Buildings, Leaders, Movements, Losses

When many people think of “church,” they think of either/both (1) buildings and (2) incorporated entities.

A “new” church plant involves a specific location, as well as incorporation papers, officers, budgets, etc.

A new church can be seen from the road. It can be visited. It can be seen in public documents.

In movements and similar networks in less-free areas, churches are understood to be gatherings of believers. They often meet in homes or other locations–they do not typically have their own buildings. They are sometimes illegal or at least unregistered or unincorporated. They cannot be “seen” easily.

When a church in the West goes “out of business” because it has too few members whose donations can pay the bills, one of the most visible signs is the loss or sale of the building. (See this well-known story about Ryan Burge and the closure of his church.) It is counted as a loss because the congregation has closed; however, the reality is, the members typically aren’t lost as believers. They just start attending another church.

When a house church is no longer located in the house where it previously met, this is rarely a loss. It can shift locations for security reasons. The believers in the house church may each individually start new house groups, and so the original house church may no longer meet. The believers in the church may migrate for work or educational reasons, and start new workers where they go. In all of this, there is much more dynamic ebb and flow.

This is one reason why in movements, the actual count of house churches and believers is difficult. Recording a location, or “going and seeing them,” is challenging both because of the security issues and because of this dynamism. (In fact, this is one reason I am very against recording the locations of individual groups–they are often people’s homes.)

However, while it makes it hard to track, it also makes a movement very easy to scale. It’s a feature, not a bug.