House Churches vs Traditional Churches

In the last post, I shared how there are 5 Advantages of a House Church. But after having experience leading both a house church and an institutional church, I’ve come to be more self-aware that the house church model isn’t perfect. There are many advantages to traditional churches that house churches just cannot do well. So instead of sharing the disadvantages of a house church, I want to spin this to paint traditional churches in a positive light. So here are 5 Advantages to the traditional church model.

1. A Beacon of Light

When I was on staff at traditional churches, there would be a few times during the weekdays where individuals would walk in the church building and ask for help. Maybe they were in need of food, money, or just prayer after going through a specific hardship in their life. When a church has a physical building in their community, it acts like a beacon of light to the local area. If people feel like they need God in their life, they know where to find a church. This lighthouse effect is a great advantage to care for people’s needs and be planted in a community.

This is very difficult to do in a house church because there are no physical buildings. It’s hard to know that a specific house in the neighborhood is actually a gathering place for a church, because there’s no signage and advertisments.

2. Seeker Sensitive

If there is an individual who is on the fence about Christianity and just wants to watch the church from afar, having a church building is a good advantage. This person can come to a church service, sit in the back, listen and watch, without having to be thrust into a Christian community. Most traditional churches can be more seeker sensitive.

In house churches, they can’t hide in the back. They are thrust into the Christian community and are expected to engage on some level.

3. High Church Environment

There are some denominations and church cultures that need to have a physical building because of their doctrine and theology. In high church environments like Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican churches, they have more liturgies, rituals, and practices that would be very difficult to do in a house church.

4. Specific Programing

Because of the resources and volunteer teams that most traditional churches have, they can do special programs like Sunday School, VBS, recovery ministries, and much more. Traditional churches can scale these specific programs because of their resources, and house churches can’t really do these effectively on a scalable level.

5. Benevolence Infrastructure

Buildings are a huge advantage to host an infrastucture for a certain ministry that may help house the homeless, feed the hungry, provide counseling to the emotionally wounded, and much more. Even though I believe house churches steward their finances better than traditional churches, having a building really does help aid their community on a larger scale.

Pros & Cons

There are pros and cons to each type of church model that is in our world today. There is no church model that is absolutely perfect. However, it is important to understand each model’s strengths and weaknesses and enter into a local church community aiming to grow in Christ and with one another.

If you’re looking for a house church, make sure to check out Find A House Church to check one out in your local area. If you’re in the San Antonio, TX area, we would love to have you over in our home this Sunday.