Dig in Deep

I’ve talked about house churches, and so far I’ve compared them to traditional churches with small groups. But there’s a structural model, growing in popularity, that’s in between house churches and small groups, commonly called cell churches.

A cell church is somewhat like a traditional church with small groups, and also somewhat like a tight network of house churches. A cell church is characterized by an equal emphasis on the cell gathering and the celebration, both meeting weekly. The largest churches in the world are organized as cell churches. While churches with small groups have an upper limit in the thousands, cell churches can grow into the hundreds of thousands.

In some ways, cell churches are similar to house churches. But using the same comparisons I used in my last post, cell churches really sound more similar to small groups:

First,, the cells are not autonomous – they have many of the same characteristics as small groups in that regard. Leaders are expected to be trained, and the discussion points are often provided by the parent church. While leaders of house churches often host discussions more than teach, leaders of cell churches, like small groups, are expected to “facilitate.” The “real” leaders are on staff.

Second, unlike small groups, the cells are outward-focused. A high emphasis is placed on evangelism in the cell context. Cells are designed to split: cell leaders are usually required to be training another leader. Cell churches view the cell gathering and the celebration as entry points to the church. Those who begin in one location are strongly encouraged to participate in the other.

Third, they are identical to a traditional churches in terms of resource handling. The celebration is more or less the same as a traditional church worship service, with a premium placed on quality, and the celebrations require a lot of resources to do that weekly.

Fourth, the styles of cell gatherings vary greatly, but with such a high importance placed on the weekly celebration, they often do not incorporate worship in the cell gatherings.

Fifth, like in a traditional church, the senior pastor is in charge. Cell churches tend to take on a pyramid structure in terms of authority, with authority being delegated from the senior pastor on down.

I believe that the major reason why cell churches can grow so much larger than traditional churches with small groups is primarily the outward focus – with a strong emphasis being placed on cells splitting, and reaching non-believers in order to do so, cells have the potential for explosive growth. But in many other areas, cell churches are identical to traditional churches, from the emphasis on the worship service, to centralized control, and resource needs.

The other reason that cell churches grow faster, and larger, is because they are far simpler – they tend to have very few programs besides the cell meetings and the celebrations.

While I think that a cell church approach is probably good for an existing church to take, I do not think cell churches naturally have all of the advantages of a network of house churches.