Monday: Supporters say the emergence of alternatives to traditional churches is bringing the church closer to its roots. Critics say they are unstable.
Tom and Lisa Ponchak's living room is modest in size and furnishings, part of their renovated home in a Lakeland historic district. It barely holds the nine adults and several kids who have gathered on a Sunday evening.
The grown-ups range in age from 24 to 45, the children from 8 months to 15 years, and they're all dressed in weekend casual - T-shirts, shorts, flip-flops, tennis shoes. They eat chicken tortilla soup and bread and discuss episodes of "Lost." Tom Ponchak describes a collision he was in returning home from Tampa, where he works as an insurance claims manager.
But there is a sense that what has brought these people together runs deeper than friendship. When the dinner dishes are put aside, the living room becomes a sanctuary and the gathering of friends becomes a church.
Someone lights a candle. Although sometimes they sing together, tonight they do not. They refer to a sheet that has a simple liturgy, and Tom Ponchak reads, "Brothers and sisters, this is the Lord's Day: Let us welcome it in joy and peace. Today we set aside the concerns of the week that we may honor the Lord and celebrate his resurrection …"
As the service proceeds, occasionally a parent chases a toddler or a little one squeals. No one seems to mind. Prayers are offered, scripture is read and discussed. Finally, the little church celebrates communion, each one taking a small piece of flatbread, dipping it in a small cup of wine and saying something he or she is thankful for. Mary Ponchak, 10, shyly says she is thankful her father wasn't hurt in his accident.
Today, on Easter Sunday, Christians around the world will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Most will do so in a church building, from one-room rural sanctuaries to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, as part of formally structured congregations. But like those in the Ponchaks' house, others will worship in a different way, one they say imitates the church as it was in the days and weeks immediately following Jesus' resurrection. It is a kind of church, they say, that avoids the problems of the traditional church, with its obsessions about money, size, a professional clergy and excessive layers of doctrine.
House churches are part of an even broader movement that is rejecting the institutional church, especially megachurches - the giant congregations with thousands of members and dozens of programs housed on large, modern campuses - and experimenting with alternatives. Another branch of this movement, known variously as Emerging, Next Wave or Postmodern churches, is particularly aimed at a younger generation of 20- and 30-somethings. These Christians are turning from larger and larger churches to look for faith in the opposite direction, in small gatherings in borrowed spaces and private homes, not as a temporary measure but as simpler and permanently impermanent churches.
It is not just a matter of a different worship style, an unconventional place of worshiping or people coming to church in jeans. Its adherents say they are recovering a more authentic vision of common Christian life.
In the second chapter of the New Testament book of Acts, the first Christians are described as sharing a communal life, with those who were needy cared for from the resources of the better-off, meeting in one another's homes for meals and prayer. That vision is typical of what those in the house church movement say they are looking for, said Tom Ponchak, 35.
"Our intention was to be a church for people burned out on traditional church," Ponchak said. "I don't get paid. We don't have a building. I've been in too many spats over what color the carpet should be."
The house church movement is small but apparently growing. A recent survey by the Barna Group, an evangelical-oriented pollster, indicated house-church attendance has grown from 1 percent of the total in 1996 to 9 percent - about 20 million Americans - in 2006. The survey also indicated house church members are more likely to be satisfied with their church than traditional churchgoers.
Religion scholars note that house churches have come and gone in the United States, especially since the Jesus Movement of the 1970s, and they are common in other parts of the world, especially Africa and Asia. In the United Kingdom, where institutional churches are dwindling, house churches have been flourishing for decades and may account for as many as one-third of all worshipers, said Donald A. Carson, professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill.
The Web site registry www.housechurch.org lists 96 house churches in Florida, but the list is far from comprehensive. There are only two listings for Polk County, and those do not include the Ponchaks or at least three others.
The Ponchaks' house church is half of a pair known together as Matthew's House. It was started about four years ago by the Ponchaks and two other couples from the Clearwater Vineyard Fellowship, part of a small Pentecostal denomination. About 18 months ago, they had attracted enough people that they split into two gatherings, with the Ponchaks coordinating one on Sunday evenings and Chris and Christy Sallee coordinating meetings on Sunday mornings.
The meetings rotate among the families' homes and always include a shared meal and worship concluding with communion. Because of an interest in liturgy and eclectic spiritual practices, Matthew's House has parted amicably from the Clearwater Vineyard Fellowship. The services borrow from Franciscan, Celtic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. In worship, instead of a sermon, they often use lectio divina, the ancient practice of reading through a passage repeatedly to discern its meaning together, then reading it as a prayer. Members of Matthew's House, who hail from backgrounds ranging from Catholic to Pentecostal, say the rediscovery of such traditions has broadened their spiritual lives.
"It's comforting to know the church started before 1500," said Kevin Justice, 45, a truck driver for R&L Carriers. "You find these things are good and not just bad. I've learned a lot in a year and a half."
Intimacy is one of the key benefits of house churches, say those who attend them. Shayla Raymond, 29, a substitute teacher at Pace School for Girls and a minister's daughter, said she has been in church all her life but feels churches can lose their focus by concentrating on numbers of visitors or the amount of money raised.
"I liked the idea of starting at ground zero and asking what's important. … You see your share of hypocrisy. I was seeking something more authentic," she said.
"You can't fall through the cracks at our church." But she added, "There are days you don't want to come because people are going to ask you how you're doing."
House churches, like their cousins in the Emerging movement, tend to be egalitarian. Formal sermons by ordained clergy give way to discussions of scripture passages, or what the Rev. Wayne Stokem calls "dialogues," in which women have equal opportunity to share.
In the fall of 2001, Stokem organized about 10 former members of First Christian Church of Lakeland into a house church that took the name Heritage Fellowship. There are now about 20 people of different ages, races and sexual orientations from a variety of religious backgrounds who attend the church, said Stokem, who previously spent about 30 years as a pastor, church organist and missionary.
Across the county, in the retirement community of Indian Lake Estates near Lake Wales, a different generation has also discovered the advantages of the house church.
This one has no name and doesn't meet in a private home but in the home-like office of Capernaum Ministries, a small consulting and training ministry run by Jim Way, 64.
"Some of these guys coming to the fellowship haven't been to church in 30 years. They won't go to a regular church, but they'll come to something like this," Way said. "There's pain in the church. People have no idea the deep problems they're having."
Way hopes to build a training and retreat center at Indian Lake Estates to help lay persons learn how to lead house churches. He organized the house church after meeting people on the estates' golf course who said they had been turned off by the church. About 15 or 20 people come, most of them retirees, he said.
The service begins with familiar hymns, led by retired minister Gene Walton playing an acoustic guitar, with words displayed on the wall by an overhead projector. Way leads a prayer and reads a scripture passage, and there is a discussion led by Curtis Guild, 77, a retired owner of a tool-and-die company.
"I spent 70 years … kind of going through the motions. I was going to church for all the wrong reasons. It was self-aggrandizement. Now, I'm really changed all inside," he said.
Despite the enthusiasm and convictions of its members, scholars who have studied house churches note they are not idyllic. Scott Thumma, professor of sociology of religion at Hartford (Conn.) Seminary, wrote in the 2006 book "Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, New Directions" that house churches of the 1970s were more fragile, prone to instability and short-lived than traditional churches.
Carson, the New Testament scholar at Trinity Evangelical, said the anti-traditionalist movement is too insular and prone to pick and choose its theology rather than relying on established evangelical traditions such as the authority of the Bible.
Many of these churches do show genuine love for their members and the community, he said, "but in the name of doing that, they can become remarkably self-indulgent. Just because you don't have a building doesn't mean you're authentic."
Stokem and other house church leaders say they are not interested in growing, especially by the use of marketing techniques. They are content to gain members by word of mouth.
Nor are they particularly concerned about the future. The members of Matthew's House compare it to a journey where the destination and the date of arrival are uncertain. And Stokem said worrying about the future is a mark of the institutional church.
"Once you start worrying about what's going to happen, the focus moves to self-preservation, the need to survive," he said. "The church is a living organism. I hope if something happened, my people would seek out a church home. … My ego's not on the line."
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