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House Church
Houses such as these were the only churches that Christians had, not only throughout the New Testament period, but through most of the second century. There are three stages of household development discernable in the early church. One report says that a church building was set up at Arbil, east of the river Tigris, before A.D. 148.1 There is more evidence that there was a church building in Edessa, 300 miles west of Arbil, sometime after A.D. 180 when the King of Edessa became a Christian. The building was destroyed by flooding in A.D. 201.1
The early Christian period of A.D. 50-313 can be divided roughly into three stages of development. During the first stage (A.D. 50-150), Christians would have met in the private homes belonging to individual members, or benefactors, of the community. The appellation "house church" is most appropriately applied to this period. The house church by definition is a domestic residence that is architecturally unaltered for the purpose of Christian assembly and is used at least occasionally by the local Christian community or a part of it. 2
1"The First Advance - Church History 1: AD 29-500" by John Foster. 2"Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Development" editors Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids.
"A House Church is a domestic residence where Christians met."
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