The story behind House2House

In the fall of 2000, Tony and I were approached by Jim Mellon and David Underwood, leaders of two other house church networks here in Central Texas. We met at an IHOP in Waco.

“We’ve had this idea. God is obviously up to something. What about a magazine that would reach out to this emerging movement of house churches?” In those early days, the terms, simple church or organic church hadn’t come into use.

We thought that was a great idea. We had seen the impact of magazines in the British House Church Movement we were part of and knew that they had played an important role in other movements in history too.

And so House2House was born. It was a true periodical–it only came out when there was enough money. We decided early on that we wanted it to be a quality production, so it was full color. We printed between 25,000 and 50,000 copies per issue, and they all disappeared–fast. There were great articles. There were loads of stories about what others were doing. It went all around the world and became a shop window on what God was doing in simple/organic church.

Our own network of churches had been going away for a long weekend over Labor Day for several years. When we opened it up to others via the magazine, it grew into the national House2House conference where hundreds came to learn.

But the way people communicate their message was changing. Magazines were less and less a feature of life. And, let’s face it, it’s expensive to produce a glossy magazine. So the magazine became a website that seeks to resource the simple/organic/house church movement.

Over the years, many people have asked us, “When are you going to bring out another issue of the magazine?”

We ran a Kickstarter campaign to gauge the interest, but fell $400 short of our $14,000 goal. What was God saying to us? The result is an online magazine. Check it out here.