The majority of books on House Church were published 25-35 years ago so it’s delightful to find a recently published book. It’s even more delightful when the book is worth reading and full of wisdom. Rex Whitman’s book House Church Now was published in 2023 and I highly recommend it. The excerpt below is about the importance of communication.
For genuine community to exist, communication is also necessary, and in fact, a community without communication is a contradiction in terms. Communication, by its very nature, is the clear exchange of information that serves to deepen and enrich the experience of community. In the basic process of communication theory an idea formed in the mind is transmitted through words and received by another person who then offers a response to the original idea. This process is repeated over and over until both parties reach a state of clarity, but whenever the process is short-circuited, communication dies and community decays. As I have stated elsewhere, this process of communication occurred naturally in the informal setting of an early house church where believers could comfortably discuss and interact over the scriptures to seek clarity on the will of God for their community.
But communication is more than simply a symbolic exchange of information or ideas; it also serves a vital social function. As proof of this fact, we are all fully aware that a meal without conversation can actually feel cold and uncomfortable. In addition, we also instinctively know that there are times when far more may be communicated by a hug or a simple act of caring than could ever be communicated in words. Communication may sometimes even seem confusing, but whether by means of symbolic communication with words or the social communication of actions, both of these aspects are necessary for healthy, genuine community to occur.
In addition to this, good communication is necessary for the healing of relationships within a community, and serves to prevent potential misunderstandings or divisions that might arise. This communication must be open, honest, and tempered by grace for genuine community to exist. Disingenuous surface communication is powerless to create actual community, and over time, the pretense becomes burdensome and even exhausting as it becomes more difficult to maintain the façade.
In genuine community, however, real people wrestle with real life and real truth to find real answers to real problems, and if you have anything other than these four elements, you probably don’t have community. Salt may look very similar to sugar, but you should never mistake one for the other, or your final product will be disappointing, at best. A few years ago, rushing to make a pitcher of Kool-Aid for a group of children in my backyard, I added salt rather than sugar to the mixture. Bad mistake! It tasted horrible and no one was impressed with my new recipe. So, if you think you can create genuine community without the right ingredients, know this, you can’t! And whatever your best intentions, you will impress no one, and as a result, be left with a very bad taste in your mouth. But as we consider the elements of genuine community, it is also important we examine the process.
Community is built upon relationships, and churches that desire a healthy, genuine, and relational community need to consider the process leading toward this goal. This process usually begins with casual contact, a friendly hello, an exchange of niceties, and some basic information on your job, your children, and where you live. But these are only the seeds of genuine community, and sadly, many churches fail to water these seeds to grow relationships beyond the level of casual contact. In many cases, people do not possess even this basic information about the people sitting right next to them on a Sunday morning. In a house church, however, the very size, structure, and informality of this small body of believers invites a deeper understanding of the people who gather there. This deeper understanding phase of community collects further information about hobbies, interests, life experiences, and a host of other details not covered in the casual contact phase of relational community. After a period, this additional information serves to strengthen relational connections as individuals discover that there are other people with whom they have much in common. As this growing identification with other individuals becomes evident, invitations are given for further discussion over a cup of coffee or a shared meal. This people-to-people phase begins to move a house church in the direction of a genuine community. As trust builds in these relationships, members expand their understanding of community, accepting other members into their circle of trust until, somewhere along the way, they begin to perceive themselves as a gathering of fellow travelers walking together on the same journey to the same destination. At this phase, group identity and group loyalty become more evident, and members begin to rejoice in the experience of their common journey, perceiving that they are far more than a conglomeration of individual travelers. Discovering that they have now become a unified body, they begin to experience the reality of genuine community, realizing that they possess a common nature in Christ, a common truth in his word, and a common mission entrusted to each of them. To briefly review, here are the five phases leading toward a genuine community:
Phase #1 – The Casual Contact Phase
Phase #2 – The Deeper Understanding Phase
Phase #3 – The People-to-People Connection Phase
Phase #4 – The Fellow Traveler Phase
Phase #5 – The Unified Body Phase
In all of this, we recognize the need to be intentional about creating a genuine community. And while knowing the limitations of artificial community, we are also fully aware of the essence, the elements, and the process leading to genuine community. The modern church has often failed to understand the importance of a healthy community that glorifies the God who dwells in our midst. May God renew our desire for community. May He remind us again of its importance; and may we rediscover its joys.
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