The Future of House Church

As I mentioned in the previous post, Karen and I attended the House2Harvest house church conference in Dallas, TX. There were over 400 people from around the world in attendance. Many prophetic words about the future of house church were issued by the speakers and those attending. Here are a few:

• Mega churches, community churches, and house churches working together to pastor a city and build the Kingdom.
• Large scale evangelistic meetings working with house church networks to handle the harvest from the events.
• Alpha Course being used to locate people of peace and plant new house churches.
• Missions will adjust to include our local cities. God will call people out of the house churches to be local missionaries. We will pray, fast, lay hands, and send them out into our communities. We will support them financially, just as we do international missionaries.
• God is calling us to radical giving - way beyond the tithe. We are so blessed here in the U.S. and other places have so little. Let's start selling our stuff, downsizing our lives, and use the money to take care of the needy and build the Kingdom.
• The Lord of the Harvest is preparing the workers for a huge harvest. House churches are simple to start and multiply quickly, which is why God is calling so many people into house church planting.

For the first 3 centuries, Christians met in houses. For about 1700 years, God has used and will continue to use the traditional church to reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ. He is also pouring out a new wine into a new wineskin called house or simple church. Church is not a building or a place you go on Saturday night or Sunday morning. We, the Believers, are the Church. Wherever we go and wherever we meet, it's church. God has a big plan, that no one is left behind, and that is going to require a huge harvest and many laborers. House church will play a big part in that and we, at The Open Door, are excited to be smack dab in the middle of His plan.