Church Refugees by Josh Packard

Author:Josh Packard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Group Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2015-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

We didn’t find any evidence among our respondents that they were leaving churches where they had great relationships with people just because they hated the large, corporate worship gathering. Rather, they turned to house churches and similar gatherings because they found them to be the only way to cultivate the kinds of spiritual relationships they were after.

Ethan explained how he and his family came to a house church. He wasn’t searching for a group of people with whom he always agreed. He was searching for a place where he could be a full participant and engage meaningfully in the activities of his worship and faith community.

From 2001 on, all we’ve done is house church. We tried planting a few churches, but all I found was this top-down model that’s just repulsive to us. This model of who has the best advertising, and it’s all about Sunday morning. My experience is that churches aren’t really that different. You either dress up or you dress down, but you go, and there’s an order of service. Generally there’s an opening prayer, announcements, the offering, then 30 to 40 minutes of preaching, a prayer, and you go home. We wanted relationships that just couldn’t be formed, in our experience, in that structure.

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