Churches That Start Small.

§ 01How a Small Church Begins.

The hub itself is a full church. It gathers for worship, preaching, prayer, baptism and the Lord’s Supper under its own elders, and it may well meet in a church building, keep a full calendar and pay its pastors. The Hub Model explains how a hub trains and sends. The churches it plants begin far more simply.

A church planted from a hub usually starts with a few households in a living room. Sometimes they’re families sent from the hub to a town nearby. Sometimes they’re people who already live there and have come to faith, or come back to it. Either way, a pastor from the sending church is responsible for them from the first meeting, and a man the hub has trained, whom its elders have approved, guides them week by week.

What a week looks like

They meet on the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week (Acts 20:7), around a table. They eat together. They read the Scriptures, and the man who leads them teaches what the passage says. They pray for one another and for their town, they sing, and they ask honest questions. Many take part, because the room is small enough for it, and Scripture calls believers to teach and admonish one another as they sing (Colossians 3:16). Once the gathering has become a church, it keeps baptism and the Lord’s Supper under its own elders. The Supper is more than the meal they share, and Paul rebuked a church that treated it as an ordinary meal (1 Corinthians 11:20–22, 27–34).

The first believers gave themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. Every day they kept meeting together in the temple courts, and they broke bread in their homes, eating together with glad and simple hearts.

Acts 2:42, 46 (paraphrased)

There’s no back row in a living room. A newcomer is noticed. A widow is missed the first week she isn’t there. A young believer learns to pray by hearing an older one pray beside him. Larger churches work hard to give people the same thing through classes and small groups, and many do it well. A small church simply starts there.

§ 02Why Most Begin in a Home.

The New Testament shows churches meeting in homes again and again. Paul greets the church that met in the house of Priscilla and Aquila (Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19), the church in Nympha’s house (Colossians 4:15) and the church in Philemon’s (Philemon 2). Believers gathered to pray in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark (Acts 12:12). Lydia opened her home in Philippi to Paul and the believers there (Acts 16:15, 40), and Paul taught in public and from house to house (Acts 20:20).

The first Christians also gathered and taught in public places: the temple courts in Jerusalem (Acts 2:46; 5:42) and the lecture hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus (Acts 19:9), and Paul reasoned in the synagogues (Acts 18:4). Scripture commands believers to keep meeting together (Hebrews 10:25). It doesn’t command a place. The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 says that worship is not “tied unto, or made more acceptable by, any place in which it is performed” (22.6).

Historians think the earliest Christian worship took place in private houses, and that churches built for the purpose grew numerous during the third century¹. When a Roman prefect asked Justin Martyr, about AD 165, where the Christians assembled, he answered, “Where each one chooses and can”².

The same pattern runs through Baptist history in rural America. On the frontier, many churches met in settlers’ cabins for their first several years, because their members were few³. In those years, by the account of David Benedict, a Baptist historian who knew many of them, most Baptist preachers were “farmer preachers,” men who farmed for a living and preached as well⁴. Benedict also admits that Baptists then were slower than almost anyone to support their preachers. That part we don’t mean to copy.

What a small church can do without

A church that begins in a home can do without a great deal that many good churches use well: a building to buy, rent and keep up, a stage, projectors and a sound system, a full slate of programs, fixed service times to staff every week, and a paid staff. It doesn’t need to raise much money before it begins, and it doesn’t need dozens of volunteers to run a Sunday.

That frees what little it has for people. Hours that would go to setting up and maintaining can go to an elder reading the Bible with a new believer over lunch, a family teaching their neighbors to pray, and a man being trained to lead the next church. Money that would go to a lease or a mortgage can go to training, to care for the elder and his family, and to sending. We believe churches that start this way can multiply faster, because so much less has to be in place before the next one can begin. No study we know of measures that, so we hold it as a conviction and a hope, and God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6–7).

None of this is a verdict on churches with buildings, staff, programs or production. God has used all of them, and he is using them now, including in churches we love and serve. Sunday schools, children’s ministries and full-time pastors have formed generations of believers. A large church can send generously, and a living room can turn in on itself. What counts is faithful formation and a willingness to send, and that can be true of a church of any size, in any room.

A small church isn’t a failed large one. Most congregations in America are small already.

§ 03What a Small Church Never Cuts.

Lower overhead must never mean weaker teaching, unsafe ministry or inadequate care. A church in a living room still needs everything a church needs, and in a home some of these things matter more, not less. The commitments for children, money and accountability would be in place before a gathering meets, and sound teaching from its first meeting. Membership, the ordinances and its own elders would follow as it becomes a church. Until it is constituted, the sending church’s elders would answer for its teaching, care, money and safety.

The Word and the ordinances

• Sound teaching. The Scriptures are read and taught every time the church meets, by a man trained to handle them and accountable for what he teaches (2 Timothy 2:15; Titus 1:9).
• Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, kept faithfully once the gathering is a church, under its elders.
• Qualified elders. Men whose lives and doctrine have been examined over time against 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9 and whom the church recognizes, with more than one as soon as they can be raised up.
• Membership and care. Members who covenant with one another, carry one another’s burdens and practice the loving discipline Jesus gave his church (Matthew 18:15–20; Galatians 6:1–2).

Children and vulnerable adults

• A written child-safety policy, adopted by the sending church’s elders before the first meeting and signed by every leader and host.
• Screening first. Everyone who serves children, youth or vulnerable adults, leaders and the adults of each host household included, gives a written application, an interview, references and a background check, and is known by the church before serving.
• Training before serving, in how abuse happens and how to report it.
• Never alone. No adult is alone with a child who isn’t his or her own. When children are cared for apart from their parents, two screened adults who aren’t related stay with them in an open, visible room, never a bedroom. A parent takes a child to the bathroom, and older children don’t babysit younger ones. If that can’t be arranged, children stay with their parents.
• The same care for vulnerable adults, including on visits at home.
• A written plan to report any suspicion of abuse to the civil authorities, as the state’s law requires and even where it doesn’t, and to care for anyone harmed.

Honest money, even when it’s little

• Gifts go into an account in the name of the sending church, or of the new church once it is constituted, never into a person’s.
• Two people who aren’t related count every offering and sign the count, and someone else checks it against the bank deposit.
• Every account has two unrelated signers. Church money never pays personal expenses without written approval.
• A simple written budget, agreed with the sending church and open to the members, and a record of giving for every giver at least once a year.

Accountable before it is a church

• A written agreement between the sending church and the gathering, saying who is responsible for teaching, care, money, safety and insurance.
• Nothing assumed about insurance. Before a gathering meets in a home, the sending church asks its insurer in writing how the gathering, its leader and its host are covered, and the host household checks its own policy. They check again if the gathering moves to a rented room, and again when it becomes a church.
• Hosts are volunteers. No family is ever required to host, and a host household can step back at any time without anyone thinking less of it.
• Good neighbors. The gathering keeps to local rules, minds parking and noise, and when someone who can’t manage stairs wants to come, it finds a room where they can.
• Accountability that lasts. Once it is constituted, the church may choose to join a network for training, care and accountability in doctrine, money and safe ministry, help it asks for and agrees to.

§ 04An Elder Who Keeps His Job.

Each small church is usually led by a trained elder who also holds another job, a bivocational elder. He may farm, teach school, drive a truck, fix engines or work a hospital shift. Sometimes he already lives in the town and is trained there. Sometimes he moves there with a few households sent from the hub. Either way, he works where his neighbors work, and he shepherds where he lives.

He has to be qualified. In the churches we hope to plant, we follow the Baptist convictions James Bell holds and teaches: the office of elder, also called pastor or overseer, is held by qualified men (1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9), and we hold this with respect for Christians who read these passages differently. A church recognizes him only after his character, doctrine and ministry have been tested over time. Completing a course never makes anyone an elder.

He would be trained through the pathways a hub teaches: the full pathway for pastors and church planters, or the proposed elder pathway of about 18 to 24 months, built on the same 17 modules and arranged around a working life. Both begin with assessment, a careful look over time at his walk with Christ, his character, his household and his doctrine, and both go on with a cohort, a mentor and observed ministry. Module 09, Planting the House Church, covers forming a first gathering. It was written first for village ministry overseas, and its adaptation for elders here is not yet written. The whole curriculum is Draft v0.1, awaiting theological review and not yet piloted. See the three pathways.

Paul made tents in Corinth while he preached there (Acts 18:1–4), and in Thessalonica he worked night and day so as not to be a burden to anyone (1 Thessalonians 2:9). He also taught that those who preach the gospel should get their living by it (1 Corinthians 9:14), received gifts from other churches (2 Corinthians 11:8–9) and counted elders who rule well, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching, worthy of double honor (1 Timothy 5:17–18). A bivocational elder isn’t a cheaper kind of pastor. He’s a pastor whose church can’t yet support him fully, or one who keeps his trade as part of his calling, which some call covocational.

Holding another job is common among pastors, and for most of them it’s a need more than a choice. That’s why his care has to be planned from the start.

Before he is asked to lead, his church, and the churches that stand with it, would agree to give him:

• Expectations in writing: what the church asks of him, agreed with him and reviewed each year, so unwritten demands don’t swallow his hours.
• Reasonable responsibilities that fit the hours he actually has.
• Shared leadership. More than one qualified elder as soon as another can be raised up, so preaching, care and decisions don’t rest on one man. Until then, the sending church’s elders stand beside him.
• A mentor: an experienced pastor who meets with him regularly, tells him the truth, prays for him and stays after training ends.
• Pay when the church is able, even if it’s modest, and help with the cost of his training.
• Rest: a weekly day off and regular time away with his family, guarded by the church as well as by him.

His household must never become invisible, unpaid staff. If he’s married, his wife and children belong to the church as fully as anyone else. They’re free to serve as others do, and no one should quietly count on their labor or their living room. The same goes for any family that hosts. Full-time pastoral support remains a good option. The Second London Confession teaches that churches owe their pastors support according to their ability (26.10), so as a church grows able, it should offer its elder fuller support.

§ 05When a Gathering Becomes a Church.

A house church is a church. It isn’t a home group belonging to a larger congregation, though home groups do good work in many churches. It has its own members, its own name, its own decisions under Christ and, in time, its own elders. The confession calls such congregations “particular societies, or Churches,” in which believers walk together for their mutual edification and for public worship (Second London Confession, 1689, 26.5).

Meeting in a home doesn’t make a gathering a church, any more than meeting in a church building does. A gathering is constituted as a church, formally organized with its own members and leaders, when it is ready. Readiness includes covenant membership, sound doctrine, qualified leadership, worship and the ordinances, care and discipline, safe ministry, responsible governance and an honest budget. Attendance targets, donor deadlines and fixed timetables have no part in the decision.

Membership rests on what Baptists call regenerate church membership. The church receives as members people who profess faith in Christ, show the new life he gives, and have been baptized as believers. They covenant together, “giving up themselves, to the Lord & one to another,” as the confession puts it (26.6). Some gatherings will stay Bible studies for a long time, and that can be faithful too.

A small church isn’t a church waiting to become real. Once it is constituted, it’s a whole church, with all the authority Christ gives a church to order its worship and its discipline (26.7).

§ 06From a Living Room to a Hub.

This is the life we pray a small church will have. It’s a ministry pathway, not a schedule, and no step is promised.

Paul told Timothy to entrust what he had heard to faithful people who would teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2). That’s the whole pattern in one sentence, and the growth belongs to God (1 Corinthians 3:6–7). We promise no number of churches, no date and no speed.

§ 07Gathering Together, Freely.

Small churches need one another. A church of twenty will struggle to train its next elders alone or to find a mentor for its pastor, and can feel very small in a hard winter. So in the network we hope to see, the churches would gather from time to time for worship, prayer and preaching together, and for the training and care no small church can supply alone.

Each church would come by its own choice. The gathering would hold no authority over any of them. It wouldn’t receive members, discipline anyone or set any church’s elders, and each church would go on governing its own life under Christ. Baptists have long held that churches “ought to hold communion amongst themselves for their peace, increase of love, and mutual edification” (Second London Confession, 1689, 26.14), and that when churches send messengers to meet together, those messengers hold no power over the churches themselves (26.15).

How often the churches would gather, and how such a gathering would be led, are questions the churches themselves would settle together. No network has been formed yet.

§ 08Learned Among the Nations.

This way of working wasn’t invented in an American small town. In Thailand, SLMIF’s Frontline Mission works with local networks to find evangelists already serving in frontier regions and trusted by the people around them. It sums up its method in three words: “Find. Train. Release.” Its one-sentence version is “We don’t recruit them to leave; we resource them to stay.” Those are SLMIF’s words⁷. An elder who keeps his job and shepherds the town he lives in is the same instinct, here at home.

In India, Mission Impact India, led by David Livingstone, reports a network of about 250 national pastors. ENDS is confirming that figure and its scope with the ministry, and it is not a count of pastors ENDS has funded or trained.

ENDS’s draft curriculum was written first for national pastors in village ministry. Its ninth module, Planting the House Church, asks each pastor in training to plant or strengthen one real gathering and to lead a first meeting simple enough for a new believer to repeat within a week. Our partners lead their own work and describe their own churches, and we don’t speak for how their churches meet. Where the Work Takes Root tells more of their story.

§ 09Common Questions.

More questions are answered on the FAQ page.

§ 10Where This Stands.

§ 11Your Next Step.

Every next step begins with a conversation, and James Bell is the contact for this work. Choose a topic on the contact page, or write to info@endsinitiative.org with the topic in the subject line.