home church

[Sola]

I don't really know much about home churching. Before I heard of the concept within the fundie circles, home churching to me was what my family did when I was a child; basically join together with another family or two during the week for discussion about the bible, sing a few songs and have food. We still went to church on a Sunday and Wednesday but probably one night a week we'd either have friends over, or we'd go to someone else's house.

 

So how does it work? What about tithing? If you church is your home then who do you tithe to? If your church is your home, are you claiming tax advantages for your 'church'? From what I have gathered this is what people are doing, there's no wonder homechurching is increasing. Seems like a little earner.

[dawniecakes]

The only sort of home churching that I think has the right idea is talked about in the book, Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna.

http://www.amazon.com/Pagan-Christianit ... 141431485X

They're "house churching" advocates, but because they don't believe that megachurches with huge mortgages are the way that Jesus imagined his church. Instead, churches should be part of the community, and use the funds normally invested into building maintenance to go to the poor instead. Definitely NOT what the Duggar home churching is about.

[apple1]

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1828.pdf

More than you ever wanted to know about this subject...

There are requirements for 501c3 status that I cannot imagine a "home church" being able to meet (although some people with no true religious beliefs at all have apparently tried using that tactic to avoid taxes by obtaining online "ordination", etc).

[oscar]

The only sort of home churching that I think has the right idea is talked about in the book, Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna.

http://www.amazon.com/Pagan-Christianit ... 141431485X

They're "house churching" advocates, but because they don't believe that megachurches with huge mortgages are the way that Jesus imagined his church. Instead, churches should be part of the community, and use the funds normally invested into building maintenance to go to the poor instead. Definitely NOT what the Duggar home churching is about.

When I was in high school, I had a friend whose dad was a pastor and ran a small church out of his home. He started out holding services for a particular denomination that didn't have the population to require a standalone building. As time went on, many undocumented immigrants joined the congregation, most of whom are low-income and do not speak English. Even though the congregation is now large enough for a church building, the nature of their ministry and a desire to keep their overhead low means that they've kept running the church out of my friend's parents' house.

I heard that they applied for 501c3 tax-exempt status but were turned down a few years ago. I believe they chose not to reapply because they were concerned that the record-keeping requirements could potentially cause problems for parishioners who were not in the country legally.