A Glimpse of a First-Century Roman House Church

By Christopher Travis Haun for http://rethinker.net/ekklesia

December 2007

(Video) First Century Roman House Church

After years of disillusionment with the visible Christian Church (at least all that I had seen of it) I came across Francis Schaeffer’s video series How Should We Then Live. I had read some Schaeffer in years prior and not been terribly impressed. Although I like the guy a lot, I still can’t say I recommend his books or videos. But in this video series there were a few “magic moments” for me in those videos where the Schaeffers and presumably some of their L’Abri hippy friends recreated and videotaped their conception of a first or second century Roman house church. Several adults met around a banquet table in a house (actual Roman ruins) to enjoy the fellowship meal, the breaking of bread, the reading and teaching from the scrolls, prayer. I think that glimpse perhaps more than any one other thing this glimpse revolutionized my view of the local church. It really opened up my eyes to something I had no conception of. As of now, twelve years later, those images are still bouncing around in my head and seemed worthy to try to capture and convey.

Normally I’d never endorse the How Should We Then Live video series. As much as I respect Francis and Edith Schaeffer as people and as authentic Christians, my main problem with them is that the main impact of his books, lecturing, and videos upon the Evangelical World has so far proven to be first and foremost political, high level, theonomic, Kuyperian. I’d go so far as to say Francis opened the floodgates of political-based Christianity into Evangelicalism in the 1980s. And I believe this angle to be totally misguided--based more on the Old Testament mission for Israel than the New Testament mission of the Church.   Francis seems to have had a bi-polar disorder in his doctrine of the mission of the church.  Take his Church at the End of the Twentieth Century book for example.  On one page he pens some of the best, most radical hospitality based discipleship ideas one could find.  He definitely understood more than most the impact the Church needs to have on the home and in the home--at the family and neighborhood level. ("I dare you! In the name of Christ I dare you to open your homes!")  But on the next page he's talking about high level politics and how the Church needs to make its impact there. 

Of all the things that I am most thankful for to Francis Schaeffer, it is undoubtedly this:  After I became disillusioned with the impersonal machinery of the modern evangelical MegaChurch around 1991, the Schaeffers showed me this short glimpse of a first or second century Roman house church.  All in all they did a powerfully admirable job in creating a vision of what the New Testament churches closely resembled after leaving the Jewish nest and seeding in Roman culture.  It set me to rethinking.  It still does today.  Instead of thousands in an audience which stifled real relationships, I saw a few friends who had fellowship around a table.   This matches the glimpses I see of the earliest churches in the books of Acts, 1st Corinthians, and Jude in particular.  Revolutionary!   I saw it for the first time in 1996 and it was my first glimpse of "house church." I never forgot it.  It has revolutionized my concept of the local Church, helped me to see the Church more clearly in the New Testament, and helped revive my faith in the wisdom of the mission Christ gave to his apostles.  This four minute should give a hint towards what inspires me to rethink the church.

I scrubbed out the audio, unified the pieces and stuck in some New Testament verses which seemed to fit well into the flow of the clips. 

I know it probably won’t have the same thought-provocative magic for most that it had for me. But I hope that its magic will still work on a few.