The History of Home Fellowships—Part 1

By Robin G. Jordan

Home fellowships have a long history. They can be traced back to the Day of Pentecost. After the apostles received the promised Holy Spirit, they began preaching and teaching in Jerusalem. The very day the Holy Spirit filled the apostles three thousand received Peter’s word, and were baptized and were added to the fledgling Church. The physician Luke in the Acts of the Apostles tells us, “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. (Acts 2:42 NKJV). In addition to gathering in the Temple in Jerusalem, the early Christians also met in each other’s homes. “So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.” (Acts 2:46-47 NKJV) The apostles not only taught and preached in the outer courts of the Temple, they also preached in homes. “And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. (Acts 5:42 NKJV) The early Christians also gathered in homes to pray. “So, when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying.” (Acts 12:12 NKJV).

Home fellowships may be older than the Day of Pentecost. In exile in Babylon, in the abeyance of the worship of the Temple, the Jews began to gather to worship and perhaps read the Torah, forming the first synagogues, or congregations. While special buildings were eventually erected for their meetings, they in all likelihood at the beginning met in private homes.

Persecution drove the early Christians out of the Temple and the synagogue and out of Jerusalem. We gather from the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles of the apostle Paul that they continued to meet in homes. (Acts 8:3, 16:40, 18:7, 20:7-12, Romans 16:5, 1 Corinthians 16:19, Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:2) While the early Church may have at times of fierce persecution met in the catacombs in Rome, the most common meeting place was a private house.

After the Peace of Constantine the early Christians began to meet in large public buildings known as basilicas and their new meeting places and the ceremony of the Imperial Roman court would influence their worship. The practice of meeting in houses would fall into desuetude. But it did not disappear altogether.

I believe that it would be useful in a history of home fellowships to look at the practices of the Celtic Church in the British Isles and in particular Ireland. The Celtic Church was responsible for the evangelization of a large part of the British Isles and continental Europe. The Celtic Christians did not meet in churches larger than a small house by contemporary standards, and also used houses for their meeting places.

The British Isles were on the very periphery of the Western Roman Empire and the Romans had never conquered Ireland. Christianity appears to have spread to Roman Britain from North Africa and Spain, following the maritime trade routes that linked Albion, the classical name for the British Isles, to the ancient Mediterranean world. Christianity spread from Roman Britain to Brittany and to Ireland. A number of the oldest churches in Brittany are named in honor of Celtic saints.

Christianity took a particular form in Ireland. Ireland was rural and tribal. It had no cities. It also had no large public buildings. Irish Christianity was monastic in form. The use of term “monastic” is bound to conjure up images of cloistered monasteries of the Middle Ages. But Irish monasticism was quite different. Christians formed themselves into small religious communities. These communities might include men and women who were vowed to celibacy. They also might include married men and women and their children. A community might have deacons, priests, and bishops, but the abbot or abbess was the head of the community. The deacons, priests, and bishops were servants of the community; the abbot or abbess was its elder/overseer. In relation to the Irish monastic community the abbot or abbess occupied the place of a tribal chieftain; Christ occupied the place of the High King.

The typical Irish monastery was a cluster of huts, encircled by an earthen embankment and a ditch so that it resembled a rath, or Irish hill fort. However, the earthen embankment and the ditch were not defenses. They were intended to set apart the site of the community as a holy place. A large wooden cross marked the entrance to the community and a large wooden cross in front of a building identified it as a church. The monks gathered at the cross at different times of the day to pray. Irish churches were not very big; they were no bigger than the larger huts. Indeed they may have begun as one of the larger huts set apart for that purpose. The largest number of people that they might accommodate was forty. If the population of the community grew beyond forty, the monks built another church. If it exceeded eighty, they built a third church, and so on.

Irish monastic communities often grew from a single hut in which lived a particular Christian known for his saintliness. This Christian would in turn attract followers due to his reputation of personal holiness. They would build their huts near him and they eventually might build a small chapel or church if the “saint” himself had not built one. Or they might turn one of the huts into a small chapel or church. The Irish monks frequently worshiped in the open air.



One of the ways that Christianity spread in Ireland was the practice of monks individually and in small groups to leave their community and to go to a distant place. The monk or monks would build a hut, start a garden, and perhaps build a small chapel or church. If there was a village nearby, the monk or monks eventually might attract a small following. The monk or monks carried with them an iron hand bell which they rung to summon such villagers to prayer.

Irish monks were responsible for evangelizing Scotland and Northumbria, and re-evangelizing most of the British Isles after the Angles, Frisians, Jutes, and Saxons invaded Roman Britain. They also evangelized a large part of Western Europe. Augustine’s Roman mission played only a tiny role in the evangelization of the British Isles, confining itself to the Saxon kingdom whose Christian queen had invited them there.

The Church of Rome would eventually suppress the peripatetic practices of Celtic monks and priests. The latter were referred to as “hedge priests.” They did not acknowledge the authority of the Church of Rome and its bishops. They would come into the jurisdiction of a Roman bishop and celebrate the sacraments without his permission. They conducted their illicit celebrations—at least from a Roman point of view—in private homes. Among the practices of the Celtic Church was to permit women to administer the chalice at the Holy Communion. In Celtic society cupbearer was a woman’s role. This practice did not sit well with the Roman Church.

The Medieval Church frowned upon the practice of meeting for religious purposes in private houses. Such gatherings were prohibited. Heretical sects such as the Albigenses, illicit lay orders like the Beguines and Beghards, and the early Protestants such the Lollards and the Hussites met sometimes openly but often clandestinely in private houses.

Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, wrote favorably in support of the practice of mature Christians gathering in private houses for the study of the Bible, prayer, and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. He did not see the need for the presence of a pastor at these gatherings. A layperson might officiate at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper at such gatherings. He did not, however, institute the practice in the Lutheran Churches.

The English crown, on the other hand, took a dim view of “conventicles,” religious meetings in private houses, from the Middles Ages until well into the eighteen century. In the reign of Elizabeth I such “conventicles” might be gatherings of Recusants—Roman Catholics who refused to attend Anglican services and secretly celebrated the Mass with a Jesuit priest who had been smuggled into the country from France under the cover of dark. Elizabeth regarded such clandestine celebrations of Mass as treasonous and the Jesuit priests officiating at them as agents’ provocateur. The Pope had declared that Elizabeth was not the rightful heir to the English throne, that the English throne was vacant for any Catholic monarch to seize, and that anyone who assassinated Elizabeth was absolved of guilt for the crime of murder and regicide. In the reign of Elizabeth I such conventicles might also be gatherings of Anabaptists and Puritans. The Elizabethan Puritans had adopted the practice of prophesying, that is, meeting to study the Bible and to develop their exegetical and preaching skills. These meetings included laypersons as well as clergy, were often held with the consent of the ordinary, and in East Anglia had replaced the meetings of the rural deanery. Elizabeth, however, viewed them as seditious. She felt that the preaching of a sermon on one Sunday of the month and the reading of the Books of Homilies on other Sundays of the month was ample provision for the explication of God’s Word in English parish churches. When Archbishop Edmund Grindal protested the suppression of prophesying and refused compliance with the royal command, Elizabeth stripped him of all his duties and powers as an officer of the Crown and sequestered him in his palace under house arrest until his death. Royal commissioners were appointed to exercise his duties and powers as a minister of the state. Elizabeth’s reasons for suppressing this practice were not religious. They were political. John Knox who advocated further reform of the Church on the lines of the Church of Geneva had written the pamphlet “The Monstrous Regime of Women” and this pamphlet colored Elizabeth’s view of the Puritans who also advocated such reform. In their meetings the Puritans might be plotting rebellion against her.

Early in the reign of James I the Canons of 1604 were adopted along with a revision of the 1559 Prayer Book. Canon 71 prohibits ministers preaching, or administering the Communion, in private houses:

NO Minister shall preach, or administer the holy Communion, in any private house, except it be in times of necessity, when any being either so impotent as he cannot go to the Church, or very dangerously sick, are desirous to be partakers of that holy Sacrament, under pain of suspension for the first offence, and excommunication for the second. Provided, that houses are here reputed for private houses, wherein are no Chapels dedicated and allowed by the Ecclesiastical Laws of this realm. And provided also, under the pain before expressed, that no Chaplains do preach or administer the Communion in any other places, but in the Chapels of the said houses; and that also they do the same very seldom upon Sundays and Holy-days; so that both the lords and masters of the said houses, and their families, shall at other times resort to their own Parish-churches, and there receive the holy Communion at the least once every year.

Canon 72 prohibits them to “appoint publick or private Fasts or Prophecies, or to exorcise, but by authority.”

NO Minister or Ministers shall, without the licence and direction of the Bishop of the diocese first obtained and had under his hand and seal, appoint or keep any solemn Fasts, either publickly or in any private houses, other than such as by law are, or by publick authority shall be appointed, nor shall be wittingly present at any of them, under pain of suspension for the first fault, of excommunication for the second, and of deposition from the ministry for the third. Neither shall any Minister not licensed, as is aforesaid, presume to appoint or hold any meetings for Sermons, commonly termed by some Prophecies or Exercises, in market-towns, or other places, under the said pains: nor, without such licence, to attempt upon any pretence whatsoever, either of possession or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any Devil or Devils, under pain of the imputation of imposture or cosenage, and deposition from the ministry.

Canon 73 also prohibits them holding private conventicles.

FORASMUCH as all conventicles, and secret meetings of Priests and Ministers, have been ever justly accounted very hurtful to the state of the Church wherein they live we do now ordain and constitute, That no Priests, or Ministers of the Word of God, or any other persons, shall meet together in any private house, or elsewhere, to consult upon any matter or course to be taken by them, or upon their motion or direction by any other, which may any way tend to the impeaching or depraving of the doctrine of the Church of England, or of the Book of Common Prayer, or of any part of the government and discipline now established in the Church of England, under pain of excommunication ipso facto.

As we shall see in “The History of Home Fellowships—Part 2”, in the third article in the series, “Home Fellowships for Heritage Anglicans,” the attitude of the English crown toward “conventicles” in the sixteenth and seventeenth century would influence the attitude of Anglicans toward meetings in private houses in subsequent centuries. Examining changing attitudes toward such meetings is important because we ourselves may not be entirely free from the prejudices of the past. We may have unwittingly picked up these prejudices from others, and such prejudices may keep us from participating in gatherings of Christians such as home fellowships, held outside a conventional church setting, which could greatly benefit our spiritual lives. We may not be even aware of the prejudices, as is often the case.