Does God need a house? He who made the heavens and the earth, does he dwell in temples made with hands? What crass ignorance this is! No house beneath the sky is more holy than the place where a Christian lives, and eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and praises the Lord in all that he does, and there is no worship more heavenly than that which is presented by holy families, devoted to the fear of the Lord.
Charles Spurgeon
As the church started in the home, it is going to come back to the home.
J. Vernon McGee
The church is never a place, but always a people; never a fold but always a flock; never a sacred building but always a believing assembly. The church is you who pray, not where you pray. A structure of brick or marble can no more be the church than your clothes of serge or satin can be you. There is in this world…no sanctuary of man but the soul.
John Havlick, Southern Baptist pastor
The expression ‘in church’ (en ekklesia)…refers to an assembly of believers. There is no suggestion of a special building. Indeed, the idea of a church as representing a building is totally alien to the NT.
Donald Guthrie
Even the meetings of the ‘whole church’ were small enough for a relatively intimate relationship to develop between the members.
Robert Banks, Fuller seminary professor speaking about the early church.
The early church was able to defy the decadent values of Roman civilization precisely because it experienced the reality of Christian fellowship in a mighty way… Christian fellowship meant unconditional availability to and unlimited liability for the other sisters and brothers – emotionally, financially and spiritually. When one member suffered, they all suffered. When one rejoiced, they all rejoiced. When a person or church experienced economic trouble, the others shared without reservation. And when a brother or sister fell into sin, the others gently restored the straying person. The sisters and brothers were available to each other, liable for each other and accountable to each other. The early church, of course, did not always fully live out the New Testament version of the body of Christ. There were tragic lapses. But the network of tiny house churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire did experience their oneness to Christ so vividly that they were able to defy and eventually conquer a powerful, pagan civilization. The overwhelming majority of churches today, however, do not provide the context in which brothers and sisters can encourage, admonish and disciple each other. We desperately need new settings and structures for watching over one another in love.
Ronald Sider, seminary professor
For two or three centuries, Christians met in private houses…There seems little doubt that these informal gatherings of small groups of believers had great influence in preserving the simplicity and purity of early Christianity.
W.H. Griffith Thomas, co-founder of the Dallas Theological Seminary
For the first two centuries, the church met in small groups in the homes of its members, apart from special gatherings in public lecture halls or market places, where people could come together in much larger numbers. Significantly, these two centuries mark the most powerful and vigorous advance of the church, which perhaps has never been equaled.
David Watson, Anglican priest and evangelist
Since in the first and second centuries church buildings in the sense in which we think of them today were not yet in existence, families would hold services in their own homes.
William Hendricksen, Reformed scholar
The New Testament Church began as a small group house church, and it remained so until the middle or end of the third century. There is no evidence of larger places of meeting before 300. There is no literary evidence nor archaeological indication that any such home was converted into an extant church building. Nor is there any extant church that certainly was built prior to Constantine.
Graydon Snyder, Chicago Theological Seminary
Those…desirous of being Christians in earnest…should…assemble by themselves in some house…those whose conduct was not such as befits Christians could be recognized, reproved…or excommunicated… Here we could have baptism and the sacrament…and direct everything towards the Word and prayer and love…
Martin Luther
It strikes me that there would be a great deal of good done if persons who have large rooms in their houses would endeavor to get together little congregations… Where there is a Church in the house, every member strives to increase the other’s comfort, all seek to promote each other’s holiness, each one endeavors to discharge his duty according to the position in which he placed in that church.
Charles Spurgeon