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Authored by Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman, this narrative tells the story of Jake Colsen, an overworked and disillusioned pastor, who gets transformed over time by his encounters with a mysterious man named John. This is the only narrative style book on my list and it might be a great tool to reach people who enjoy this style of writing. This book is available for purchase but it’s also available as a free download in English, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, German and French. To download your free copy go here. You can also go to Wayne Jacobsen’s website, check it out here. An excerpt from the book is below.

“The church is God’s people learning to share his life together. It’s Marvin over there and Diane back here. When I asked Ben about your life together he told me about your meetings, but nothing about your relationships. That told me something. Do you even know Roary’s greatest hope or Jake’s current struggle? Those things rarely come out in meetings. They come out in the naturalness of relationships that occur throughout the week.” 

“But we’re too busy for that,” Marvin’s wife, Jenny, added. “We try to do that when we get together.” I knew what John was going to say before he said it, “And is it working?”
“Is what working?”
“Are you accomplishing all of that in your meetings?” 

“Not very well, but we’re trying to learn to do it better.” 

“And we’re still talking about an ‘it’. We humans are notorious for taking something Scripture describes as a reality, giving a term to it and thinking we’ve replicated the reality because we use the term. Paul talked about the church that gathered in various homes, but he never called it ‘house church’. Houses were just where they ended up in their life together. Jesus was the focus, not the location. As I said, you can have all the right principles and still miss his glory in the body.”

“Now that is depressing,” Jenny said teasingly and the others laughed. “Why do you say that?” John asked. 

“Because we’ve been trying for nine months to get this right and now it all seems so futile. Maybe we should just go back to a traditional church and make the most of it.” The groans around the room indicated that wasn’t likely. 

“What I’m trying to get you to consider is that body life is not something you can create. It is a gift that Father gives as people grow in his life. Body life isn’t rocket science. It is the easiest thing in the world when people are walking with him. You get within twenty feet of someone else on that journey and you’ll find fellowship easy and fruitful.” 

“That’s what we’re looking for. We thought that when we got church right we’d all have the relationship with God we’re looking for,” Marvin broke in. 

John continued, “Just consider that you’ve gotten it backwards. No church model will produce God’s life in you. It works the other way around. Our life in God, shared together, expresses itself as the church. It is the overflow of his life in us. You can tinker with church principles forever and still miss out on what it means to live deeply in Father’s love and know how to share it with others.” 

“That’s not how I learned it,” Laurie offered. “How are we going to know how to live in God’s life if someone doesn’t show us?” 

“That’s where religion has done the most damage. By making people dependent on its leaders, it has made God’s people passive in their own spiritual growth. We wait for others to show us how, or even just follow them in hopes that they’re getting it right. Jesus wants this relationship with you and he wants you to be an active part in that process.” 

“But can we do it on our own? Don’t we need some help?” Marsha asked. 

“Who said you’re alone? Jesus is the way to the Father. As you learn to yield to his Spirit and depend on his power, you’ll discover how to live in the fullness of his life. Yes, he’ll often use other people to encourage or equip you in that process, but the people he uses won’t let you grow dependent on them. They wouldn’t dare crawl between you and the greatest joy of this family—a growing relationship with the Father himself.”

“That’s what I’d rather have talked about tonight. So many groups I’m with are continually trying to figure out the best way to do church. What if we spent all that time and energy focused on the Father’s love, what Jesus is doing in us, and how we can live more freely in his Spirit? Then we’d know how to love each other. We’d be honest and open and support each other on this journey. Our focus would be on him, not ourselves and our needs, and some amazing things would happen.”

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This is a great study guide for those interested in how the State historically has impacted the Church. Leonard Verduin writes with great insight and detail, making this book highly valuable for those trying to understand how the Church drifted so far from the teachings of Christ. Below is an excerpt describing the major transition that happened under Constantine.

The movement toward “Christian sacralism” began in A.D. 313 with the promulgation of the Edict of Toleration (also known as the Edict of Milan because it was first published in that city). This edict declared the Christian religion to be religio licita (a permitted cult), a status it had not had before. The immediate effect was the cessation of persecution, for the edict made the old charge of sacrilege-treason no longer possible. This change of climate allowed the Christians to come out of hiding, and it became apparent that the followers of Jesus were far more numerous than anyone had surmised. Through the Edict of Toleration the God of the Christians received space in the yellow pages. It could have been foreseen, however, that it would not sit right with the Christians to let him become one of many: their God was a God that ends all gods. The Christians continued to urge people to renounce the ancestral faith and its gods, embrace the one and only, and come to baptism.

As a result of either this intransigence on the part of the Christians or their unexpected numerical strength, soon after the Edict of Toleration a second edict was enacted that made Christianity the one and only legitimate faith. Christianity became the “right” religion, and all the rest were by implication “wrong.”  This sudden change of fortune for the Christian cause was largely the work of the emperor Constantine. For the part he had played in that mighty change he has been known ever since as Constantine the Great by all who think the Constantinian change was a benefaction for the cause of Christ. We must take a close look at that change to see whether such a high appraisal of it is warranted.

There is no evidence that Constantine had the faintest conception of progressive grace or the remotest understanding of authentic Christianity’s unique structuring of human society. All that happened was that the roles were reversed: the Christian faith now occupied the place from which the ancestral
faith had been expelled. Whereas Christianity had been persecuted hitherto, it now found itself in position to do some persecuting of its own-which it began at once to do. 

Elegant church structures, forerunners of the medieval cathedrals, were built at public expense, frequently on the ruins of an earlier shrine to some pagan deity.  Sunday, the first day of the week, which had been known to the early church as the “Lord’s Day,” was now proclaimed a legal holiday with the pagan name “day of the sun.” This return to the pre-Christian name for the Christian day of rest was no doubt due to the emperor’s continued reverence for the sun as a deity.

Constantine began at once to subsidize the Christian church with lavish money payments, and functionaries of the church were paid out of the public treasury. This led to an unholy scramble for appointment, often by persons who had neither theoretical nor experiential knowledge of the new faith. This scramble was accelerated by a decree that freed all clerics of public burdens, such as the paying of taxes.

It is quite clear that Constantine promoted the new faith mainly for its “immeasurable benefit to the commonwealth.” He has left no evidence that he placed any high value on Christianity’s doctrine of sin and grace, divine forgiveness, pardon and renewal, or love and mercy. It speaks for itself that Constantine, like Plato before him, would see in the private cult of religion a frightful threat to the sacral ideal. Thus, before the Constantinian change had come full circle, the death sentence had been prescribed for either holding or attending a conventicle.

The kingdom of Christ, which the Savior in his hour of trial had declared to be “not of this world,” was now as much a kingdom of the world as any that had ever existed. The sword that Jesus had told Peter to put away was again drawn from its sheath – by men who wanted to be known as vicars of this Peter. And these self-styled vicars began at once to instruct the regnum to hack and to hew with it in the very domain from which Jesus had banished it. The kingdom of Christ now pitted army against army, sword power against sword power, and from this point on warfare was under the water of baptism, a very “Christian” enterprise. By the year 416 the army was declared closed to all but Christians. Calling down fire from heaven to destroy those who stood in the way (behavior which Jesus had rebuked in unmistakable terms) was now under the benediction of that same Christ. Not only did the church now pronounce its blessing on wars fought for political aggrandizement, as a tool for “causing the empire to wax greater and greater,” but it also began to give its support to acts of violence perpetrated in the name of religion. 

Leonard Verduin, Anatomy of a Hybrid

Highly recommended book by Robert and Julia Banks. About 260 pages, this will take some time to get through, but it’s well worth the effort. The following excerpt is so important, I hope you read this and commit yourselves to loving your new family members “for better or for worse”.

Paul frequently spoke of the church as a family. Comparing the church to the human body stresses the interconnectedness of the members and the importance of allowing room for them to minister to one another. The family analogy emphasizes the quality of members’ relationships and their care for one another. In congregations today family terms are used loosely. Members refer to their church as “a family” or “the family of God” when most have only a limited knowledge of one another-like those advertisements for various firms that project their mass market of customers as members of one large, happy family. In other congregations family terms are used in a purely spiritual sense. The bridge between members carries only religious traffic.

Paul not only used family language as his primary vehicle of expression regarding the church but he used it on a number of levels.

-NT churches-whether in smaller or larger gatherings-met primarily in people’s homes (Acts 2:43; 16:40; 20:8; Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15; Phlm 2).

-Paul and other apostles founded their churches primarily on converted households (Acts 11:14; 16:15, 25-34; 18:18).

-The church in the home was the basic building block of the congregation (Rom 16:23; 1 Cor 11:18, 33).

-The bond between church members is similar to that between family members (Rom 16:2, 13; Gal 1:2; 4:19; Col 4:9; Phlm 10; etc.).

-Congregations are described directly as the household of God (Gal 6:10; 1 Tim 3:15; Eph 2:19; etc.).

-The central activities of these churches were familial in character (1 Thess 5:26; Rom 12:9-10; 1 Cor 11:33).

-Ministry-whether by resident members-or visiting members-was basically modeled on a Christ-centered form of ministry exercised in the family (1 Cor 16:15; 1 Tim 3:4; 5:1-2).

So there are multiple ways in which the church is a home based, homemade, homelike affair. It can be argued that these days it is not always helpful to draw an analogy between the church and the family; so many families are abusive or dysfunctional that often people do not know what a good family is. We should remember, however, that families in the first century were just as ambiguous, if in different ways, and that the early Christians transformed the model of family life so that they could make use of it. This meant that in the best instances members became ideal fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters to one an other. Their authentic relationships developed out of their belonging to a common family, with all the resulting privileges, responsibilities, and rewards. This heightened sense of family included physical, psychological, social, and material dimensions. Members were to greet one another as a family with a holy kiss. They were to treat each other as a family by expressing affection for one another. They were to eat together on a regular basis, as a family. They were to love and care for one another, as a family should.

For some early Christians the church family replaced the original family that they had lost upon conversion. For others relationships in their churches restored or deepened the family bonds that already existed. In either case Paul intended that believers maintained a real involvement in each others’ lives that
was based on a serious commitment to one another.

What difference would it make today if members of a congregation, like the members of a family, committed themselves seriously to loving one another “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health”? We may not live under the same roof, but, according to Paul, when I join with you in a church, I am to take care of you and you are to take care of me. You become my responsibility and I become yours. Both of us have, as Martin Luther put it, a responsibility “to become to each other what Christ is to us.”

Robert and Julia Banks, The Church Comes Home

This book by Tony and Felicity Dale is an easy read at about 115 pages. The excerpt below comes from a chapter entitled You in Your Small Corner and I in Mine and talks about sharing ourselves with others.

It is hard to enjoy any sense of “community” when we see each other a couple of times a week for an hour or so, at the most.  It is wonderful when Christians, desiring to share their lives in more meaningful ways, begin to so order their priorities that they can spend time together.

In the New Testament, the believers not only shared their time but also their possessions. None of them said that anything they had was their own, but they shared everything. Many years ago, we were challenged by A. W. Tozer’s five vows, one of which was that we were never to own anything. This means that the Lord can do what He wants with my possessions. If He asks me to give something away, it is not mine to hold on to. The principle here is stewardship rather than ownership. I need to take good care of the things that are entrusted to me. I may need to think twice before lending out my possessions to people who I know will not return them in as good or better shape than they received them. But apart from that, my material goods are not my own. Think how many resources could be released into the kingdom if we shared, for example, our power tools, our lawn mowers, or our cars.

I (Felicity) will never forget another blessing that came our way. We were newly married and one of the people in the student church that we had helped to pioneer decided that we needed a car. Unbeknownst to us, she worked for the whole summer, and then presented us with her entire earnngs. Imagine how surprised we were, how unworthy we felt, but also what an incredible blessing it was! And looking back on what that car enabled us to do as newly married students in a busy medical school context, I can see that we were able to touch many more people because of the travel time saved. She really had made her gift to Christ, and we were enabled by her generosity to live our lives more effectively for the kingdom.

Sharing ourselves is often the most difficult thing to do. Paul could say in I Thessalonians 2:8, “We loved you so much that we gave you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too.” In our culture it is not acceptable to show weakness. We all go around wearing masks. We wear the mask of a bright smile and “everything’s fine,” when actually our marriage is falling apart. Or maybe we don’t know how we are going to put food on the table this week, or we are scared that our kids are going out control, or we feel so depressed we don’t know if we are going to make it through the day. The contrast to what has become the norm is illustrated by a passage such as I John 1:7 that tells us “if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ is, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from every sin.” There is a transparency here, a willingness to let others see us as we truly are. Openness of this sort does make one liable to be hurt at times, but all loving relationships have the potential of causing hurt. Those we love the most have the greater capacity to hurt us. Does this mean that I won’t accept love because I refuse to risk hurt? Jesus loved us so much that He laid down His life for us. Love covers a multitude of sins. It also builds us up into a living demonstration of the body of Christ.

Do we feel safe sharing our innermost selves with a trusted brother or sister? It can take a lot of courage. Or from the other side, are we able to respect confidences and to love unconditionally without judging? The book of I John is full of passages that talk about the need for us to love one another. Time and again it asks how you can love God, whom you cannot see, if you do not love your brother. Our love for God is to be measured by our love for our brothers and sisters.

Are we prepared to rise up to the challenge of meeting the New Testament standard of building our church on relationships rather than just attending meetings or being part of the program? Are we willing to be inconvenienced in our personal lives to do this? Are we prepared to take the children of the single mom for a day so that she can get some time off, or to take time to visit the person who is sick or in prison?

In John 13:35 it says that the world will know that we are His disciples when we love one another. Is it currently that surprising that not only the world, but even many Christians are dropping out of involvement with the church because they cannot find any real relationships there?

Tony and Felicity Dale, Simply Church

This book by Travis Kolder is about 65 pages and easy to read. As the title suggests, it encourages people to take a step of faith to begin the journey into true fellowship. The excerpt below is from a chapter entitled Calling Forth the Women. The excerpt may be a bit long but it’s an important topic, we need women fully functioning in our gatherings.

For those women who have grown up in the church, one of the big questions isn’t whether they want to but whether they believe Jesus and the church wants them to be involved in this process. Many have grown up in a church culture that only allowed men to do most things, especially related to leadership, while the women were left to care for the kids and teach women’s Bible studies.

This is a huge discrepancy from what the New Testament teaches. You will be hard-pressed to find stories in the New Testament of women just tending the house and the kids. Yes, they did that, but they also did much, much more.

Let’s start with Jesus. While we know that Jesus had twelve male disciples who followed him around, we also know that women played a significant part in his ministry. He had no regular job and no home to speak of. His travel seemed to be funded at least in part by a group of women who he’d significantly impacted: “Soon afterward Jesus began a tour of the nearby towns and villages, preaching and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he cast out seven demons; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s business manager; Susanna; and many others who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples” (Luke 8:1-3). The women who had encountered Jesus and were changed by him were traveling with him and helping finance his ministry.

Jesus also seemed to have a strong relationship with Mary and Martha of Bethany along with their brother Lazarus. Martha was known for taking care of the house and hosting Jesus and his disciples. In one story, Martha attempts to rebuke Mary for not helping her tend the house. Jesus’s response to Martha is that Mary had chosen the good part, something that would never be taken from her. What was Mary doing? Was she sitting starry-eyed, looking at Jesus and thinking of a restful, spiritual state in heaven? Was she just being “so heavenly minded that she was no earthly good?” No! Luke tells us that Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught” (Luke 10:39). She was positioning herself in the place of a full-fledged, participating disciple. She saw her place in God’s kingdom and prioritized that over the typical domestic concerns and even restrictions that parts of Christianity assign to women.

Need more examples? Jesus’s birth starts with a holy, humble virgin who says yes to an angel who came with a mysterious message (Luke 1:38). His ministry begins as that same woman, now older, insists her miracle son do something about the party that ran out of wine (John 2:1-12). He spent an unprecedented amount of time speaking of the kingdom to one woman at a well by herself, partly because he loved and cared for her and partly because she was key to reaching a whole Samaritan village (John 4:1-42). Mary Magdalene was the first person Jesus sent to others to announce the news of his resurrection.

Yes, Jesus mostly taught with and worked with his male disciples. So while these stories of women don’t demand our focus, the fact is that they do exist. This should cause us to stop and re-evaluate if we’ve sold Jesus short on what he would allow a woman to do in the name of expanding the kingdom.

Jesus’s disciples continued his inclusion of women in church ministry. Women were part of the prayer meeting that preceded the arrival of the Holy Spirit in the upper room (Acts 1:14). They believed that their “daughters [would] prophesy” (Acts 2:17), and they did (Acts 21:9). A woman named Tabitha had a ministry serving the poor and others (Acts 9:36). Her illness, death, and resurrection became the basis for the spread of the gospel throughout her region. Now, this would happen with who died and was resurrected, but she was well-known in the city for her service to others. Other women who came to Christ opened doors for significant ministry in an area. God opened the heart of a woman like Lydia (Acts 16:11-40) or God-fearing women in Thessalonica (Acts 17:4).

Let’s not forget, either, that the apostles also traveled in teams with their wives, which Paul says that Peter, the other apostles, and the Lord’s brothers did (1 Corinthians 9:5). Now, in the West, when we think of women traveling with their husbands in ministry, we think of hotel rooms, airline flights, and luxury. This was not the New Testament understanding of apostolic travel. It was a hardship with the potential to be robbed, left out in the cold, or even die. These women who traveled with their husbands were not treated to a luxury trip; they were responsible for participating in the hardships of ministry with their husbands.

Paul wrote of a similar reality. His letters to the churches were filled with acknowledgments of his female co-laborers. Phoebe was a servant of the church in Cenchrea (Romans 16:1). Paul uses the word “deacon” to describe her role, which is elsewhere in the New Testament used to describe Paul himself, Timothy, Apollos, and other members of his apostolic team. In that same letter, he acknowledges Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, as a co-laborer (Romans 16:3). He recognized Mary as a hard worker for them, which actually meant that she was a co-laborer in the gospel. Junia was a woman who was highly respected among the apostles and possibly even considered an apostle herself (Romans 16:7). He also acknowledged Tryphena and Tryphosa, whom he calls the Lord’s workers, and Persis, whom he says had worked hard for the Lord (Romans 16:12).

This wasn’t just a unique situation in Rome. In many places where Paul greets the church by name, he names women who were helping him spread the gospel. The letter to Philemon is also addressed to Apphia, a woman and possibly Philemon’s wife, in Philemon 1:2. In Philippians 4, he appealed to Euodia and Syntyche to reconcile with each other, but, in the process acknowledged that each of them “worked hard with [him] in telling others the Good News” (Philippians 4:2-3). In his letter to the Colossians, Paul greets Nympha and the church that met at her house (Colossians 4:15).

One of the clearest examples of a woman working to host and mother a church in the New Testament comes from the book of 2 John. This book is written to the chosen lady and her children. Commentators are split as to whether they believe this was a literal woman or an image for a church that had many disciples (children) because the whole letter involved church matters. I believe both are true. John wrote to a real woman who was likely a natural and spiritual mother. The church that probably met in her home was an extension of her family, so while the letter was sent to a literal person (a woman) and her children (probably both natural and spiritual), these matters were to be handled as a church, because they were a church. The entire book of 2 John was written to a church most likely started and hosted by a woman.

Travis Kolder, Stick Your Neck Out

This book by John C. Fenn is about 114 pages and is an easy read. It gives practical and spiritual advice on starting and maintaining house church. The excerpt below is about relationships.

One of our house churches, the leaders had sat at  home for about seven or eight weeks and realized  that they couldn’t do that forever and they started thinking who they knew who had stopped going to church. They called those people and said let’s get together for a meal, a time for prayer and some worship and visit and that is how that house church was born. Oftentimes it is very natural.

We’re not trying to build a network. We’re building relationships. Networking is just a natural result of getting to know one another. A house church meets with purpose. It is more than a Bible study; it is more than just a prayer meeting. It is people who will commit to one another with purpose to meet week in and week out and to truly do what it takes to become the body of Christ, to grow in the Lord. It is all about discipleship. It is not a Bless Me Club; it is all about discipleship.

It is that commitment to look outward and become like Christ and grow in Christ. Look for people who are on that same spiritual page. That is when you call them and say, hey, come on over, let’s pray, let’s have a Bible study, let’s talk about this; and you walk through it and you talk through it. You will find as time goes on that people will say things like, wow, you guys meet in living rooms? Wow, that is what I’m looking for, something where the Lord can just move! And, here is the thing: trust the Lord and he will take care of it. He will do it.

And, again I want to make the point that the house is not the point, it is the relationships. The house and the home is where the family lives. It flows out of the family. Let’s look at where most of the New Testament people in house church came from. And we can see this in a couple of scriptures.

In John 1:40-42, it says “one of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon, and said unto him, we have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jonas: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone.” And that was their first meeting.

Andrew introduced his brother Peter to Jesus. And, Andrew introduced Simon, his brother to Jesus. And right after that it says Philip found his friend Nathaniel. And Jesus said to Nathaniel, I saw you sitting under the fig tree, here comes an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. And he said you don’t even know me. And Jesus said, no, I saw you sitting under the fig tree before Philip called you. Philip, it says, was of the same town as Peter and Andrew.

And, so what you have is Andrew introducing his brother, so that means family is the first connection in biblical house church. And, 2) Philip found his friend Nathaniel; they were of the same community; so neighbors and community is the second group. And then in Luke 5:10, we are told that Peter is a partner in a fishing business with two guys, James and John. Of course, they all left the boats to follow Jesus. But, they were business partners.

So, there is 1) family, 2) friends/community and then 3) co-workers. And that is the basis. If you look through the Book of Acts at the end of Paul’s letters where he greets people, these three elements are consistent with the biblical house church: family, friends and co-workers; and friends include neighbors.  So if you want to go to four, it is family, friends, neighbors and co-workers are found in John 1 and Luke 5:10.

John C. Fenn, House Church Essentials

This book by Roger Thoman is only 60 pages and easy to read. I have included a short excerpt below. You can download this for free here.

Coming together, for Jesus-followers, is really as easy as, well, coming together. The Bible does not provide us with an outline or order of service because we are his people, coming together with his love and purposes on his heart, for his glory, and with his leading. As such, times together can involve anything and everything from eating to praying, from sharing life’s journeys to crying with each other, from studying scripture to listening in silence, from laughing together to ministering in spiritual gifts, from talking and more eating to prophesying and teaching.

When people ask this question, “what do we do when we get together?” I like to encourage them to think through two scriptures, initially, that speak to this question.

The first has already been mentioned: 1 Corinthians 14:26 says “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.”

The second is Acts 2:42: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Notice, again, this is not an order of service, simply a broad record of what God’s people tend to do when they gather. The four elements of Acts 2:42 provide some guidelines for gatherings, but the Holy Spirit wants to be the one leading and controlling our agenda. When we get together, it is a supernatural gathering with God in our midst.

As Felicity Dale said, “If we will learn to hear and follow His promptings, we will never have a boring meeting.”

Because we have learned, in the past, to have certain people lead our gatherings, moving into Spirit-led, participatory gatherings can be a daunting endeavor. The way to learn is to do it. Make mistakes. Learn some more. Don’t give up. Every person is a minister, and when we capture that in our times together it is incredibly rewarding. The body of Christ can reflect him in wonderful and varied ways when fully unleashed to do so.

Roger Thoman, Simple / House Church Revolution