COVER • CONTENTS • ORDER MAY 2020 | Personal UPDATE
ARTICLE
Chuck Missler Founder, Koinonia House and Koinonia Institute
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THE ONCE AND FUTURE CHURCH
Article source originally published in October 1, 2016
ver the many decades that I have enjoyed my love affair with the Bible, I have had the marvelous benefit of many great teachers. I’ve also had the incredible experience of fellowshipping in one of the most famous churches emphasizing expositional teaching from the Word of God. But I also would like to let you in on a precious secret. Unquestionably, the greatest personal growth I’ve ever witnessed occurs in the home Bible study. From those early years on Harbor Island Road in Newport Beach, to those precious times on Mountain Home Road in Silicon Valley, the fellowship of those intimate home groups, where people can interact, ask questions, and hold one another accountable, was the place of growth for all of us — teacher and student. This was, of course, the way it all started. A group of but a dozen — fishermen and others — along a seaside in Galilee. Even later as Paul traveled and planted, it was the intimacy of home fellowships that provided the earliest forums for the Gospel. The declarations in the synagogues and on Mars Hill were but an initiation. Their resulting questions were responded to in small groups in homes and on hillsides. Groups meeting in houses were the original recipients of the Gospel.1 Even the famed giving of the Spirit at Pentecost was in a house.2 Clearly, the early Christians met in homes. (Check out Acts 2:46; 5:42; 8:3; 9:11; 12:12; 16:40; 18:7; 20:20; 21:8; Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15; 1 Cf. Matthew 10:14; Luke 10:5, 7; Acts 10:22, 30; 16:15, 32 2 Acts 2:2 VOLUME 30 | ISSUE 05 |
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