Starting a House Church: A New Model for Living Out Your Faith

by Larry Kreider, Floyd McClung

There’s a new way of doing church and it’s taking North America by storm! Here, a recognized authority on the house church movement and a popular speaker and pastor share their expertise in starting and maintaining a healthy house church. Together they look at current and future trends in the house church movement and provide best practice models for planting and leading house churches. Also, they explore how house churches are not always the same as simple cell-groups or small groups, especially in the areas of leadership and money. Readers will discover all the information they need to begin a house church in their community.

Genres: Church

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2007

Reviews

[Kristy Hetzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended to any Christian. I don't necessarily agree with everything said in the entire book, but a very thought-provoking yet unifying challenge. Even if you want to stay in a typical church, still recommended reading.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Food for Thought

Very practical insights are shared. The tenets explored and expounded on are food for thought whether or not you are on the evangelical part of the theological spectrum.

[Logan Streondj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very broad look at starting house churches, underground churches, and informal discipleship. Certainly is rather amazing how much experience the authors have all over the world. Though yeah my understanding is the house churches are structured more like biblestudy groups. Insightful and inspiring.

[David Cowpar · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much great things about running a church in this book, and not just a house church, but any church.

[Danilo Ruiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read!

I really think this book involves both the heart and the practical side to starting a guitar church. I’m going to be studying this with our church leadership.

[lily v · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a very practical book, i enjoyed it. def a good read if you want to start a house church (which i highly recommend)!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not a bad book, not by any means. It was very accessible and an easy read. It also maintained an outlook that was a little more conservative than I tend to run, marked by the occasional lapse into Evangelicalese. I can read that language, so I got through it, but it's jarring to some.

It was a wee bit more simply written than I'd prefer, with a tendency to use lots of exclamation points! Which is great! But I'm a Presbyterian! So I don't trust you if you sound too enthusiastic!

The authors have a track record of success in both church planting and small church creation, so it has an array of practical hints that were very much in keeping with other, more exhaustive guides to the subject.

For more conservative folks less prone to my own hyperanalytic approach to things, this earnest and straightforward book would probably work just fine.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps the first contemporary volume on house churches (other than its direct precursor, Kreider's "House Church Networks") that doesn't problematize traditional, institutional church life in its presentation of why and how to start a house church. It thus ends up making house churches sound normal and mainstream, not dissident and edgy. A good read, therefore, for folks who have left the institutional church and want to do something different yet not renegade or based on disparagement. Regrettably, the book is not as hands-on as its title suggests; for the amount of useful material within, it could have been much shorter -- pamphlet-length, even.

[Dennis Podryadchikov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Addressing the problem of 40% of the world population being unreached, the authors see a solution in creating small churches. They paint the ideal picture of answered prayer of Jesus when churches of all sizes share their resources to bring the good news to the unreached. The authors answer many practical questions that beginning church planters have. Most noticeable characteristic of their methodology is the abundance of illustrations borrowed from the business world and personal experience whereas the theological paradigm is desired.

[Krzysiek Troszczyński · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that it's the best and most practical book on house church subject that I read. In down-to-earth style Larry and Floynd give us very practical insights on how to start relation-based fellowship right in your living room. They answers many vital questions about house church dilemma.

[Rodger · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you want to know how to do house church, this book is a good place to begin. the author presents HC as one expression of the church, unlike most who try to present HC as THE way to do church.

[Irmgarde Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not everything about this book is perfect, but there is much food for thought. The emphasis on relationships is important to me. About halfway through so far.

[Jason Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great primer on why and how to discover ministry in a whole different way.