The church comes home for people with disabilities

House churches are making a comeback, according to a report in The Barna Update (also reported in TIME and The Washington Post). And in my opionion, that is good news for the church. Why do I say so? For the following reasons:

1. It’s the New Testament pattern for the church to meet in believers’ homes (Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 2). Although Jewish Christians in Jerusalem continued to meet in places like the temple and Solomon’s porch as part of their Jewish roots until the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70, they followed the distinctive New Testament practice of meeting in homes (Acts 2:46; 5:42). Moreover, history has also shown that for the first three hundred years of its existence, the church met primarily in the homes of its members, not in some buildings built specifically for church meetings.

2. The house church provides the right setting for members to participate and contribute to community life as expressed in the New Testament (refer to all the “one another” and “each other” verses in the epistles). It's difficult to imagine how it is possible to fulfil the priesthood of all believers in what usually takes place on a Sunday in most congregations today.

3. A house church can release financial resources for God’s work more effectively than a church that meets in a church building. In the New Testament, Christians are instructed to give financially to three main areas: helping the poor (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-37; 11:29; Romans 15:26-27; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2; 2 Corinthians 8:1-9:15; Galatians 2:10; 1 Timothy 5:3-16; James 2:14-17; 1 John 3:16-18), supporting church planters in their work (1 Corinthians 9:3-14; 3 John 5-8), and giving honorarium to local church elders (Galatians 6:6; 1 Timothy 5:17-18). Unfortunately, a large amount of the money contributed by church members today is tied up in church building funds, lease or rent payments, interest payments for bank loans, building maintenance costs and utility bills.

4. The house church provides a more welcoming environment for people with disabilities to integrate into the local church community. Here's what Robert Banks writes in a book which he co-authored with his wife Julia Banks, deceased (they were involved with home churches for over twenty-five years):

In the church all worldly distinctions of gender, class, and race are overcome (Gal 3:28). This includes distinctions based on differing abilities. We all meet as equals in the sight of God, each with a special need and a special gift to share. As Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche communities for the handicapped so eloquently reminds us, all of us are “handicapped” in some way.

For a variety of reasons home churches tend to attract a disproportionate number of “challenged” people. Perhaps these churches have a flexibility that makes it easier for such people to fit in without drawing attention to themselves. For example, someone who suffers from a chronic bad back finds it more acceptable to lie on the floor in a living room than in the aisle of a church sanctuary! A deaf person can lip-read more easily when facing the speaker. The needs of someone who is blind or someone who has a learning disability can be more easily accommodated in a home church than in a large congregation.

The group that welcomes differently abled persons into its midst must remain sensitive to their needs. As Jean Vanier points out (Community and Growth [New York: Paulist, 1979], pp. 204-5.),

When a community welcomes people who have been on the margins of society, things usually go quite well to begin with. Then, for many reasons, these people start to become marginal to the society of the community as well. They throw crises which can be very painful for the community and cause it considerable confusion, because it feels so powerless. The community is then caught in a trap from which it is hard to escape. But if the crises bring it to a sense of its own poverty, they can also be a grace.

There is something prophetic in people who seem marginal and difficult; they force the community to become alert, because what they are demanding is authenticity. Too many communities are founded on dreams and fine words: there is so much talk about love, truth and peace. Marginal people are demanding. Their cries are cries of truth because they sense the emptiness of many of our words… But sometimes marginal people can become a focus for unity, because they… can force the community to pull itself together.

That would be the testimony of one home church that we know of. For the past twenty years they have had as a member a woman who could be described as a person with limited intelligence. Alice became acquainted with one of the women in the group through a community endeavor to help those who were unable to read or write. In time Alice became a part of the woman’s extended family, sharing weekly meals, babysitting, participating in special events and occasional holidays. Eventually she was drawn into the life of the home church to which the woman’s family belonged.

Alice has been a precious gift to that church. Her warm heart and willingness to admit that she doesn’t understand everything has endeared her to the adult members, and she is much loved by the children, who appreciate her simplicity and childlike demeanor. But that is not to say that Alice has always been easy to live with. She can be very demanding at times, obstinate and fearful because she doesn’t always understand what is happening around her.

While the Hughes family has been her major support, others in the church have included her in dinner parties, outings, and holidays. Some have shared the responsibility of getting her to and from doctor’s appointments. In many ways she has been a group “project,” although that is certainly not the way the home church would talk about her. As Alice describes her experience as a member of the home church, “When I made contact with the group I didn’t know nothing. I was dubious about going to a house church – but when I went they gave me such confidence in myself, although I’d had no chance in life. The house church helped me a lot. That’s all I can say.”

(Robert & Julia Banks, ‘The Church Comes Home’ [Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1998], pp. 220-1.)

But as Bono says, I still haven't found what I am looking for.