You Just Began Your H4H Journey!

You can plant a church. Yes You Can! H4H is an exciting network of Christians, all over North America, dedicating their families and homes as centers of relationship, hospitality, worship, and community/world mission. Planting new churches using a simple and cost-effective methodology- Your family connecting with others, by extending hospitality in your home.

Working among an unreached people group in West Africa, we planted churches simply, and relationally. The services were simple, relaxed, and enjoyable. Under tree's in family courtyards. Stripped of many unnecessary forms and structure. We simply practiced Acts 2:42, Anywhere, Anytime, Everywhere. You may not agree with all that you hear in these videos. Well, the truth is neither do we. But you can do what works for your group, and we are here to help you. Your home is a great way to take Christ to people.

“The churches that the apostles and Paul planted were, for the most part, light and lean `House churches’ without a great deal of institutional trappings… The most effective missionaries are multiplying churches which are very simplified.”

Stephen Hawthorne (Perspectives On the World Christian Movement Study Guide, William Carey, 2009, pg 50)

Just Watch All The AMAZING Video's to Learn More -And Begin- We are here to help!

Welcome to your journey "Home 4 Him" as together we initiate new Churches.

10 Minute summary here OR watch the full length - the following three

Discipleship is Our Mission.
(Church Planting is the result of Discipleship)

Why Join H4H?

Purpose of H4H

Why join the H4H Network?

I could begin my own home group, and do my own thing couldn't I?

Yes you can. But Consider the following.

How Do I begin a Group?

Remember we are back to basics. Keeping church simple and uncomplicated. Just begin, and link up with others doing the same thing.
Here is a video clip to help you get started.



Book: (THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE: A Return to Simplicity, Robert Fitts (To request your copy, please contact Robert at the following address: Robert Fitts 76-6309 Haku Place, Kona, HI 96740) (Check the books side bar to read the book online for free)
Robert Fitts outlines 16 things to do to start a House Church. TO START A CHURCH IN A HOUSE.

1) Pray and Get Others to Pray. Get others to pray with you. Find someone who sees the vision and pray with them for God's direction as to how to proceed. 2) Connect the work – To teachers and Ministers. The apostles sent Barnabas along later to help give it encouragement and strength. 3) Have a simple meal with communion at the end. 4) Start Small: "Where two or three have gathered together in my name... Matt. 18:20 5) Be active in several House Churches. 6) Be free to meet whenever and wherever. 7) Do not make up a membership list. For the reasons cited above, do not make some people members and some nonmembers. They will never be your sheep anyhow. They all belong to Jesus if they have been born again. If they have not, then you will have the high privilege of leading them to the Lord. Until then, they are as welcome to attend our meetings as anyone. 8) Receive all who come. Some will come to your house church who are formal members of another fellowship. ......We are not trying to dislodge anyone from anything the Lord is telling them to do. But neither will we tell them they cannot come to our meetings. We must receive all who come to us just as every other church in town should receive all who come to their meetings. 9) Do not write a constitution and by-laws. The New Testament is our constitution and by-laws. It is totally sufficient. We need not formulate some other document to give us direction as a church. The day is coming when we will simply give to the Lord and expect nothing back on tax day. We are not against taking advantage of this tax break. Use it if the Lord gives you peace about it. The day may come when the disadvantages of being a "registered" nonprofit religious organization will outweigh the advantages. 10) Don't throw rocks at the "Traditional Church". We are a part of the traditional church because we are a part of the citywide church. The problems of the church are our problems because we are the church. 11) Meet Regularly. 12) Don't be afraid to call it church. Throughout the New Testament we find many words that are used in place of the word "church," such as disciples, saints, assembly, believers, etc. There will be times that we will call our meetings church and at other times we will call them fellowship, gatherings, assemblies. But when we gather in Jesus' name, we know it is the church which is his Body. 13) Submit to Spiritual Authority & Accountability. (Elders Etc) 14) Use Discussion Bible Study (The Priesthood of the Believers) 15) Plan and Pray for a "Church Split." 16) Embrace the Citywide Church.

H4H is About Real Meaningful Caring Relationships- Anytime, Anywhere, Everywhere!

Are you tired of "going to church" talking about the weather, not really connecting with anyone, not ministering to your world? Imagine a gathering of people who do more than just smile and ask, "how are you?", or say "Nice day out there!"one day a week. We gather with friends, people interested in our lives outside of church. People who take time, make time, to care, discuss the scriptures, pray, and reaching out to others for Christ. Who Actually want not just the mercy of God, but his mission as well.

If you long to connect with others over mission. H4H is about doing life together, not just church. Not one hour, but life lived in community, and out in the community. It's all about relationships. Here is a good video that exemplifies a goal of H4H groups.
What to give it a try?

Video Lessons on Simple Home Church Concepts

H4H provides this for your consideration. We do not necessarily agree with all that is said, but this series is to help facilitate your H4H Journey.

Part #1 10 Minutes


Part #2 10 Minutes


Part #3 10 Minutes


Part #4 10 Minutes


Part #5 10 Minutes


Part #6 10 Minutes

Why the H4H Network? My Personal Journey

Video will be posted here:

Home- A Natural Place To Begin

Why not start at home?

The natural place for relationships is home. We bring our friends and our extended family into our home. Our neighbors relate to us as a local household. From the home we touch school kids, adults at work, and all ages in our community sports programs.

When, in our homes, we teach and live for Jesus Christ home becomes a place where our children are discipled to connect with God and reach out to the world. As a family, we can pray for our friends and neighbors. We can invite those that we have been reaching out to, to come in to our process and learn right along with us. They can then duplicate the process in their home and with those they are connected with.

It just sounds so natural. Why do we have to complicate it all by separating ourselves into same age clusters or by gender? I read in the Bible about whole households coming to Christ, and I realize that that rarely happens now. I realize that we have changed our focus from home centered to institutional centered.

Who will dare to change the focus?

Who will start at home?

Who Can Join H4H?

The New Testament shares and amazing fact. Ordinary families spreading the gospel of Jesus.

"Forced to leave home base, the Christians all became missionaries. Wherever they were scattered, they preached the Message about Jesus." Acts 8:4 (TMSG)

We have profesionalized service to Christ so much that we have forgotten that WE ordinary believers have a function. We practice the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9), where each participant has a ministry. Each member serves as a bridge between God and man, through service to the saints, and the world. God chose the ordinary things to shame the wise. 1 Cor 1:27-28

H4H seeks:

To Join H4H you will need to be secure in your biblical understanding of Church. Some of you may have a difficult time viewing a H4H concept fellowship as being "real" church. Others will have a hang up over the "size" of the fellowships (10-20). But Jesus said: "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:20. Where two or three or single people or families gather, Jesus enters in, in a special way.

First, you need to sense H4H as a Way of doing your Service/mission.

Convinced that this is how God wants YOU to disciple others. Don't jump on H4H because it seems like the latest cool new "Church growth fad", or you hope to "give it a try" for a few months. Attend an existing H4H group if you want to try it out. As a Family have many discussions and prayer times before you make the move (include the older kids). As a Student or Single person, discuss this with a friend to partner with you. Put a piece of paper on the wall and list the possible pro's and con's of using this model as your ministry for the kingdom. Can you really buy into this as mission, as church?

Second, your motivation for Entering H4H is critical.

Disgruntled people are naturally drawn to these "freeing" H4H ministry concepts. However, they desperately lack the character, integrity, and doctrinal substance to see H4H through, for very long.

If you wish to begin a H4H fellowship because you are;

A. Bitter about your existing church,
B. You simply want to do church "your own way",
C. You wish to have an isolated group doing it's own thing, accountable to no one for practice or teaching but you,
D. Your a charismatic person and feel you have the "hottest gifts and insight " to offer people for you know how to do church "right", with more "spirituality", more "correctly".

Don't join H4H! God simply will not honor such motivations and studies show that people or groups that have these motivations will die within two years.
You will discourage and injure many people, consume precious kingdom time as we are left trying to fix YOUR mess.

So why exactly are you drawn to H4H, and for how long?
How do you envision the H4H concept helping you further the kingdom of God?

Third, you need to be connected with others in the Movement.

Are you ready to meet with other H4H fellowships, attend the annual H4H conference?
Having a sense that we are a part of something larger than ourselves is critical to survival, and effectiveness. People who see this as an opportunity to connect more deeply with Christ and other people through hospitality and worship in their home.
Let your home become a light among your relational network.

H4H is a NETWORK

It is ESSENTIAL that we Network TOGETHER!

Studies show that most isolated home groups die within 2 years. Simply put, you can not do this alone. It is not healthy, nor is it sustainable.

H4H fellowship groups must agree to:

1) Cross Fellowship

Hold combined worship meetings at least once every 2-3 months, with other H4H groups.(Rotate them as geography enables) If necessary, rent a room at a hotel, or church for the larger gathering. (On PEI we could all meet in Charlottetown or Summerside, easily enough.)

2) H4H Training & Encouragement:

Attend & support your annual H4H conference: All those in the H4H network come together for training, vision, fellowship, prayer, focus, and cross pollination.

H4H Fellowship Finances

1) H4H fellowships will have an abundance of finances for ministry. With no church building, or paid minister (80% of most churches funds go to these expenses) you will find you can disperse a large among of your funds to ministry and people needs.

The day is coming when we will simply give to the Lord and expect nothing back on tax day. We are not opposed to taking advantage of this charity tax break. However, the day may come very soon when the disadvantages of being a "registered" nonprofit religious organization will outweigh the advantages. We feel that a "Charity Tax Number" is simply not necessary for each H4H fellowship. The application is now a complicated matter and will actually interferes with groups multiplying quickly. But apply if you wish. H4H groups have great freedom and flexibility to meet the needs they wish, without the mounting annual paper work, not to mention the now two year application process.

Accountability is the key.
Simply open a joint account for your specific H4H fellowship group and require three signatures to access the funds. Do not be concerned over a Charity Tax receipt. Simply take the amount you normally give and decrease it a little to compensate for the tax loss, if you must.

Each H4H group in the network is free to make a group decision for themselves of how to assure accountability of finances.

However, the key is don't hoard money EVER. This is such a monumental shift in thinking for most people, especially those coming form traditional churches.
Give away as much as you can to miniseries, people in need, community projects that honor Christ, mission projects, support H4H conferences, and training events, Pay travel expenses for H4H leaders to come to your group and speak with you, or help you with issues,

Suggestions of how to use offering:

Help poor families with heating, electricity or groceries.
Repair a needy persons house in the community,
repair a widow's car.
Help a single mom with some expenses, or hire her a baby sitter and invite her over to a fellowship night to give her a break.
Support a missionary or overseas project.
Collaborate with others groups or all groups in the network and pool resources for a Larger mission project.
Dig a water well for a needy Village.
Buy a cow for a poor African family.
Buy small group DVD's or books to use for studies.
Send your kids to Youth Conferences, and mission events "postage paid".
Buy special gifts for mission children. Support a family in the third world.
Go on a short-term mission trip.
Rent a bus to take you group to a Christian event.
Support a ministry student.
Support your Local Bible College
Rent a room for a combined service with other H4H groups,
Rent the pool for the who H4H group.
Pay for your Groups leaders to attend training programs
Support your H4H Network, the annual conference, www Site expenses to promote H4H,
Pay for travel expenses for H4H Traveling Coordinators to come and encourage your group.
It takes some people serious serious time to keep this network going. Your support will help the work to continue, and multiply.

Reach a consenses as a group. But Please! Some of you, you are just so difficult, please take off your "Traditional Church" way of using money and give liberally. Every incidence in the NT where money is discussed in the context of the Church, is in meeting needs of people.

Giving generously to the needs of people all around your community opens doors for the group to grow and multiply. People will beging to talk about you all over the place. They will never have seen such a small group doing so much to help people before. They will be impressed and Jesus will get the glory he deserves. But give it in Jesus Name!

H4H Teaching Times Are Relaxed Conversational Studies Where All Participate - Why?

We promote open discussion with all participating for the teaching times at H4H. Retention and understanding of the material is significantly increased this way.
Here is a video to help you understand why we promote a relaxed and conversational learning environment rather than the traditional sermon monologue.
Enjoy this 6 minute video

Why Low-Budget Church Models?

Good Question. Is their anything wrong with how we plant churches now? I had a great dialogue with a lady on my Blog who challenged me personally about as "possible negativity" toward Large churches. My response to her may help sets a clearer context of why I am promoting H4H and similar concepts. No, I am not opposed to Larger churches.

Please read this Article before you Judge me. :-)

---------------------------

Hi Robin
Appreciate the reply very much. I accept the criticism as well as I do have a tendency to focus on the negative as I analyze and chew on things.

Robin, I am not opposed to large churches. I am for healthy churches of any size. I was excited to hear about the healthy large church you participated in, and I am certain that such healthy large churches are not the exception.

However, I do not accept that a church is healthy simply because it is large. Nor is it true that a smaller church tends to be more healthy. We have a unique context where I minister and live. The cost of current popular church planting models is concerning to me. We simply aren't multiplying fast enough, because the model we follow is not affordable, nor doable, with our demographics here. There is a great myopia in church planting. I speak as an insider here. Most church planting associations promote one model, and no other.

We are a very rural area. We have NO mega churches in the Province. Actually, no Mega churches in any of the three eastern Provinces of Canada. There is only one church of about 1000 in the three provinces. Rarely do churches, of any kind, reach 250-300 in any province. We are simply too small, too rural, and too poor, to use such Large budget church planting models. Combined dual family income on PEI is about 40,000 CDN (About 32,000 US). Our capital city has only 35,000 people, a small town by your standards in Florida. Our existing churches spend almost all their budget (90%), on ourselves (Staff, building, heating etc)
Many (No exaggeration) rural churches are closing all around me, and many more are simply too small to keep going as they are "doing" church now. I want people to realize that a small church is not dead, and a church with no building is still a "Church" and they can still be vibrantly missional.

My "Beef" is that people here read books about planting Large Churches, and get salivating at the concept. They think they have the latest "something" that might work here. The demographics are wrong here. The demographics of our region dictate that it impossible for these models to work here. Churches will be smaller, have to be smaller, and they must be more economical in function - Or we simply will not have a multiplication movement.

Our churches are planting about one church every 10 years with a cost of around $550,000-$750,000 for the first 3-5 years of start up. In Canada, we need to plant two (2) new churches per decade (10yrs), just to keep our current number of congregations. We need to plant three (3) per decade, to actually advance the kingdom.

In World Mission circles, the size of a church planted is never an issue of discussion. Here in the west, it seems to be the chief discussion. World mission people are simply saying, plant churches. Churches of any size, everywhere, in every community, every segment of society, but , for God's glory, just plant as many churches as we can. The focus is "Multiplication" while in the West it is more focused on "Mega" - largeness.

Often, the idea here is that a church plant has to be huge, or it has failed. No Denomination has planted a large new church yet in three provinces. If a new church is not large, it has failed. People look down their nose at the concept of small church plants. I am trying to generate interest in looking at more low-Budge models for church planting. My Family is doing a Low-Budget church plant now. Fully self supported by the team involved, with no outside funds. It is working. People are watching us closely. Saying little, but they are sizing me and this Low-Budget method up big time. We rent a facility Valley Christian Church Link.

I am promoting that we stop obsessing about the size of our churches and focus on more multiplication, using more methods. Our income and rural demographics demand that we use simpler more cost effect models.

Until we as leaders present a more manageable strategy, it will be difficult for us to get more more people involved in church planting. Our Church planting association is having an extremely difficult time recruiting a new Church planting team leader for a new church plant in Halifax. Been looking for 2 years now. What they are doing is not wrong. However, what they are doing scares the socks off any Canadian Ministers and leaders. High expectations, low-pay, the reputation of your skills and ability are on the line- determined and judged by whether you have 100 people or 50 people in the end. So they have now been looking in the US for some time.

Church planting as we do it now is relegated to an "Elite Group". There is little "can do" attitude about church planting in the region. It's now the work of "experts". Theologically, I do not see that as healthy, nor correct. But in practice this is the mentality we have. My church planting team in Africa consisted(s) of self-supporting farmers. No salary from me, or any western church, nor their own local churches. Poor farmers, with little education, earning their own income, planting churches using low-budget strategies. But here, people have their "hands off' church planting because what we do is so complicated, costly, and demanding, it frankly scares people from being involved. Only "super-duper" servants have those "skills".

I long to see many more people bringing church to lost people, especially in these small, poor rural areas. These new churches will probably not have church buildings and hired full time staff. Why should they not still be given a church? Can we not be creative and plant self-supporting churches that will require less expense? We are doing it at VCC now, so it can be done.

I think we have an amazing opportunity before us. I have been so excited at the potential here, that I am bubbling about it. But we have to change our strategy to tap into it. Nothing will happen if we continue on the same path with the same approach. We will lose the harvest.

I would love to see ten new small fellowships, with ten people meeting, lead by ten church planters. That is doable for us here. We have people who can do this. This, in my opinion, is a better strategy than having one church planting family, planting one church, in one community, once every 10 years, with 50 people. The potential for multiplication in the ten groups is greater I think. Our fellowship is going backwards as congregations close. But we are financially strapped to plant using our current model. Really, no denomination knows how to do it well in this context. That is what I heard a group of church planters, from all denominations say as a Church planting meeting I was involved in. We are church planting out on the very edge, the very outer limit, of our sustainability, and this leaves no room for slightly smaller than expected results or success.

Anyway, Robin I am not attacking Large churches. I’m for church planting of simpler kinds.

Now the article. Notice I did not comment on the trend? The trend is More attending a smaller number of larger churches. My only question – Go back and look at it again - is why are the reasons people said they where drawn to the large church. Also some of the very same criticisms? When asked what they did not like about the large church they listed many of the same things? How can that be? I am just wondering how you explain that contradiction?

Our Capital city churches are still very small, under 300. Churches of 250-300 are very few in all three Maritime Provinces of Canada. It would be only about 5% of churches. So I have not ever attended a "Large Church" by Florida standards. For most of us the largest churches we know within 50 miles around us would not be more than 100 -150 people. 80% are less than 70 in attendance on PEI.

Anyway, Not sure I explained myself very well. Thanks for keeping me on my toes. Give it to me when you feel I need it. I love the dialogue. This was good, and I would like to see more of this.
God Bless Robin

Other Interesting Video on Simple Church Concepts

Simple Church & Heresy - Floyd McClung


Simple Church Responsibility - Floyd McClung


Simple Church What is Church - Floyd McClung


Simple Church Core Values - Floyd McClung


Simple Church DNA - Floyd McClung



Simple Church Becoming Missional - Floyd McClung



Simple Church & Unity - Floyd McClung