting house churches as a effective means of spreading the gospel?
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