Could a pastor of a house church actually be more successful in God's eyes than a pastor of a mega-church with a huge building and thousands in attendance every Sunday? Yes, if he is multiplying obedient disciples and disciple-makers, following Jesus' model, as opposed to simply gathering goats once a week to watch a concert and listen to an entertaining speech sanctified by a few out-of-context scriptures.
A pastor who determines to follow the house church model will never have a large congregation of his own. In the long run, however, he will have much lasting fruit, as his disciples make disciples. Many pastors of "small" congregations of 40 or 50 people who are striving for more might need to adjust their thinking. Their churches might already be too large. Perhaps they should stop praying for a bigger building and start praying about who should be appointed to lead two new house churches. (Please, when that happens, don't give your new denomination a name and yourself the title of "bishop"!)
We need to eradicate the thinking that bigger is better when it comes to church. If we were to judge purely on a biblical basis, single congregations consisting of hundreds of undiscipled spectators who meet in special buildings would be considered quite strange. If any of the original apostles visited modern institutional churches, they would be scratching their heads!
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David Servant ( - )
David Servant is the Founder of Heavens Family, helping the least of these world-wide. David Servant has been serving in ministry since 1979 as a church-planter, pastor, teacher and missionary. When David Servant read the results of his high-school vocational aptitude test, he laughed. The results told him that he was best suited for a career in ministry or in entertainment. At the time, David's future goal was to live in a log cabin in the wilderness and live off the land for the rest of his life. The Lord, however, had different plans for David Servant. God didn't intend for him to run away from the world, but rather to play a part in changing the world by building God's kingdom. David received his call to ministry during his (reluctant) freshman year at Penn State, and one year later was enrolled in Bible School.David Servant is the author of eight books, including Forever Rich, and the The Disciple-Making Minister, a 500-page equipping manual that has been translated into more than 20 languages and is being distributed to tens of thousands of pastors.