EARLY HOUSE CHURCHES

House Churches What has been discovered? Let's begin with Christian architec­ture-that is, church buildings. The Roman school declared that church buildings have been with us from the second century on. It further taught that the church build­ings erected during the Constantinian era were built on the sites of pre­vious church structures. This dogma was universally accepted as fact. i' But recently, Christian archeology has gone back to reinvestigate ') those sites. The findings: Without exception, there was no church building or any other kind of Christian meeting place to be found / buried beneath any Constantin ian-era church buildings. Archaeolo­gists found either virgin land or pagan temples or marketplaces or maybe even an occasional Pizza Hut, but no evidence anywhere of any kind of building used for Christian gatherings. The implications were staggering-and still are! They are a call to the whole church, Catholic and Protestant, to rethink the nature of what we call "church." In one way, the most remarkable discovery was that of a single Christian meeting place-the only one ever found from the pre­Constantine era! Even it was not a church building, but a home that had been converted into a meeting place for Christians. The site is a town in Syria with the odd name of Duro-Europa. Exhaustive studies have been made of this building, The upshot is this: It was just a home used in the mi.o1-200s as a place for Chris­tians to gather. One of its peculiarities: A wall had been torn out between two bedrooms to make one large room that would hold about seventy-five people sitting on the floor. The point? Until Constantine, there was no such thing as a church building or "Christian" architecture. A church building had never been dreamed of in a dream. That which we know as the Chris­tian faith was a living room movement! Thee Christian faith was the first and only religion ever to exist that did not use special temples of worship; it is the only 6'living room" religion in hu­man history. House Churches in Africa Let's look at yet another surprising archeological find. Imagine, if you will, a group of Christian archaeologists plowing their way through thousands of deeds and property records of towns and cities in North Africa. These deeds, surveys, title changes and tax records an dated from A.D. 100 to 400, and often stated the uses being made of each building. Some of these documents ten the name of the family that lived in each house, the occupation of those employed, and their religion. Some of these records also ten what other activities the building was used for besides living quarters. ("Baking located here"; "Pots made here," etc.) Lo and behold, from time to time notations are found that say, essentially, "The Christian ecclesia sometimes holds meet­ings in this house"! Exciting? Well, on some occasions archaeologists have been able to locate these very sites and do a dig. The invariable findings: an ordinary house. No more, no less. An scientific evidence of this era rises up to declare to us that the Christian faith was utterly informal in its expression, and homes were its base! A formalized Christianity in a ceremonial setting was invented during and immediately after the age of Constantine. It did not grow out of a slow, natural progression to a more mature church. but out of a sudden captivity to a half-converted, neo-pagan worldview. The institutionalization of the church was not a step up, but a step off the precipice into a chasm of slavery to unbiblical traditions. We are still in that chasm. Your own church may be as orthodox as sunshine in July, but chances are that 50% to 90% of its practices are hand-me-downs from Mr. Constantine. Small wonder that noted Temple University historian Franklin Littell calls Constantine, "that great whale that broke the net"  pp. 55-56   Rutz, James H. , THE OPEN CHURC