House Church Q&A

About The Church in the House

SUMMARY
It is my firm belief that by the year 2000, there will be a house church movement in every country on earth. I
believe it is the only way we will see the fulfillment of the Great Commission by the year 2000, or by any date
thereafter. It is already beginning to happen. God is speaking THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE to people
everywhere. The ground work has been laid over the past 25 years through what has happened worldwide in
the broad acceptance of the cell group movement.
Not so long ago it was highly questionable to start a house group of any kind outside the church buildings
themselves for fear that it would draw people away from the “church.” Now these groups are seen as very
desirable as a means of church growth. But God is calling us to take a further step and recognize that we can
actually have a church, in the fullest sense of the word, in a house.
Some of the largest congregations in the world today had their beginning in a house. When did it become a
church? Was it a church when it had ten people and met in a house? or when it had a thousand people and met
in a specially designed building called a “church”? The answer is obvious. It was a church when it began in the
house and if it had continued to meet in a house, it would have continued to be a church.
God is stirring and shaking our present church structures and bringing us back to basics. Much of what we now
have come to think of as essential is not really essential at all. When we look at the simplicity of the New
Testament church and compare it with the institutionalized church of our day we see little, if any, resemblance at
all. The church in some countries looks more like a corporation. Denominational hierarchies consisting of huge
networks that, in many cases, are ruled over along political lines rather than through God-ordained spiritual
authority. This has caused immeasurable grief and division for hundreds of years.
May God give us the insight, the humility, and the grace to admit how far we have strayed from the simplicity
and the purity of the New Testament church and return to it in brokenness and repentance.

Robert Fitts