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Have you ever taken a bite of a piece of cake or brownie and it was so rich you couldn’t eat the whole thing at one sitting? Victor Choudhrie’s book Greet The Ekklesia In Your House was like that for me. I read the PDF version of the book which was 206 pages. The book was originally published in 1999. The current version was expanded and updated to 368 pages in 2012. You’ll get a sense of the density of this work by reading the excerpt below entitled Persons of Peace.

IDENTIFYING THE “SON OF PEACE” IS KEY TO EKKLESIA PLANTING: The Lord taught His disciples, when you go to preach, look for “a person of peace.” Stay there and eat with them, heal the sick and cast out demons and preach the kingdom of God. (Luke 9:1,2; 10:5-9). The Greek words “huios eirenes” mean “son of peace.” The word “son” also means “descendent” and can be used for male or female. In the New Testament there are many examples of persons of peace, such as Cornelius (Acts 10:24), Lydia (Acts 16:14), Mary, the mother of Mark (Acts 12:12), Dorcas (Acts 9:36), Priscilla (1Cor. 16:19), Tyrannus (Acts 19:9,10), Jason (Acts 17:5-9), Justus, Crispus (Acts 18:7,8) and many others, whose names are mentioned in the 16th chapter of Romans. Many of them are women.

EAT WITH THE PERSON OF PEACE: Persons of peace are facilitators who facilitate Ekklesia planting. All the people mentioned above were persons of peace who had Ekklesias established in their homes. Christianity spread throughout the world through the efforts of persons of peace, not just through the work of the apostles or the institutional church. Generally, persons of peace are influential, like Cornelius and Lydia. The Lord has blessed them so that when the time comes, they can take care of the boarding and lodging and security needs of the saints and the new converts. This is why the Lord gave instructions to go and stay with them and “eat whatever is laid before you. A laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house.” (Luke 10:5-8). The influence of such a person helps in gathering his own household as well as his neighbors to hear the word of God (Acts 10:24). In virulent disregard to these clear instructions, the modern evangelistic teams go to a village, set up their loud speaker system, sing and preach. They do not mentor a local leader and leave without planting a church. This unscriptural method can cause many problems, both for the preacher and the preached. Persons of peace are the latter day saints who plant Ekklesias in their homes.

BREAK THIS RULE AND PAY FOR BOARD AND LODGING: The failure by missionaries in finding persons of peace and dealing directly with the poor, resulted in having to open “mission compounds” for those who were thrown out from their communities. Even today, this mistake is being repeated, and new believers have to suffer persecution and ostracism. It also sends wrong signals to the educated and the influential that Christianity is meant only for the poor and low caste people.

THE GENTILES ARE GROANING FOR THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD: In His economy, God has already planted persons of peace in every human habitation, be it a city, a village or a neighborhood (Acts 15:14; 17:26,27; Rom. 11:5). The Bible says that, “the whole of creation is in travail for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19). Finding the person of peace is the key to starting a house Ekklesia in any locality. He is easily identifiable because he is generally a person of good reputation and hospitable. He will invite you into his house and take care of your food, accommodation and other needs (Luke 10:5-9). These should not be refused, because they are arranged by the Lord Himself in order for His Ekklesia to be established (Mark 16:20). Even though at this stage he belongs to another faith and may be even hostile to Christianity, by constantly praying for him, breaking his bondages and blessing him, you will release him for God’s intended purpose.

FINDING THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF PEACE IS THE TOP PRIORITY OF THE EKKLESIA: God has already visited all the lost people on the face of the earth and their locations (Acts 15:14; 17:26). Jesus came to rebuild the fallen tent of David. Now it is for us, the children of “shalom” to go and find the Gentile children of “peace.” It is our responsibility to prayer walk the area and bless all the families living there. We need to bind the strongman, identify and release the children of God (the persons of peace), and plant multiplying Assemblies in their homes. Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matt. 5:9). The only diploma we need is B.A.B. (Be A Blessing). (Gen. 12:3)

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The excerpt below is from a book entitled Starting A House Church by Larry Kreider & Floyd McClung. Published in 2007 it has elements that are a bit outdated but most of the content is solid. I especially enjoyed the comments about pitfalls when gathering. Some of those comments are excerpted below.

If we seek community with other followers of Jesus without an orientation to a new definition of church-a definition that is about genuine community and radical commission-people will revert to expectations based on older models. We must orient people to a community based on genuine relationships that require honesty, forgiveness and mercy. If we do not, churches will experience conflict and division among people, and conflicting expectations within people.

House church must be about authentic community in order to be relevant to our culture. Biblical house church is about family- something we all desperately want but aren’t generally good at doing. Unless we address this issue up front with answers from the Bible, many house churches will struggle with problems of disunity and unfulfilled expectations.

In order to experience genuine community in a house church, we have to trust other people…but there is this little problem called sin! We don’t, however, believe that sin is the greatest barrier to community, but lack of forgiveness. People in our nation are broken, and trust doesn’t come easy these days. When people consider whether or not to trust, many seem to think that the other person’s sinfulness is the problem. They are idealistic about their own lack of sin. Idealists don’t do well in community-not because they are imperfect, but because they don’t acknowledge their imperfections and received the forgiveness of God. If idealists have not received forgiveness, they will struggle with giving it to others.

It’s important to get this right. If you are part of a small community, sooner or later someone will do something to hurt or disappoint you, and you may once again have good reason to avoid “the Church.” But Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out in his book Life Together that the Church is not a place for idealists and humanists. Rather, Church is a community of forgiven sinners, a family of people who need mercy from those who have learned to forgive like Jesus.

Another trap to avoid is fear, particularly fear of what people think. House churches are largely unproven entities in today’s church world. They are new to many people and depend upon sometimes-inexperienced people to provide leadership. Despite these challenges, house-church leaders must act in faith, not in fear. They must build what God has called them to build and gain the courage to press on even when they encounter people who question their nontraditional approach to church. Even though house churches may lack credibility, what they lack in status can be made up for by courage and vision.

Fear of our own mistakes is another thing that can hinder us. Bible teacher Bob Mumford once said, “I do not trust anyone unless he walks with a limp.” He was referring to Genesis 32, when Jacob, after wrestling with the Lord and demanding His blessing, was touched in his thigh and from that day forward, walked with a limp. When God lovingly deals with us through difficult times, we walk with a spiritual limp the rest of our lives. This is the stuff of which true spiritual fathers and mothers are made.

Peter, the disciple who became an apostle of the New Testament church is another example of a spiritual father with a spiritual limp. After denying Jesus and then experiencing His complete acceptance and forgiveness, Peter lost his abrasiveness and became a true father in the faith. From that time on he “walked with a limp.”

Both Jacob’s and Peter’s examples testify to the fact that we all make mistakes. They also teach us that we must not give up. We may be doing all the right things, but problems will still arise. Or we may be tempted to go back to something easier than dealing with the shortcomings of humanity. Being a spiritual parent to believers in a house church is not easy. But it is rewarding.

The Bible says that all things are possible, not that all things are easy! Even Jesus dealt with problems while investing His life in the 12 disciples. They all left Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. He felt alone and forsaken. But He knew that the last chapter was not yet written! Fifty days later, Peter stood with the 11 and preached at Pentecost, where 3,000 people came to faith in Christ. No doubt, Jesus was just as proud of fearful Peter preaching to a multitude as He was to see thousands believe in Him.

Getting involved in a house church can be discouraging. Why? Because it’s not like going to a mega-church where everything is done for you. You are not a spectator, but an active participant. It is a community to belong to, not a set of doctrines to believe about Church. In the early stages, it is new and fun. Then comes a stage of involvement, which is about going deeper in relationships, working through personality differences and learning to open up your life honestly in ways that may be difficult for you, even threatening.

Then comes the stage that is the biggest challenge: realizing that you are responsible. Everyone has to accept responsibility for what happens-otherwise, things don’t happen. Things won’t get fixed unless everyone shoulders the load.

At this stage, many battle the temptation to quit. The enemy may try to use discouragement to take you out of the game. In a sense, you are a pioneer, and pioneers pay a price while others receive the benefits. Someone built the highway in your city, but now you drive down it without even thinking about the massive sacrifice someone made to build it.

If you believe that the Lord may be calling you to labor with Him to build His Church according to the principles that are outlined in this book, you will probably have to cross your own river. After you cross, there is no turning back. But then, who wants to go back to the wilderness? Let’s march like Joshua, through the river, with a confidence that the Lord is saving the best wine for last. He is waiting for you and me to prepare the wineskins so that He can pour out His Spirit, from house to house, city to city and nation to nation.

For more information on Larry Kreider you can check out his website here. You can check out Dove International here.

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Written in 1952 by Emil Brunner, The Misunderstanding of the Church is a deep read. You can get a flavor of the book by reading the excerpt below. If you’re like me, you might have to read it a couple of times, intentionally. Blessings.

The Word of God is truly and effectively in the Church as the word of the Holy Ghost, implying therefore a unity of “logos” and dynamic energy which lies beyond all comprehension. From this unity, which later ceased to exist or to be understood, flows the hidden life of the primitive community. It forms the secret both of the fellowship and of its moral power; for upon the inspiration of the Holy Ghost rests the Koinonia, the communion of men with each other, the fact that they are knit together in an organism which includes both equality and difference, the fundamental equality of all and their mutual subordination each to other. The significant mark and the essential being of this communion consists in the quality of agape-the new ethos of the fellowship and its members. It is understandable that a later time, when this original power and unity no longer existed in the same abundance, should seek to find a substitute for what was lacking and to secure the presence of what was fast disappearing. This attempt at security and replacement assumes three different forms: the living Word of God is secured-and at the same time replaced-by theology and dogma; the fellowship is secured and replaced-by the institution; faith, which proves its reality by love, is secured-and replaced-by a creed and a moral code.

It is so much easier to discuss from an intellectual and theological standpoint the ideas implied in the revealed Word of God and to analyse them conceptually than it is to allow oneself to be transformed at the centre of one’s life by the action of the Holy Ghost: and further, theological ideas can be handled and arranged as one desires at any time-not so the Word of God.

It is so much easier to secure the life of the fellowship, its coherence and its indispensable hierarchy by means of solid legal forms, by organization and offices, than it is to allow the life of communion to be continually poured out upon one, to allow oneself to be rooted in it by the action of the Holy Ghost. You can handle and shape as you please such things as law and organization, but you cannot act thus towards the Holy Ghost.

And finally: it is so much easier to assent to a creed, a dogma, a firm body of teaching than it is to believe in such a way that belief is inseparable from love. Above all: one can mould as one will creeds and moral codes, handle them, teach them, learn them, but one cannot thus control that faith which is active in love.

The order intrinsic to the fellowship springing from the Holy Spirit was diakonia-service-the same therefore as flowed from true faith and revealed itself in a new relationship to one’s brother. But the organized hierarchy presupposing the office had neither the character of brotherly communion nor had it a unity wherein equality was consistent with differentiation-a unity characterized by reciprocal subordination. The delicate structure of the fellowship founded by Jesus, and anchored in the Holy Spirit, could not be replaced by an institutional organization without the whole character of the Ecclesia being fundamentally changed: the fellowship of Jesus Christ became the church. The apparent similarity between the official organization and the New Testament order of the Spirit shows upon closer inspection that at every point there has taken place a change in essential character. The paradoxical unity of things which everywhere else exist in disparity was no longer present as the decisive factor. Now there was dogma- without the dynamism of the Spirit-filled Word of God. Now there was faith, in the sense of correct, orthodox belief, but separated from love. Now there was a community in the sense of a Church with offices, but no longer the solidarity of reciprocal service.

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The best book I’ve read so far on church history is a book by Dr. Kim Tan entitled Lost Heritage. Over and over again our brothers and sisters, who just wanted to follow Christ, were martyred and exterminated because they did not tow the Church/State line. It’s a heartbreaking read but we need to understand our heritage. The excerpt below is the final chapter in the book.

Church history is the story of how the Church lived out its faith in the world. Some retreated into their monasteries to live out “church”, while others became more and more integrated until they were part of the establishment. Still others fought bravely to be in the world but not of it. The “City of God” must coexist with the “Earthly City”. Where one is emphasised to the exclusion of the other, it has proved harmful to both. These two kingdoms, while in conflict, have to continue existing in an uneasy equilibrium. Sadly, the lesson from church history is that the world has often proved stronger than the Church, and for much of the time, the Church has not been distinctly different from the world. It seems the world has usually found a way of infiltrating the Church. It is no different today. The world’s materialism, injustice, indiscipline and lack of respect can be seen in the Church today.

There is much obviously that we can learn from the past. The issues and battles faced by the Church are not that different from ones we encounter today-more subtle perhaps, but essentially the same.

History is a process; it is dynamic and not static. Nothing stays the same. In the midst of enormous social and political upheavals, God’s people have been able to find a Rock in their Lord and Saviour who does not change. In times of trouble, he has been their refuge and his Word has been a source of inspiration and instruction. Amid the uncertainties of our world today, the Church needs to find its way back to God and return to his Word with a fresh hunger. There will be new challenges and we can only face them when we have a sure knowledge of God and his Word.

We learn also from history that it is dangerous to presume on God’s blessings. He has shown that He will move on when the Church deviates from his original intention. No segment of the Church has a monopoly on God at any time. We have also seen that God’s blessings can in the end lead on to complacency and become a hindrance. His past blessings are no guarantee of his continuing presence. Every generation needs to know his presence for itself. We cannot live on the spiritual capital of the past.

Complacency is a great danger within the Church. At the peak of Israel’s power during the reign of King Solomon, the nation enjoyed the bountiful blessings of God. But within a generation of his death, King Shishak from Egypt had invaded Israel and taken away all the treasures from the Temple (2 Chron. 12:9). These were the sacred things of God, made at great cost (Ex. 35-38), and part of the treasures of Israel. King Rehoboam then substituted the golden shields taken by King Shishak with some bronze replicas. We have here a lesson confirmed by Church history. When the early Church became complacent and thought that it had arrived, the enemy entered and took away its treasures-as we have seen, the Church was robbed of many truths for a very long time. Instead of recovering the “golden” truths however, it often settled for poor quality “bronze” replicas of the real thing. In our day, complacency is still a major threat and unless we are watchful and seek to walk humbly with our God, we too face the same danger.

We also need to look to God to restore other truths to the Church. The issue of radical discipleship and lifestyle has been mentioned. From the Catholic tradition, there is the challenge of the monastic movements. Furthermore, I believe that in our day, we need to recover a love for the mystics. These were Christians who touched depths of devotion to God and whose experience of the Holy One is foreign to the modern Church. We need them to lead us into a much deeper devotion of our God that will enrich our individual and corporate worship. It is indeed sad that the modern Christian knows little of the writings and hymns of mystics, both ancient, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Tauler and Fenelon, as well “recent”, such as Faber, Watts and Tozer. This is our loss and the Church is the poorer without their contribution.

This brief survey should make us grow in our appreciation of the richness of God’s work across history. We will be less inclined in the future to imagine that everything exciting began with us! We should see now that we have many spiritual ancestors. This should both humble and excite us. We are the product of many streams, and more and more we are seeing these converging. Catholicism today acknowledges the necessity of faith and honours preaching, but the centre of its religious life is in the sacraments rather than the sermon. Classical Protestantism, especially in its Lutheran form, ascribes value to the sacraments, but its emphasis is on an evangelical faith through the preaching. Pentecostalism values both the sacraments and the sermon but sees the work of the Holy Spirit as of paramount importance in every aspect of Church life. We are inheritors of these truths. To that we need the merging of the Radicals’ stream with their emphasis on discipleship, community and non-institutional forms of church government. As we have seen, distortions have resulted from taking any one of these emphases alone as characteristic of the nature of the Church. It is only when all these features are present, that we will see the kind of Church which Jesus intended.

How do we keep movements fresh, alive and on the rails? How do we prevent dynamic groups from settling down and becoming independent of God? Perhaps it is impossible; it is human nature to settle down and enjoy what has been gained. Looking at Church history, I am pessimistic as to whether any movement can stay fresh and dynamic over several generations. Perhaps it is God’s intention that in every generation, there should be a fresh movement of the Spirit.

It is difficult to summarise such a wide sweep of history, but if there is one overriding lesson we need to learn, it is this: we are a pilgrim church called to a walk of faith. While on this journey, we should learn to be less dogmatic, more loving; less bigoted, more humble. Above all, we should have a real hunger for the Lord Jesus; seek to love Him with all our hearts and minds and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We should get on with the task of mission and get the Bride ready. He is coming back. Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus, come!

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Another great book by Jon Zens entitled We Are Christ on Earth. Jon’s books are easy to read and understand and are great gifts for friends and family who might be interested in relational gatherings. The excerpt below talks about the forgotten horizontal dimension of the cross. To check out Jon’s books go to jonzens.com.

Traditional systematic theologies have dealt with Christ’s cross-work primarily in terms of its vertical dimension-that He died to heal the alienation between the Creator and humanity. This aspect of Golgotha is indeed vital and foundational. But the New Testament goes further to reveal the multidimensional realities of the Cross. The cosmic dimension is found in Col. 2, the charismatic dimension is found in Eph. 4, and the communal (horizontal) dimension is revealed in places like Eph. 2 and 1 Cor. 12:13.

Francis Schaeffer called this horizontal dimension the “sociological healing” that flows out of Gospel salvation. In other words, as each individual is baptized by the Spirit into Christ, they also come into His body, where there is no Jew or Greek, bond or free, or male and female (1 Cor. 12:13).

This ekklesia setting, then, becomes the “display case” of God’s multi-faceted grace and wisdom (Eph. 3:10). Thus, in the New Testament, salvation is not individualistic (people saved alone), but rather corporate (people in relationship with others). In Ephesians 2, Paul pointed out that the Law required that Jew and Gentile be kept apart. Jesus came, honored and fulfilled the Law, then took away the barrier of the Law so that the two would be one in a “new humanity.”

For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the hostility, which is the Law composed of commandments expressed in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two one new person, in this way establishing peace; and that He might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the hostility. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father (NASB).

From this context, we can see that it is crucial to affirm both that Jesus died to atone for our sins (vertically, toward God), and that He died to create a “new person” (horizontally in relationships), which was the culmination of His eternal purpose in Christ.

Tragically, and for a number of reasons, the centrality of this horizontal fabric of the believer’s life has been virtually forgotten. Consider, for example, the content of most gospel tracts. The focus is on “getting saved,” but nothing is said about the fact that in this new life they are to function in His body by the Spirit.

A book that years ago opened up my awareness of the horizontal dimension of the cross was John Driver’s Understanding the Atonement for the Mission of the Church (Herald Press, 1986). This work deserves your attention if you wish to explore further this dimension of Jesus’ work.

What are some implications of the horizontal/communal dimension of the Cross for our practice of ekklesia? It seems to me that one of the key implications would be that in our living and in our presentation of the Gospel we consciously connect new life in Christ with life in His ekklesia.

In other words, we are not just asking people to say a prayer and invite Jesus into their heart. Instead, we are inviting them to a full-orbed life of following Christ-a life of knowing Christ and functioning with the brothers and sisters in His body. This organic reality entails a whole lot more than just “going to church.”

Another implication would be that Jesus-communities should be displaying the Lord’s goal of “the two being made one” fellowships where Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, rich and poor, educated and uneducated can all follow Jesus together in fervent love.

That is why Paul had to correct Peter publicly: his removing of himself from table fellowship with believing Gentiles when certain friends of James came, contradicted the “sociological healing” that a watching world should see in the New Humanity.

Realizing that horizontal realities are embedded in Christ’s cross opens up new vistas for understanding issues the early church faced. For example, in post-apostolic times the Lord’s supper became an individualistic ritual where believers examined themselves regarding sin in their life. But when Paul told each of the Corinthians to “examine themselves,” the context indicates that he had in view one’s relationship to others in the body. The way they were coming together reflected schism, not bondedness. They were not eating together as a unit. The poor were thereby being humiliated. The giving nature of Christ was not reflected in the way they shared food with one another. In such circumstances, the Supper could only be done “unworthily” because the way they were acting was a denial of all that it signified. If we miss the social dimensions of the cross–the New Humanity—the New Testament will always be a veiled book to us in crucial ways.

The movement in post-apostolic times from vibrant body-life to dependence on leaders, from Spirit-led ministry to institutionalized forms, and from free-flowing relationships to political backing and intrigue all combined to eliminate any consciousness of the horizontal/relational purposes the Lord had in Jesus’ cross-work. The horizontal healing accomplished by Jesus’ cross was largely buried and forgotten.

We should, therefore, be encouraged by the emergence of sensitivity to, and concern for, the body dimension of the believer’s life in Christ, as evidenced by the books, talks and articles on the subject. May the Lord give us grace to make intentional efforts to see this vital aspect of Christ’s work become rooted in the life of His ekklesias.

Check out Jon Zens website at searchingtogether.org.

I found this PDF online, anonymously written called Church Life As Taught In Scripture. The first edition was published in 2008 and then revised in 2024. It’s 118 pages, has lots of scripture, is interesting but hard to get through. You can get a taste of what I mean from this one paragraph excerpt. I also included access to the PDF file below. The only identifier I found was “simple by Design“.

This practice of meeting in homes was continued long after the Apostles had passed away. This was not because of persecution (nor because of a lack of other informal social venues such as coffee shops) but simply because it was the way believers functioned properly as churches. We see for instance in Acts 2:46-47 that while they were meeting in houses, they were also “having favour with all the people.” In fact, there was no empire-wide persecution of the church until the Roman emperor Decius in 250 AD (followed by Gallus, 251-253 AD, then Valentine, 257-259 AD, and finally Diocletian, 303-311 AD). The Roman officials themselves often intervened to protect Christians from persecution, even by unbelieving Jews (Acts 16:35; 17:6-9; 18:12-16; 19:37-38; 23:29; 25:18-20, 24-27; 26:31-32). So persecution wasn’t always an issue, and even when it did break out, meeting in houses did not keep Saul from knowing where to go to arrest believers (Acts 8:3). Where Christians did at times in history have to respond to persecution by literally meeting underground, this, too, happened in smaller, home-sized congregations. So where the Jews had synagogues and the Gentiles had their temples, Christianity did not need any special building for the church to meet in. But when the Roman emperor Constantine became a ‘Christian’ and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, he ordered the construction of 19 Christian buildings in 327 AD, known as basilicas, which were the most popular style of the time (basilica literally means ‘royal hall’). Until then religious buildings were seen as shrines. These were constructed in three places, namely one in Bethlehem and two in Jerusalem (for Christ’s birth, crucifixion and resurrection), nine in the city of Constantinople, and seven in the city of Rome, and initially had no pews. In Constantinople, the new capital built on the site of the old Byzantium, these buildings were primarily built for this brand new city in the east. This city also had many pagan temples, each named after a god or a goddess. Constantine similarly ordered that each one of these nine Christian buildings be named after first century saints. (He also gave Greek pagan names such as Eirene, meaning ‘Peace,’ and Sophia, meaning ‘Wisdom,’ to some of the other ‘church buildings’ there, although pagan worship was not recorded in the new city of Constantinople.). One of the seven Christian buildings constructed in Rome that year was a shrine placed on the side of a hill just outside the city walls of which the slope of the hill was called Vaticanus…(Saint Peter’s basilica in Rome was established as the seat of the ‘bishop’ of Rome, who later became the ‘pope’ of what is today known as the Roman Catholic Church, or Western Church. The structure’s basilican form, rebuilt in the sixteenth century, became important as a model for later ‘church buildings.’ Many of the features in Constantine’s ‘Christian basilicas’ were copied from pagan basilicas.) These buildings later came to be known as ‘churches,’ and were constructed throughout the empire, with no new pagan temples being built or repaired. Existing pagan temples were also later transformed into cathedrals, and in addition to those built, were handed over to the ‘bishops’ who by now had developed into powerful church leaders. This happened by government decree, and believers were driven out of their house meetings into these large basilicas. Even then many still
met in homes, especially since that was what they knew church to be. Then, just over half a century later, in 380 AD, ‘bishops’ Theodosius and Gratian ordered that there should be only one state-recognised orthodox church, and one set of faith the orthodox dogma. Each Roman citizen was, to put it lightly, forced to be a member and was made to believe in the ‘lex fidei,’ the law of faith. Other groups and movements-including those meeting in homes were forbidden. This led to many Christians over time wrongly believing that God dwells in a special way in ‘church buildings’ (similar to the Jews who considered God to physically dwell in the temple before it was destroyed in 70 AD). This later even led to the church proudly establishing graveyards close by the ‘holy church buildings,’ where people felt their mortal remains would be safe from the monsters and dragons of the deep. So historically we see that there is no evidence of meeting places larger than homes before Constantine, nor is there any literary or archaeological indication that any such homes were converted into church buildings. The reality is that everything in the New Testament was written for a home-sized church, where ideal church life and church meetings take place in a smaller, family-like setting in the homes of church members conducive to the kind of intimate table fellowship demanded by the Lord’s Supper.