Home Evangelism
by W. A. Criswell (1909-2002)
Return to thine own house, and show how great things God hath done unto thee. And he went his way, and published throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto him (Luke 8:39).
In the last chapter of the Book of Romans, the sixteenth chapter, Paul will write, "Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Christ Jesus; and likewise greet the church that is in their house" (Romans 16:3, 5). Look again as he closes the First Corinthian letter, 1 Corinthians 16, with this word: "The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, and the church that is in their house" (1 Corinthians 16:19).
I turn again to the fourth chapter, the last chapter of Colossians, and he writes there, "Salute the churches which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house" (Colossians 4:15). And I turn again, to the beginning of Philemon, who lived in Colossae. He starts off his sweet letter of love and appeal, "Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon, our dearly beloved and fellow laborer. Greetings to the beloved Apphia," who apparently was his wife, "and to Archippus," who apparently was their son, "our fellow soldier, and to the church in thy house" (Philemon 1-2).
The greatest success, triumph, of the Christian faith, the greatest it has ever known was in the first three Christian centuries. It literally subverted the civilized world. It swung the Roman Empire on new hinges. It created a new civilization. There has never been anything like it in the history of mankind. And they did it without a church house. They didn’t build churches until about three hundred years after Christ.
You could ask these ancient first-century Christians the same question that I once asked the choir leader from the Baptist church in Moscow: "Oppressed, how do you carry on your work?" The man from Moscow said, "We do it in the home, from house to house." If you were to ask the earliest Christians, "How did you do it in the time of the greatest power of the Christian church?" they would answer, "We did it in the home, in the house. We gathered friends, and we gathered neighbors, and there we taught the Word of God, and we sang the songs of Zion, and we prayed together."
