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Everyone would expect a new church to begin by meeting in a home. A group consisting of only ten or twenty people would not need a larger meeting place, and the costs involved in buying or renting any sort of building would be prohibitive. So when we were a new church, and when we said that we were meeting in homes, most of our friends in other churches understood. But when they learned that it was our intention to continue meeting in homes no matter how large we got, curious eyebrows often began to raise. The idea of the house church does not easily fit into the paradigm of American evangelicalism. For hundreds of years now, the idea of the church has been almost universally associated with a central meeting place—a church building. Even though the biblically informed Christian knows that the church is people, not a building, it remains almost impossible for some to escape the association between a particular local church and the building in which that church gathers. We understand that when a society has grown up with an idea—a tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation—a departure from that tradition can seem strange or even wrong. We do not fault those who question our practice, or those who are not convinced of its benefits, nor do we condemn the longstanding tradition of churches meeting in large central buildings. Too many examples of excellence within that tradition, both historically and currently, could be brought forth in its defense. Our intent is simply to offer several reasons why we want to continue meeting in homes, and to demonstrate that our practice is valid and biblically sound.