When the Church Has No Home: What Persecuted Christians Remind Us About the Church
For many of us, going to church on Sunday is normal. We know where we are going, we walk through the same doors, see familiar faces, worship together and listen to the Word. We probably don’t spend much time thinking about the fact that simply having a place where Christians can gather openly is a privilege.
For many believers around the world, that isn’t their reality.
Church buildings can be closed by authorities. Congregations can lose the places where they meet. Christians displaced by war, violence or persecution may find themselves far from their church communities. In other places, believers have to be careful about where and how they gather because meeting openly could put them or their families at risk.
Open Doors Canada is drawing attention to this reality through Church With No Home, a tour visiting churches across Canada this year. The events share stories from the persecuted Church and give Christians an opportunity to pray for believers who continue to gather and follow Jesus in circumstances very different from our own.
The name of the tour says a lot in just a few words. What does church look like when there is no church building?
In some places, it looks like a few Christians meeting in someone’s home. Somewhere else it may mean gathering in a different location from one week to the next. For displaced Christians, church may happen wherever they have managed to find safety. For others, even letting people know where they are meeting could be dangerous.
None of this is new to Christianity. The early Church often gathered in homes. Acts describes believers sharing meals, praying and learning together from house to house. Paul mentions churches meeting in people’s homes several times in his letters. Christianity spread long before church buildings became part of the way most of us experience Christian life.
That doesn’t make buildings unimportant. A church building can be a tremendous blessing to a community.
the building itself.
In places where gathering openly is something we rarely have to think twice about, it can be easy to take Christian community for granted. Hearing from believers who don’t have that same freedom can help us see it again as the gift it is.
There is nothing beautiful about a family losing its home, a pastor being arrested or Christians having to hide their faith. But there is something worth paying attention to in the way believers continue to follow Jesus when circumstances become difficult.
Their stories can remind us why Christian community matters in the first place. They can also remind us that the persecuted Church isn’t a separate part of Christianity that belongs to another country or another culture. These are our brothers and sisters.
Paul told the church in Corinth that when one part of the Body suffers, every part suffers with it (1 Corinthians 12:26). Hebrews 13:3 tells believers to remember those in prison and those who are mistreated as though we were suffering with them.
That leaves us with something practical we can do: pray.
We can pray for Christians who have nowhere safe to gather, for pastors and church leaders serving under enormous pressure, for believers who have been displaced and are trying to rebuild their lives, for Christians in prison because of their faith and for families who have paid a price for choosing to follow Jesus.
We can pray that they will have courage and endurance, that they will know they haven’t been forgotten and that the Gospel will continue to reach people even in places where following Christ is difficult.
And their stories can make us look at our own churches a little differently too.
Perhaps we’ll value the people sitting around us more. Perhaps we’ll remember that somewhere else in the world another group of Christians is gathering too, just without the freedom and security we have.
That is part of what Church With No Home hopes to bring to churches across Canada: real stories from persecuted believers, time to pray for them and an opportunity to think about what their faithfulness can teach the rest of the Church.
We may never meet most of the Christians whose stories we hear from the persecuted Church, but we belong to the same family. Remembering them shouldn’t be something we do only when persecution makes the news. It should be part of the way the Church cares for its own.
Open Doors Canada is continuing to share information about upcoming Church With No Home events and locations. You can also learn more about the work of Open Doors Canada and the persecuted Church.
