According to a variety of sources, "house churches" appear to be increasing in number as some people move away from traditional forms of church. However, how many "house churches" are out there and how many people are involved? A new study by the Barna Group says it really depends on how you define "house church" and ask the questions in the survey. And, they are right.

From Barna:

When a question asks whether the survey respondent has "attended a worship service in someone's home, known as a house church," the results generally find about 10% of the adult population claims to have done so in the past month...

A different approach is to ask people how often, if ever, they attend a religious service - not a "worship service" - in someone's home or even in some other place that is independent of a congregational-form church. This more inclusive question typically finds that 22% to 24% of all adults claim to have had such an experience during a given month.

Continue reading Counting People Who Attend House Churches.

One of my favorite troublemakers is Frank Viola. When George Barna "entered" house church world (through his writings, at least), one of my comments was that he had not actually connected with any of the people in house church world. In other words, Barna was saying all the things house church people say, but not providing any solutions or awareness of the house church movement. And, I found Revolution to be a relatively unhelpful book for that reason (and several other theological reasons I have stated elsewhere).

In the follow-up book, Barna seems to have jumped whole hog into the house church world with none other than Frank Viola. Together they published Pagan Christianity which riled a lot of people up (me included) and not just because of the not-so-subtle title. For what it is worth, I think New Testament scholar Ben Witherington did a great job in his series on the book (starting here) and Frank was gracious in his response.