In a number of meetings I attended over the years, as we worked to plan programs for clergy and lay church members in the area, someone always suggested we invite as a guest speaker some pastor or another who headed a large or even megachurch congregation.  I always spoke against that approach because I didn’t want to convey the notion that a megachurch was the standard to which congregations should aspire.  None of them would ever make it, so why waste time dangling that image in front of them?

Some of my colleagues weren’t so sure, and one, in fact, unabashedly told me one time that, “I want to be the pastor of a really, really big church.”  It was all I could do to not laugh out loud.  He may not have noticed, anyway, given the stars in his eyes as he envisioned the possibility.

Churches have deeper problems than figuring out how to fill gymnasium-sized worship spaces.  It turns out a lot of folks are leaving churches because they want a more authentic relationship with God and with fellow believers than they find in their traditional mainline and even megachurch experiences.

One person spoke of abandoning a megachurch he attended saying, “The person sitting next to you in the pew could be close to dying, but people don’t really know one another.”  He is looking for something different, because the modern church, as he phrased it, has become “like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.  It starts getting distorted and changed.”  So, he, like a growing number of Christians, became a part of a home church.

A home church is a gathering of believers in someone’s living room or den, perhaps following or preceding a shared meal, in which believers pray together, read and discuss scripture, and share communion.  There is no ordained leader, no established liturgy, no organizational structure, no building to maintain, or various other aspects familiar to churchgoers.   The man who gave up on the megachurch he attended remarked that in the home church the focus was on “deep friendships” and “helping one another grow spiritually.”

Proponents of home churches see it as following the example of the earliest Christians portrayed in the New Testament.  As religion pollster George Barna expressed it, “These are people who are less interested in going to church than in being the church.”

In my view, God is working in a variety of ways to bring about spiritual awakening and renewal.  There is no question for the need, as the human family fractures into fearful, suspicious, even hate-filled factions.  Despite what some claim, and despite how many couch their language in God-talk, fewer and fewer people know God, and if the church is failing in making God known in authentic ways, I have no doubt God can and will turn elsewhere.

But, I don’t think God is done yet with the church, for a church still can stand as a sign of God’s presence in a community and in the world.  There is a lot of good that can come about when Christians and churches join together in reaching out to those in need. 

I think it would help the church, though, to be less focused on “business,”  “success” and “church growth” and more focused on growing in faith and faithfulness.  We can learn from the home churches and their motivations.

We can benefit by the presence among us of some of the folks who are choosing to abandon us.