The quotes on the nature of church from House Church and Mission by Roger Gehring are ... mind boggling, paradigm-shifting... 

Gehring:  Church centered in the home    4/2005 

The quotes on the nature of church from House Church and Mission by Roger Gehring are ... mind boggling, paradigm-shifting...  (These quotes begin on page 9 of my summary of "House Church and Mission".) 

Gehring:  “The large part played by the house churches affords a partial explanation of the great attention paid to family life in the letters of Paul and in the other Christian writings.  It must not be forgotten that in both Jewish and Gentile life religious observance had been largely centered in the home.”  Quoting Filson, p. 3  (Note that Gehring's book represents not only his own study of Scripture but also a survey of the work of a number of other NT scholars writing on this subject.)

JW:  In his marvelous book "Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith", Marvin Wilson confirms this fact.  "Foundational to all theory on the biblical concept of family is the Jewish teaching that the home is more important than the synagogue. In Jewish tradition, the center of religious life has always been the home. The Church has yet to grapple seriously with this crucial concept." p. 216. 

This represents a huge paradigm shift for most Americans who have been "trained" to believe that "religious observance" is centered in the church (the church building, Sunday worship services, etc.).  Church and family are seen as two separate and distinct entities.  A return (re-formation?) to NT values would mean reuniting church and family. 

Gehring:  “Of fundamental importance is Elliott’s insight that ‘households thus constituted the focus, locus and nucleus of the ministry and mission of the Christian movement.’”  P. 6  (Here we have another NT scholar quoted.)

JW:  Spend some time thinking about this sentence.  If it is true (and I think it is!), the ramifications are immense.  If taken seriously, every evangelical seminary in the country would have to completely revamp their curriculum.  Every parachurch ministry would have to rework their entire strategy for mission. And so on... 

"Households are the focus of ...ministry and mission"  Focus = the primary thing you give attention to.  Not church programs.  Not church buildings.  Not church budgets.  Not church staffing.  Not youth programs.  Not Sunday School.  Households!  Mothers and fathers and children and relatives and the people they are in relationship with.

"Households are the locus of...ministry and mission".  Locus = the physical location.  Again, not the church building.  But also not (primarily) the workplace or the school.  Households!  Ministry and mission primarily took place in the home and from the home.

"Households are the nucleus of...ministry and mission."  Nucleus = the centerpoint from which everything else grows.  Our phrase is "the marriage (and then the family) is the first and most foundational expression of church".  Not (first of all) the Board of Elders or a leadership team or core group.  A family is (potentially) an embryonic church. 

Question:  How do you get lots of "grown ups"?

Answer:  Start with lots of embryos.  (This simple concept gives us a clue about the phenomenal growth of the early church.  As someone has said, "Christianity conquered the Roman Empire one house at a time.")

In the "ministry and mission of the Christian movement" in the First Century, the household was primary.  Everything else was secondary.

John White
Lk10 Community Facilitator