I like this stuff...

Why is the home church movement growing and gaining momentum? Well, probably for a number of reasons...here is one good one. And yes, I am a proponent of house churches. Any method that reaches and teaches people the message of Jesus. Here is part of a blog that I recently read...

There is considerable evidence to suggest that free and open systems tend to go bad less often than tightly controlled systems. The Catholic system is very tightly controlled, and we would argue it has gone bad in many ways. The free church system is a very loosely controlled, low-accountability system, yet tends to stay doctrinally pure. (With some exceptions, of course.) Power tends to corrupt, not keep pure.

The most articulate answer to this control questions comes from a seventy-five year old writing by Roland Allen. He is writing in a missions context. The tendency for missionaries is to feel we must control the national churches. Here is Allan's response:

"We fear that it [the spontaneous expansion of the church] is something that we cannot control. And it is true. We can neither induce nor control spontaneous expansion whether we look on it as the work of the individual or of the church. . .‘The wind blows where it will,' said Christ." If we cannot control it, we ought to rejoice that we cannot control it. For if we cannot control it, it is because it is too great, not because it is too small for us. Therein lies the vast hope.

Spontaneous expansion could fill the continents with the knowledge of Christ: our control cannot reach as far as that. We constantly bewail our limitations: open doors un-entered; doors closed to us as foreign missionaries; fields white to the harvest which we cannot reap. Spontaneous expansion could enter open doors, force closed ones, and reap those white fields. Our control cannot: it can only appeal pitifully for more men to maintain control."

-Roland Allan The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church