House Church Values & Practices: Proposal Eight

Independent, Deliberately Small, and Elder Led

We are committed to the Bible’s teaching on leadership through local elders, and too, believe smaller congregations to be the New Covenant, apostolic pattern and the logical extension of the Scripture’s teaching involving our relationships with one-another in a church.  This smaller size will provide us the opportunity for fostering greater accountability, and will promote candid, close “one-anothering” to go on within our congregation.  Likewise, it will give our elders the advantage of being able to personally shepard all the people under their care.

       In light of that, we will have only one pastor-teacher, and one ruling elder.  The pastor-teacher will primarily be committed to discipling, teaching, prayer, and counseling. The ruling elder will join in those activities as well, but he will chiefly be committed to overseeing the activities of the congregation. 

      We will place a heavy emphasis on finding godly men to lead our own church, and who can plant other congregations from out of ours.  These men will need to have proven to God’s People over an extended period of time to have faithfully managed their own family well before becoming a leader in the Church of Christ.  

    We will not seek to join a Protestant denomination, but will remain an independent, free congregation with no formal membership vows for those who come into our community.  The reason is primarily because a denomination functions essentially as a large, disconnected, mega-church that typically is founded around ancillary, divisive doctrines.  Over time these have demonstrated to eventually become nothing more than a centralized, bureaucratic, para-church organization.  We understand this whole structure to be impersonal, with no biblical warrant, and a nasty stumbling block to fellowship between other Christians and congregations.  

       In regards to formal membership, in Scripture there is no such thing as a baptized, professing disciple of Christ who is not a member of the Church already.  That being true, we believe that when such Christians as these come to us desiring to enter into active fellowship with us they certainly may.
       Therefore, by ones avowed commitment (covenant) to Christ and His Word we will actively disciple and hold one-another accountable. Thus following the King does not become institutionalized, but rather it is relational and is lived out personally as a family in the Spirit of the Lord through agape-love.

Link to Proposal 9