"the house church..."

"The house church is a way of living the Christian life communally in ordinary homes through supernatural power. It is the way redeemed people live locally. It is the organic way disciples follow Jesus together in everyday life. Since the redeemed no longer belong to themselves, they adopt a mainly communal, rather than purely private and individualistic, lifestyle. House churches emerge when truly converted people stop living their own life for their own ends, start living in a community life according to the values of the Kingdom of God, and start to share their life and resources with those Christians and not-yet-Christians around themselves.

"It is the result of the conviction that we do not only experience Jesus Christ and His Spirit in sacred rooms dedicated for that express purpose, but in the midst of life. In that sense, the organic house church is the death bed of egoism, and therefore the birthplace of the church. True community starts where individualism ends. Art Katz, a Messianic Jew who lived in community much of his life, says:

"'Community life pulverizes you old ego in the power of the Spirit of God, and rescues you from just living a miserable private life, where after loving each other during a one-hour worship service a week we rush home.... We need to start to function as a part of the fellowship of the redeemed. As the redeemed, we do not go home after a service, we are at home with each other.'"

Houses that Change the World, Wolfgang Simson, p79-80.