The more complex and ornate the gathering becomes, the more difficult it is to be faithful to the “Great Commission”--to multiply to the ends of the Earth. The real fruit of an apple tree isn’t more apples, it’s more apple trees. We aim to do only that which can easily be reproduced since reproduction is itself the mission. The beauty of this is that it centers us on only what is necessary and thus foundational to what it means to be a faithful body of believers.

We don’t have a budget for paid ministry staff within each House. While paying Neighborly House pastors would be biblical, not paying staff affords those who are called to preach truth the ability to do so without fear of losing a paycheck (2 Tim 4:3-4). By not paying a pastor, Spirit-led multiplication isn’t inhibited by a community’s inability to pay a salary, and just as importantly, man-led multiplication isn’t enabled by a community’s financial strength. If God wills growth, God gives growth. When Jesus said we would be better off with his Holy Spirit dwelling in believers, we think he meant that. We give a lot of weight to what each person, governed by the Spirit, has to say and entrust ourselves to one another (Eph 4:11-16).

Nor do we have a marketing budget. We believe that our love for one another is what marks us as Christians. The world should know us by our love, not our billboards. As mentioned previously, if our love isn’t all that attractive, our love, not our budget, needs to increase. By valuing simplicity in this way, our very small community has seen children adopted, marriages repaired through paid-for counseling, housing provided, medical bills covered, people healed, missionaries sent out, the gospel preached, the hungry fed who have in turn fed the hungry, etc. We get excited by the thought of giving away as much as possible as we aim to live simply on our daily bread.

We meet in homes to ensure that each community stays small (15-20 people). We want a small enough environment so that all people can be deeply, truly, and persistently noticed and seen. In this way, the mission informs the design, not the other way around. Prioritizing smallness gives us the ability to faithfully abide by the fifty-one New Testament “one-another” commands that seem to necessitate smallness. It also helps us avoid a hefty mortgage which is one of the many reasons we can give 90% away and operate on 10%. So, once a group reaches its max, it’s time to open up another house. Remember, more apple trees.

You can probably tell by now that we aren’t trying to “cast a wide net” as it were. Too often, efficiency is the thief of intimacy. For us, and for the Church, success is defined by faithfulness, not by what “works”. It is the Lord’s job to give growth and the Lord’s alone (1 Cor 3:6). While the biblical descriptions of the early Church are admittedly attractive, the early Church model seems to be less of a prescription and more of a description. It helps to read the book of Acts as a descriptive retelling of what happened at their crazy, sometimes dysfunctional, but always powerful family reunions. Their gatherings, unlike ours, were simple, not sexy. How bad would it really be if, like the early Church, all we had was a family, the scriptures, and a cup with a side of bread? While the early biblical model is not the only “right” way, it definitively shows us that it was not the wrong way. Perhaps, if we began to live as they lived, we’d begin to experience what they experienced–a movement inexplicable without God.