Get Your Pretense On!

Chapter 6: The Oikos Factor • 139

The Jerusalem church worshiped, was organized, and discipled in the oikos networks revealed in the Pentecost conversions (Acts 2.46; Acts 5.42; Acts 12.12). The Good News of Jesus Christ was often shared in the natural settings of people in their web of relationships and friendships, e.g., Cornelius and his household (Acts 10-11; cf. Acts 10.24). It also appears that the nucleus of most of Paul’s missionary planted churches were made up of one or more households ( oikos networks) where he naturally shared the Good News of salvation (see the households of Lydia and the jailer at Philippi, Acts 16.15; the households of Stephanas, Crispus, and Gaius at Corinth, Acts 18.8; Rom.16.23; 1 Cor. 1.14-16; 1 Cor. 16.15; and the households of Priscilla and Aquila, as well as Onesiphorus at Ephesus (1 Cor. 16.19; 2 Tim. 1.16; 2 Tim. 4.19). This is also true of the oikos of Philemon at Colossae (Philem. 1.1-2), Nympha at Laodicea (Col. 4.15-16), and Aristobolus, Narcissus, and others at Rome (Rom. 16.10-11). What is truly exciting, when looking at the biblical evidence, is that oikos households, once converted to Jesus and his Kingdom, could themselves constitute a church. Paul could refer to the “the church ( ekklesia ) which meets in their house ( oikos )” (Rom. 16.3-5). The various “household codes” in Ephesians and Colossians – husband and wife, parents and children, master and slave – are those who would be a part of a single New Testament household . It appears that oikos networks were stable enough to provide a nucleus or base out of which a wide group of believers could meet and live under its hospitality. Through these relationships, now Gentile and Jewish believers could be connected intimately through Christ, breaking down historical barriers (gl. 3.28; Eph. 2.19-22). Leaders of the church were to be good managers of their own oikos households, since they were called to care for the “household of God” (1 Tim. 3.2-7; Titus 1.6). Truly, the oikos became the place where teaching, worship,