House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity Paperback – March 1, 2009

House Church and Mission will stand as one of the most important studies on the First Century church. Gehring's research is invaluable in explaining the context of the house church to the worship and spread of the Christian faith in it's first years. The sections dealing with the "oikos" or household concept found in the cultures of that time and place form a fundamental understanding of how the house church formed the basis for church growth. Gehring shows that the household pattern included not just the formal family, but also slaves, cousins and other extended family members as well as those in the community who regularly were associated with the household in business and other ventures. It would not be unheard of for a household to include 20-50 people. Usually, the head of the household had an outsize say and influence on such things as worship and beliefs. As a result, we can see the way the new religion quickly grew as not just one member, or even just those in the immediate family accepted Christ, but could spread far more rapidly as the tentacles of the household spread out from the locus of the original home.Of particular interest is the section on the house church setting in Galilee during the ministry of Jesus. Rather than simply inventing a new model for church, the early disciples followed a pattern already well understood in their native culture, and used widely by Jesus himself. It was therefore natural for the disciples and other followers to use the house church setting as they found it in the Greco-Roman world outside of Galilee. Instead of re-inventing a church model, they were able to adapt it to the dominant culture of their day.This is an excellent addition to the literature of both house churches and also of the historical understanding of the house church's importance in early times.

The book is excellent and one of few on the subject. You will not be disappointed but you will find yourself reading themany citations since it is a thoroughly researched doctoral dissertation. At the same time it provides a wonderfullearning experience!

Gehring's work will be recognized as foundational for many who plant and encourage house church expression. His survey of the literature to date revealed a gaping hole in scholarly treatment of the early context of worship. I found the work thorough, as any scholarly treatment of the subject should be, and insightful. It is a resource to keep.

Gives an interesting perspective to the use of homes in the early church.

I bought this book for my husband and he has been overjoyed so far by its content! Really happy that we got it.

This is a very helpful and informative book. Some portions not very understandable for those without graduate degrees in theology.

Very very good!!!

In his book "House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity" professor Roger Gehring provides a milestone in scholarly research on the issue of the household church in the New Testament era. There are several strengths to this work. First, it is written by a biblical scholar and is based on the author's doctoral dissertation. Therefore, there is plenty of attention given to Greek parsing and socio-historical analysis to keep the detail-oriented among us happy. Second, it thoroughly addresses the household structures prevalent both at the time of Jesus and the early Christians and shows how these patterns would naturally be the place and context for early believers to meet and function. Third, there is a nice overview at the start of the book bringing the reader up to date on the scholarly research into first-century household patterns that has been done in the past. Although there have been a few relatively recent scholarly attempts at providing a foundation for grassroots, non-hierarchical, house-based Christianity (such as Robert Banks' "Paul's Idea of Community" and Del Birkey's "The House Church"), I found Gehring's work to be the most in depth at analyzing the biblical text and first-century social context. My main criticism of this work is that its scholarly detail and length (about 320 pages, excluding back matter) will turn many readers away. I highly recommend this work for those who like to dig into the details of scripture and first-century history, but I hope Gehring gives some thought to writing a smaller more popular level book for those not so inclined, but who nonetheless would benefit from his findings. Overall, absolutely a must book to have!RAD ZDERO, author of LETTERS TO THE HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT and THE GLOBAL HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT

It s a valuable tool for New Testement understanding. It is not an easy read, although I like the style very much. If you are willing to think it through and use it in study, there are many, very valuable gems to be gleened from it. It is a valuable resourse and worthy of repeated study It is not a 'dummys guide to church'. It is meat that needs chewing. I recomend it very highly.

very good