HIDDEN CHURCH

Rom 16:5 _ Greet also the church that meets at their house (also 1 Cor 16:19, Col 4:5, Acts 2:46-47)

I saw Joel Osteen this morning, not in Houston of course (haha), but via live stream. He’s got his live
band and live singers. Lights are good… Cameras in place... Joel in his usual element, the passionate,
positive, inspiring kind that he is. Normally, I would see Joel and I would say “Wowww”. As I was
watching him pray this time though, the cameras are panning, and at one point, one camera wandered
through the auditorium, and the chairs are empty. And I felt strange. I guess I felt a little sorry for the
guy. Here’s the guy who has the largest congregation in the US, but this time, the congregation is not in
sight.

All across the globe, churches are trying to improvise on how to have some semblance of the Sunday
worship. “Worship-on-line”, church people call it. Some pastors are only able to stream their preaching.
Other pastors are able to come up with more variety – live praise and worship, media presentations,
testimonies, the preaching or course, and then some more (and voila, the church has its own variety
show).

For hundreds of years, we only know of one church model – the big congregational meeting. But there is
actually another church model that is not so familiar to many of us. And that is the “house church”.

Back in the early beginnings of the church, believers met in houses, not in church buildings. Believers
met in houses for fellowship, worship, ministry, disciple-making, and more. The believers ate together
and worship together in houses. They met in smaller groups, I guess, as much as the house can
accommodate. The early believers did not have the luxury of technology we now have, but they didn’t
have trouble being a church – the small way.

Somehow, the model of the church in the house got lost in time, especially when the Roman Empire has
finally recognized Christianity and made its official religion. Cathedral-type building arose and
throughout the centuries, we’ve come to know the church that way.

The 20th century saw the reintroduction of the church in small form. Paul Yongi Cho of South Korea
popularized the idea of “cell” where small groups of believers met every week, not in the church
building but in their homes or in their work places. Because of the success of the “cell” model, many
churches attempted to adopt the concept in their own context. Many failed but also many succeeded.
The most successful adaptation I think is through the G12 movement which started in Latin America.

Then there’s the modern house church movement. This movement proposes that the only valid church
model is the small model – the “house church”. This movement comprises of networks of small groups
of believers meeting in houses (they see church buildings as unnecessary), not necessarily on Sundays
but on any given day of the week. The exponential growth of the underground church in China may be
due to a large extent to these networks of house churches.

Somebody has intimated with me that maybe God sent COVID19 (graciously) because he was serious
about closing our churches so we might consider being in house churches as before. I am inclined to
agree; though, I really don’t know. The thing is, just as soon as this pandemic is over, churches will surely
be in big meetings again.
But for the time being (or maybe for all time), maybe this is God’s will for us. If the church is God’s
family, then what can better represent it than individual families, praying together, worshipping
together, studying together, fellowshipping together, serving together, loving together, caring for one
another, forgiving one another, protecting one another… ?