Westerners have many expectations mostly culture about a new church

Westerners have many expectations (mostly cultural) about a new church.

When we think “church” we think “pastor” and at least some rudimentary building. A service with a particular order. Worship, usually with a worship leader and music.

When believers move into a new area, they don’t look for the nearest Christian and ask them when they study the Bible with other believers. They look for the nearest churches. They google them. They map them. They look them up in phonebooks. They drive around–and look for buildings.

If someone’s in desperate straits and needs help, they probably don’t look for the nearest Christian–they wander into a church and ask the people there for help.

People seeking Christians look for buildings rather than believers.

Still, truth: most church growth comes from babies born to Christian homes, or from conversions catalyzed by relationships with Christian friends. Home groups can be effective: but in the West, we are culturally wired not to think of them as a church. If someone were to start a home group, they would want to do it “under the accountability” of a church – which means a building, and a staff.

The multiplication of home groups (Discovery Bible Studies) is therefore, at least in theory, limited by the number of “building churches.”

In places that have no experience with Christianity, there are fewer cultural expectations. New churches, of whatever form, do not have to live up to those expectations–the “old wineskins.” They can (and often must) adopt new wineskins that are less expensive and replicate faster (like house meetings, and Bible studies).

And perhaps this is one contributing factor to why they spread faster.

Ed. Note, followup comment: This is not just Westerners that think this way - most existing (institutional) churches have these same expectations. We need to avoid “Western = bad” and “Everybody else = good” misconceptions.