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I want to preface this particular series of articles (on various church models) by saying this: I am a young follower of Christ who is simply seeking out and examining the various church models so that I can find what I feel to be the most effective. I am not bashing, attacking or decrying any one form of church as long as that body is actively pursuing the kingdom good. I have simply been so moved by my current experiences that I must write about it. All in all, it has been an awesome experience, one which I would not trade the world for.
I had just came from a multiple hour-long (from about 8 PM 'til Midnight) discussion time with Wolfgang Simson (author, "Houses That Change The World") and I have to admit, I was blown away!
Why, you ask? Let me first take a minute to explain where I am coming from. My "ministry career" as I used to define it, started at a large Catholic church roughly 3 years after I accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. I started out working with their teenagers and then moved into teaching/speaking at their confirmation classes. From there, I served a year on the church's Pastoral Council, where we supposedly advised the Pastor on matters of ministry to our peers. I say "supposedly" because our suggestions and concerns were usually not heeded. Nothing wrong with the church… the Pastor (at that time) was simply content where he was at and had no intention of getting up and moving.
From there, I moved to the church where I had accepted Christ. After discipling, mentoring and some interning under the then-youth minister, I took over for him and served for two years on staff there, at a traditional Southern Baptist church.
Now, I have found myself at a church where "doing ministry" is a way of doing life together rather than an institutional set of practices. It is basically a difference in mind-sets... on one hand, you have a large building, with around 200 or so "members" and a "ministerial" staff of around 5 or so, with a variety of "support" staff members. The "key components" of a traditional church structure's meeting are:

1) "Singing" - usually called "worship" and lasts about 20 minutes or so
2) "Preaching/Teaching" - done by a "trained professional"
3) "Invitation" - time for people to come down front and "be ministered to," the people are invited to come rather then reached where they're at.
4) "Mingling" (before and after the "service") - the only real fellowship sometimes. This could include lunch at a cafeteria such as "Luby's" or a good, Tex-Mex restaurant if you're in Texas.

With the house church structure, you can see a bit of a contrast… these four things are what Wolfgang Simson stated as being the four components of a successful house church:

1) "Meating" - meeting while eating… many times we go out to eat after church, but the fellowship isn't considered as part of the actual "church" time. This isn't what's reflected in the New Testament church.
2) "Sharing life together" - this isn't going to happen on three hours a week… there has to be genuine sharing of lifestyles and lifeways.
3) "Learn something together" - this can be through teaching, discussion… whatever way the group can take away heart knowledge of a living Lord. But, it should be noted that the primary way this should be happening is by example.
4) "Prayer and Prophecy" - times of intense prayer and prophecy are usually followed by the planting of churches and/or the salvation of unbelievers who are there. Prayer happens for a time and then prophecy follows, which usually results in knowledge about various people in the room and sometimes, a vision of where the next church is to be planted.

The differences between the two models, needless to say, caught my attention. A million questions were rushing through my mind as I sat and listened to these things being broken down for me. You have to know that I was hearing this all fresh and new… I had not read his book and had never before met this man. I had been at a church that is moving towards being a house church but still has many traditional trappings (ie: lots of singing, little if any prophecy, very few miracles/healings and an understood, underlying structure to it with a hierarchy). I had been struggling deeply with trying to find what a "house church" really was supposed to look and feel like and then… I heard stories of it from a first-hand visitor. I heard him break down the structure and the things that he felt were important in this type of church.
At this point, I became more engaged. Wolfgang Simson went on to state some of the pitfalls he saw happening in the Western church on a pretty regular basis:

1) Following a guru
2) Being a holy huddle (unaccepting of new faces)
3) Not connecting with the body of Christ in the area
4) Exchanging one program for another… one quote he said stuck out in my mind and I wanted to state it right now… he said, "We have programs because we don't have an understanding of prophecy."
5) Replacing of "corporate worship" with "singing songs."

After he stated those, I started thinking about the various accounts of the New Testament church I could remember right off the top of my head. Nowhere in those could I see the traditional church model (except, of course, for the large celebrations in the temple courts, and those didn't seem too frequent). Did I feel attacked? Having come from the background, I could easily have been. I could easily have discounted what he was saying as something "weird" or "nuts" or even blown it off as "small church insecurity syndrome." However, I stepped back and as I did, I realized that I had bumped into the wall of the box I had been thinking inside of.
I had always thought "inside the box" of how I "did ministry." I had only ever seen one way of doing church (even across denominational lines) and that way had always been within fixed boundaries. There had been set boundaries, traditions and trappings that had always been a part of my ministry life. "Set appointments if you need to do counseling," Have your secretary say you're in a meeting when you have to get the budget done," "Have high attendance Sundays so people will invite their friends," "Have special, 'interactive' sermons for Easter and Christmas so you can catch the attention of the CE Christians," and more such "Come, come, come" strategies. Looking at my past experiences, I could easily see where Kevin Smith got his material for his film "Dogma." I had been a part of the "Come and see" mentality as opposed to the "Go and show" model.
Now, I was shell-shocked. For the past two years at my present church, I had been struggling to get teenagers to "come" to church, rather than considering the option of planting a youth house church in three or four of their homes (which I am currently praying about doing). Now, I see another vital truth about the house church movement… the philosophy entails planting house churches into a subculture, rather than trying to get people out of a subculture and into a church.
There was a three part process that Wolfgang Simson mentioned that especially hit home with me… he stated that one mind-set that exists is to follow these three steps:

1) Behave - get people to adapt, change their ways, and become "like us"
2) Believe - get people to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and then begin teaching them the Christian theology
3) Belong - allow people to feel as thought they belong at church; allow them to feel a sense of affinity and community with the other believers

I thought about what he said and then processed it and found that I could see what he was talking about. Then, he went on to say that he felt in a Post-modern culture, a new order of doing things had developed and was becoming the most effective way to do ministry:

1) Belong - allow people to feel loved, accepted and to know they have a home and family
2) Believe - Bring them along to the point where they accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior
3) Behave - Begin a cleansing process in which the new believer can shed the trappings of their old life and begin a new way

After this last set of principles, I had to take some time to process everything I had known to be "ministry." This is something I am still attempting to do even today. I had not grasped the fullest extent of the vision for house churches and a return to the New Testament way of doing church. Now, I feel that I have at least reached a point where I can begin investigating this phenomenon with complete abandonment to what changes it could mean for my life. This experience of speaking with and discussing the "house church movement," with someone who is actively living out the practice, has served to open my eyes and make me think "outside the box" in terms of acceptable ways to do ministry, especially in a Post-Modern world.
It is usually a standard reaction to something brand new and radical, which carries and aura of perceived "impossibility," such as this, to put it in the back of our minds and ignore it for a day, a month or even a year. However, with something that could possibly, I feel, mean the difference between death and life for the church in America today, I feel it is definitely worth investigating. Whether or not God's plan for me is to be back on staff at a church or para-church ministry is still something God has yet to show me, however, I can say that I now view planting house churches as a viable option.
What I've attempted to do here is simply to outline the principles of the house church movement and then highlight those that most stuck out in my mind about it. I've also tried to give my initial reactions to both those principles and the idea of the paradigm shift that it would entail for me, as a minister, and maybe even for the church in America today as a whole. I plan on writing at least three articles in this "series" just kinda' laying out what I heard in visiting with Wolfgang Simson (author, "Houses that change the World") and then Ralph Neighbour (cell church guru). After those two, I want to set out the differences between those two structures and the "traditional American church" structure.