Talk:House church

Should Simple Church be Merged?
I would not like to see this article merged, at least not at this point. Right now, the term "simple church" is used in some cricles instead of or in opposition to "house church" for several reasons that I've heard. First, some want a new name because they want to emphasize the missional component of simple church that has not always been present in some house church stereotypes. Second, some wish to distance themselves from the "grumpy" stereotype some have of the house church movement as being a movement of regular church drop-outs. Third, there is a significant group of practioners who do not plant churches exclusively in houses, so they find the term "house church" as referring to place, while simple church refers to ecclesiological values. While I use the terms as synonoyms to a certain extent, I am very aware that not all of those who prefer "simple church" would be happy with that. I think of all the reasons I've heard, the biggest reason why not to merge is that the difference in names reflects a difference in values for some.

Until the useage becomes synonomous and the newer "simple church" movement works out its identity in relation to the older and more established house church movement, merger would be premature. Oakiebsc 22:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I attend a "house church" and I would also not like to see a merging of the articles of "house church" and "simple church" The message of the two kinds of churches are different. The house churches have a scriptural backing for their actions and it is not just about making church simpler. It is about a restoration and an advancement in the blue print of the Master Planner. User: Mecartz

Thanks, Mecartz. You bring up a good point. Many feel references to meeting in houses in the Bible is linked strongly to the practice of "House Church". No such connection could be attached to "simple church". It fits the category of missional or ecclesiological method, not scriptural directive. I talked with a Missiologist and college professor who has studied house church, simple church, and similar movements this past week about the difference in the labels, and he seemed to agree. Based on this feedback, I've taken Alphachimp's advice and removed the merge request from "Simple Church". Oakiebsc 01:34, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

While simple churches tend to be house churches, house churches are not always simple churches. Many house churches desire to free themselves from restraints present in many denominations, yet they do not believe that church should be simplified as described in typical simple church philosophy.Edwardjones2320 (talk) 19:39, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Appropriate category?
Should this article really be part of the Pentecostal and charismatic category? Do all or most house churches fit this description? I'm not really familiar w/the movement (otherwise I wouldn't be asking this ;) Gwimpey 05:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

No, House Churches can come from any Christian tradition whatsoever.--Lance W. Haverkamp 01:43, 22 April 2006 (UTC) Doctorate in Ministry student.

Yes, house churches can and do come from many different Christian traditions, and one of the problems with the article as a whole is that it seems to assume only one form and understanding of house church, while not explicitly stating it. SteveH (talk) 02:26, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Some house churches (note small letter) are beginning to go 'post-Pentecost'. See Lev 23 where the feasts of the Lord, symbolic of New Testament worship, are enumerated. The constant truths of Passover and Pentecost (salvation and baptism of the Holy Spirit) still remain a foundation to be built upon in coming into the 'fullness' of Christ. Mecartz.

Home Church Month
IMHO, this section is just an announcement, and not worth including in a Wikipedia article, except possibly as a link. I hate to make such a major edit without discussion, though. --Hooponopono 19:52, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely; somebody ought to just take it off — especially since it's already past — and put in some meaningful information. Like some stuff about the Barna surveys, Revolution, and the like. The house church movement is too important to have such a small page. --God&#39;s Webmaster 23:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Major Edits
I agree. This article used to have a lot more information in it about "house church" and its origins but it appears that most of it has been removed. The whole article has changed to match the views of what some people who do house church want it to be. The announcment about House Church Month and the inclusion of what large organizations are supporting it now. These modifications seem to try to argue/prove the "credibility" of the house church movement rather than providing real information on a topic. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.116.125.25 (talk • contribs) 15:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I did some work on this page. Is that better? I went ahead and removed the cleanup tag; feel free to re-post it if you feel that this page needs more cleanup.--God&#39;s Webmaster 23:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Link Cleanup
1/4/2008: Based upon the recent edit history, there seem to be those who want to delete the links. There are also those who would like a large list of links. Yes ... I know Wikipedia is not a list of links, but I found most of them to be quite useful. I was sorry to see the link section bluntly cut to virtually nothing at the beginning of 2008. I will review the various Wikipedia policies and recommendations and try to come up with a viable and useful list. Perhaps I will create my own web page for the other links and then create an "other potential links of interest" link. As always, everyone else has a say in this. In the interest of full disclosure, I recorded the "sample house church interest meeting" when I could not find one anywhere on the web prior to our new house church having one. The link was quite popular with roughly 15 downloads per week. -MSchwab

I cleaned up and organized the "external links" section - it was getting to be a mess. In the interest of full disclosure, I am the webmaster of Free House Church Resources. I tried, however, not to vaunt our website over others.

Please note that the lists are alphabetized. Let's try to keep them that way. It is much more professional.--God&#39;s Webmaster 20:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

2007 First Annual International House Church Convention, Long Beach, CA (Jan. 26-28) Update
I bumped onto a House2House web page promoting a conference about house churches in Long Beach and signed up. My wife and I attended as observers just looking into the topic/movement. We learned many things, and wanted a way to share back. One of the presenters (Ori Brafman) illustrated his presentation by citing Wikipedia and comparing/contrasting it to the house church movement. The conference was the first of its kind for me, complete with first time errors, foibles and wonders. What I noticed there, and in research later, there is a lack of information/research/publication on the topics of legal, political, foci, sociological, alignment and conflict in favor of presenting only a few basic, easy to agree to points and views. That brought me to this article which I found very well written. It too, lacked or limited the topics mentioned above. Because this is the first time I have written anything in Wikipedia, I assume I am doing this completely incorrectly but with the intent to learn, understand, and contribute. Help nicely, please. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jerryocesq (talk • contribs) 21:45, 18 February 2007 (UTC).

Added correlations
I've added some correlations between the house church movement and other parachurch movements to the 'relation to' section. If anyone disagrees, I am happy to discuss. I want to demonstrate that I have been a part of several house churches, and am thrilled about Christ's work in individual lives. In an intellectual sense, though, I want to make sure we connect to the world around us and discover if and how the house church phenomenon is a part of a large momentum... and I believe God is intentional, so I think it's worth looking at. Thanks! Jwiley80 04:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Chinese "house church" leaders arrested
Should the news story about house church leaders being arrested in China be mentioned in this article? It seems relevant, since it is relevant to the perception of house churches in China. ~MDD4696 23:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Isn't there a separate articel on house churches in China? 68.39.174.238 (talk) 00:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Problems with this article
I think this article has some serious problems. First, it's very lightly referenced at best. Second, parts of it seem to be more of an essay than an encyclopedia article -- in particular, Scriptural basis and Structure and organization. Third, the External Links and the Recommended Books section are way out of hand -- there should be just a few carefully chosen external links instead of the current 50 or so, and from the books section, perhaps some could be used as references, and the most of the rest should probably be removed. I'm going to let this sit for a few days and collect comments, and then start doing some referencing and trimming of the article. -- ArglebargleIV 14:33, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Get rid of that giant pile of links and books. Let's get that down to maybe 3 or 4 links, and a book or two. I added a reference, but we need more for the article.GusChiggins21 (talk) 21:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The EL section is now just the DMOZ category (Which should prevent people adding their own site for no reason). 68.39.174.238 (talk) 00:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC) PS. Those books are extremely under cited: An author and title only, not even a publisher. I would recommend dropping that entire section and letting the references section do the book and site recommending.

Baptist Home Churches
Home church and simple church seem like the same except the simple church is even more flexible to meeting places. Other than this a variety of names can be attached for doctrinal distinctives. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Samuraibill (talk • contribs) 06:56, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Transparent Bias
This article does not even attempt to hide its baised point of view. This article needs a significant overhall to meet the standards of impartiality. There should also be the addition of an objective "criticism" section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 214.13.168.180 (talk) 11:31, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, "Criticism" sections should be avoided (see criticism). That being said, if you'd like to work on it, go right ahead!  TheAE  talk / sign  17:33, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Chinese Traslation
I don't think that house church should be translated as"地下天國"in Chinese.We usually say"家庭教会"——Ri green (talk) 15:56, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Indiscriminate Deleting of Links?
Hi there. I recently added two links, to

http://housechurchresource.org

and

http://www.simplechurch.com

They were deleted seconds later, with this cited as the reasoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:75.177.182.45&redirect=no

"Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a collection of links, nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam guideline for further explanations. Because Wikipedia uses the nofollow attribute value, its external links are disregarded by most search engines. If you feel the link should be added to the article, please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. Thank you."

I take exception to the presumption on the part of Mr.Ollie. I am not affiliated with either the House Church Resource or Simple Church websites, but have used them both to locate and discuss house churches in times past. There is also no obvious advertising or promotional interest. Both of these sites carry ads, but so do the NBC and Time Magazine sites that have been deigned appropriate to remain. If only news articles are listed as additional resources, readers will have a limited idea of what real-life house churches do and are about. This severely restricts the breadth of the external links.

Thank you for considering.

75.177.182.45 (talk) 16:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Mike, a ten-year house church veteran.
 * The removals were correct. The link you added did not add any encyclopedic material to the article.  Them From  Space  16:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Original research
I'm having a look at the article now. One thing I would like is if we could actually have some citations to third party reliable sources on the scriptural basis of house churches. We have a list in House church of verses in the Bible that support it, but that looks a bit too much like original research to me. Instead, ideally, we would have citations pointing to sources that talk about how people in the house church movement interpret the Bible as to give scriptural support. They'd probably end up citing the same scripture, but it'd be better if Wikipedia were citing house church movement people talking about the Bible rather than citing the Bible directly in the voice of God Wikipedia. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:34, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

+ POV tag 06/2014
The article, besides containing original research as suggested above, uses Christian missionary writers as sources. This makes it blatantly biased. The article also contained (I have removed it) a totally unreferenced and unreliable list of the number and membership of house churches around the world.--79.17.79.245 (talk) 11:23, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Since user Abishai 300, who on his own user page explicitly says to be here on Wikipedia to impose his Christian agenda, has reverted the unreliable information contained in the article prior to my revision, it is of importance to report here, for all readers, what are the unreliable sources used that I have removed:


 * jesus org uk, or the Jesus Army
 * journalistic article of The Guardian

These aren't reliable sources. They are blatantly non-neutral Christian websites and articles by journalists who, by definition, aren't scholars but just report the rumors of the day.--79.7.79.215 (talk) 12:36, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * User Changeful, who primarily works on Chinese Christian controversial movements (such as the cult Eastern Lightning), has reverted again the article claiming that I am imposing the line of the Chinese government, when I am unrelated to the government of China and I am trying to make the article neutral and reliable, credible. The mention of the Chinese name in the lede is unneeded, since this article treats "house church" all over the world, and the list of numbers is unreliable, as discussed above.--87.13.111.241 (talk) 19:10, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * You have not only been removing the name, you have been expunging any mention that there exist "house churches" in China. Changeful (talk) 20:13, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * False. The diffs confirm.--79.25.28.5 (talk) 18:18, 17 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The Jesus Army website is not something this article should ever be citing. The Guardian article is a reasonable piece of popular reportage on the phenomena of Chinese house churches. The article as it currently stands relies too heavily on confessional sources rather than academic/scholarly sources. I've added one scholarly source today: the Floyd V. Filson article in the Journal of Biblical Literature which discusses the role of house churches in the development of the early church during and immediately after the apostolic period. I'll try to add more from the Filson source. Like a lot of religion articles on Wikipedia, we really need to trade in a lot of the self-published church blog type of sources for some actual scholarly work carried out with a modicum of academic neutrality. —Tom Morris (talk) 23:25, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Editorialising
I agree with User:AndyTheGrump I have added back the POV template the following two sections are not neutrally written and have no place in an encyclopaedia they are editorialising.

"Many traditional churches fall into a pattern of establishing ever-increasing quantities of church programs that detract from the core basics of Christian life within the church. The pastor and other elders can often be seen as the cause of this problem, however, the demand of the congregation and community seeking a variety of church programs tends to facilitate the creation of more and more nonessential church activities. The result is a program driven church which drifts away from the biblical model of church found in the New Testament. To reverse this process, the church leaders need to be resolute about the purpose of the assembly and come to grips with the fact that a certain number of current church members will leave the congregation and attend elsewhere. The church should be an extension of Christ's kingdom and not a collection of people following a particular business model which has the goal of ever-increasing expansion at the price of quality."

"Some search long and hard for proper church fellowship but then fade out of the picture when the search proves unsuccessful. People are looking for Jesus but instead, often find programs, guilt and Smalltalk. Those looking for fulfilling church experiences might find "fog machines and Five-Simple-Steps-to-Spiritual-Growth and fill-in-the-blank Bible studies" instead. After giving up in disappointment, many sleep in Sunday mornings or go to the farmers market. Other social gathering places, such as taverns, don't ask people to get "plugged in" or ask them to serve in nursery duty for an eternity of Sunday's. They can just sit down and feel like they belong which is how the church should make them feel"

I suggest both sections are removed again. Theroadislong (talk) 20:21, 1 March 2015 (UTC)


 * There can be no question about this - it is not the job of an encyclopaedia to make assertions about what the 'core basics' of a Christian church should be, what the 'Biblical model' of the church is, or what 'church leaders' should be doing. I am going to remove this grossly-inappropriate editorialising again - and if it is restored without prior consensus, I will report the matter, with the aim of determining what sanctions the Wikipedia community considers necessary to preserve the integrity of the encyclopaedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:41, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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Proposed merge of Simple church into House church
Not clear that Simple church is notable as an independent movement. Most of the citations on that page are discussing house churches and small group movements generally, not simple church in particular. Daask (talk) 14:29, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Klbrain (talk) 15:06, 2 January 2021 (UTC)