Thanks for checking out our site. We hope you find the information presented here to be helpful and encouraging in your spiritual development. We have built this site for the following reasons:

1) We want to provide information to those who are interested in learning how to function as a member of the ekklesia as described in the New Testament.
2) We want to provide an opportunity for those in our region and beyond to connect and fellowship with believers of like-minded values.
3) We want to provide practical tools for people in our network to discuss questions, concerns, struggles and triumphs with one another resulting in mutual online edification.
Feel free to e-mail Dave if you have any questions.

Here is a Chinese website all about New Testament house church life.

WHAT'S NEW


Announcement:

We would like to set aside the first Wednesday of every month for a time of prayer and fasting. Our objectives would be:

1) to seek the mind of the Lord and to minister before Him
2) to bring earnest petitions and supplications before our Lord
3) to be led by the Spirit in effective intercession
4) to be directed by the Spirit in powerful ministry to one another
5) to experience spiritual edification, inspiration and motivation as we devote ourselves to earnest prayer

Anyone who is interested (in our network or not) is warmly invited to the Hagel's on the first Wednesday of each month at 7:00 PM for this time of ministry before the Lord. We look forward to seeing any of you who share a similar urging from our Lord.



We are a network of autonomous, interdependent house churches that are found among the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. We join together on a monthly basis to enjoy a larger sphere of fellowship, a greater sense of identity, a deeper pool of resources, and a wider sense of mission. Our network meetings occur on the first Sunday of the month at 10:00 a.m. We enjoy singing, prayer, testimonies, exhortations, prophecies, and words of instruction. Everything shared comes under the scrutiny of the saints and may be challenged by questions and debate, in humility, gentleness and love (except when we blow it and then have to ask for forgiveness). About once a quarter, we also eat a meal together. We do appreciate the need for leaders and order, but our elders lead by persuasion, not by edict. We are also blessed to have the opportunity to receive regular instruction from gifted teachers among us. This usually occurs on the second and fourth Sunday evening of each month around 6:00 p.m. Plenty of room is given for questions and discussion of what is presented. Additionally, our relational ties are maintained through email updates and discussions which are often copied and forwarded throughout the network. Our network exists soley upon the basis of mutual fellowship, respect and service. We have no formal membership, nor are there any formal obligations except the ongoing command to love one another as Jesus loved us. We hope you'll join us sometime.

Great question! The word ekklesia is the Greek word that is translated almost everywhere in the New Testament as "church". So why don't we just call ourselves the Finger Lakes Church Network. Well, there are some very good reasons for not doing so.

First of all, when people use the word "church" they don't always mean what the Bible meant by the word "ekklesia". For instance, people talk about replacing the roof of their church which indicates that the word "church" can refer to a building. The New Testament, however, never refers to a building when it uses the word ekklesia. Again, people often say things like "church was wonderful today" or "church was so boring I fell asleep" by which they mean the church service. The New Testament writers never used the word ekklesia in this way. Today when people use the word "church" it carries with it a wealth of meaning that has more to do with man's tradition and little to do with Scriptural truth. We want to challenge people's typical understanding of what "church" is with a return to a New Testament vision of what it was meant to be. We want to show people what Jesus really had in mind when He began His ekklesia.

Jesus, Himself, is responsible for choosing this term. He said, "...I will build My ekklesia...."(Matt. 16:18). It is our hope that you will come to see the difference between the ekklesia that Jesus is building and the "churches" that men are building. Why did Jesus pick this term? In the culture of Jesus' day, the term ekklesia was not a religious term. Instead, it was a common secular and political term. Outside the NT, it is almost exclusively used to refer to a public assembly that was regularly convened for the purpose of making decisions. It was an assembly of full citizens, functionally rooted in the constitution of the democracy, an assembly in which fundamental political and judicial decisions were taken. In other words, the ekklesia was primarily understood in the culture of Jesus' day as an assembly gathered together for the purpose of deliberating and making decisions. This is the term that Jesus takes to describe what He is going to build for His new covenant community. Jesus could have chosen another word like synagogue if he merely wanted to talk about a gathering of people for a religious purpose, but he did not.

Jesus gave the ekklesia great authority. In Matt. 18:17, he puts the responsibility of confronting unrepentant believers upon them. Jesus did not give this responsibility to some special individual within the ekklesia. He entrusted the whole ekklesia with this responsibility. Apparently, those early believers took up this responsibility in stride and the apostles concurred. It was the ekklesia who chose a replacement for Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:15-26). It was the whole ekklesia who chose the seven deacons to serve the widows their daily portions (Acts 6:1-6). The ekklesia witnessed the debate of the Jerusalem council regarding Gentiles being required to be circumcised and they chose the spokesmen who was sent to the Gentile ekklesias to communicate the agreed decision. In many churches today, the average churchgoer is a passive spectator, but in the New Testament each member of the ekklesia was a responsible participant.

In churches of today, many attendees walk into a building, sit in rows looking at the back of one another's heads, sing pre-selected songs, eat a bit of cracker and drink a thimbleful of grape juice, drop some money in the offering plate or box, listen meekly to the preacher's homily and shake hands after the service with those around him. In the ekklesia of the New Testament, active participants came to their host's home with food and drink to share with each other for evening meal. The bread was broken and shared among them as was the cup of the new covenant while they remembered our Lord's suffering and the joyful expectation of the wedding feast to come. Songs, prayers and praise were freely and spontaneously offered. Others offered words of instruction, exhortation, and encouragement. Prophecies were given for edification and comfort. Sometimes ideas were shared that needed to be challenged, debated, and corrected and this was done in humility and gentleness. People gave cheerfully to those in need in their midst and to those who labored among them in word and doctrine. That's a pretty significant contrast.

Each ekklesia in the New Testament was small and intimate, only big enough to fit in the main room of someone's home. When an ekklesia grew too big, another one was started nearby. It was important for them to be small. How could they share a meal together if they became too large? How could they work through the process of deliberating over decisions if too many people were involved? How could they all actively participate in meetings if their group expanded excessively? Yes, the Jerusalem church did meet on the Temple grounds, but only for a short time. Persecution ended that in a hurry. How could the ekklesia have survived persecution if it didn't remain small and unseen in people's homes? Small, initimate, powerful. This is the blueprint of Jesus' ekklesia. This is what Jesus modeled. It's what his apostles taught. Following this pattern, the Kingdom spread like leaven in dough and transformed the known world in a very short amount of time. It's time to return and be built into the ekklesia that Jesus is building. This is why we use the word ekklesia.