emerging church, emergent, simple church, house church, home church.
Friday, February 23
the pope on home church
So what does the current Pope (Benedict XVI) have to say about home church? Well check this out from his General Audience in the vatican City on Feb 7th this year;
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Taking a step forward in this kind of portrait gallery of the witnesses to Christian faith that we started a few weeks ago, today we consider a married couple. The couple in question are Priscilla and Aquila, who have their place among the circle of numerous collaborators drawn to the apostle Paul, and whom I already briefly mentioned last Wednesday. Based on the information we have, this married couple developed a very active role at the time of the post-paschal origins of the Church.
When the apostle Paul writes his First Letter to the Corinthians from Ephesus, together with his characteristic greetings, he explicitly mentions "Aquila and Prisca, together with the church at their house" (1 Corinthians 16:19).
...In this way we come to know the hugely important role this couple played in the sphere of the primitive Church: that of welcoming in their own home the group of local Christians when they got together to listen to the Word of God and to celebrate the Eucharist.
It is precisely that type of gathering that in Greek is called "ekklesìa" -- the Latin word is "ecclesia" -- the Italian "chiesa" -- that means assembly, gathering. So, in the house of Aquila and Priscilla, the Church gets together, the Church summoned by Christ, which celebrates here the Sacred Mysteries.
In this way we can see the very birth of the reality of the Church in the homes of the believers. Christians, in fact, until around the third century, did not have their own places of worship: At first, they gathered in Jewish synagogues, until the original symbiosis between the Old and New Testament was dissolved and the Church of the people was forced to give itself its own identity, always deeply rooted in the Old Testament.
Then, after this "split," they gather in the homes of Christians, which in this way become "Church." And finally, in the third century, authentic (???!!!) buildings for Christian worship were born.
But here, in the first half of the first century as in the second century, Christian houses become true and proper "church." As I have said, they read Scripture together and celebrated the Eucharist. That was what used to happen, for example, in Corinth, where Paul mentions a certain "Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church" (Romans 16:23), or in Laodicea, where the community would get together in the house of a certain Nympha (Colossians 4:15), or in Colossae, where the gathering would take place in the house of a certain Archippus (cf. Philemon 2).
... One further lesson we cannot neglect to take from their example: Every house can be transformed into a small church. Not only in the sense that, therein, Christian love, typically made of altruism and mutual care, should reign, but even more in the sense that the whole of family life, founded on faith, is called to revolve around the sole lordship of Jesus Christ.
Thank you for this great blog. Our church did a study on Aquila and Priscilla just a few weeks ago. I'm sure the pope would have been at home among us.
Phillip Walters Yeppoon, Queensland, Australia backyardbelievers.blogspot.com
Something is happening across Britain today: a new kind of church is beginning to appear; increasing numbers of
christians (recent research suggests between 40 & 100,000) are starting to gather in homes, colleges and work places.
Living out a 24-7 faith, they are missionally focused with a 'go to them' dynamic instead of a 'come to us' invitation.
These communities are small, fluid, organic, reproducible and most of all simple; so simple that any believer would respond
by saying "I could do that!"
The aim of this site is to connect, report and resource these new groups.
If you'd like to know more check out the vision page.
