Going to Church in the First Century

Rating:
Summary: Visitor to an early Christian house church tells about it.
Review: Robert Banks, together with his late wife, Julie, have been leading voices in the movement of Christians away from the institutional church and back to the homes, where it all started.

In this book, Dr. Banks sets forth a fictional account of a visit to a first-century house church. Sharing a meal, talking about the simple things of ordinary life, praying together -- a picture of what it means to BE the church, instead of just going to church.

Rating:
Summary: WARNING!
Review: WARNING: This book could turn your world upside down! When we look at the Book of Acts, it's clear that church was much, much more than punching the clock on Sunday morning-it was a way of life. The church also wasn't any particular building or institution-it consisted of communities of friends, family members, co-workers, and neighbors who gathered together in homes for worship, prayer, reading Scripture (including the Gospels and Epistles as they became available), fellowship, and a communion meal. Unlike other recent books on house church, this book doesn't try to present an argument for house churches, it just depicts a very accurate but simple story of what it would have been like to attend a church meeting in the 1st Century. Read it and you'll realize that church was more like a family barbecue than whatever it is we've turned it into today. Utilizing relational house churches today might be a great way to reach people who don't want to attend an institutionalized meeting in a church building, but value the opportunity to gather with family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors in a manner similar to the church of the 1st Century.

Rating:
Summary: Eye-opening account of First Century church
Review: When I was growing up, I would read accounts of church in the Bible and see in my mind rows of pews facing a pulpit. My own experience of church distorted my reading of Scripture. But even for those of us who have long since quit visualizing rows of pews when we read accounts of New Testament worship, the tendency to read our own experience back onto the text, and so to miss much of what was really going on, is always at work.

Almost every congregation I work with as a consultant likes to think of itself as a New Testament church, yet every one of them, in very basic ways, ignores many of the core principles that shaped the New Testament church. Not intentionally, to be sure, but out of ignorance of how the New Testament church related or from a largely unexamined assumption that some very radical differences between New Testament practices and ours are superficial, with no consequence for the vitality of church life or the effectiveness of its mission.

This carefully researched fictionalized account of a first century house church meeting gives the reader the flavor of a community worship experience that few of us have personally experienced, and so gives us a glimpse of what we may be missing when we settle for "church as usual." And it can show us just how far we have strayed from the New Testament pattern with some of our modern practices and concerns.

A couple of churches I have worked with have struggled with the question, "Is it okay to have meals in the church building?" In the house church meeting dramatized in this booklet, the fellowship meal is the central event of the worship. In emphasizing the importance of eating together for nurturing Christian community, I have told some churches that for the New Testament church, the question would not be, "Is it okay to have a meal at church?" but rather, "Is it possible to have church without eating together?"

For anyone who wants to catch the flavor of what going to church in the first century was like, this booklet is a delightful read.