The various backgrounds out of which house church groups and Christian communities have come in the last 10 or 15 years often did not provide a clear basis for appropriate leadership. Some house church groups grew up in major Christian denominations. Whether Protestant or Catholic, these denominations assumed a focus on the pastor or the priest as the leader.
Very often there were those in the house churches who rejected the pastoral form of leadership. This reaction may have reflected adolescent growth syndromes or bad experiences with authoritarian pastors. Whatever the reasons, that kind of reaction and response often did not lead to an alternate vision of what leadership should be.
House churches have also been influenced by student movements in the late '60s and the early '70s, where there were various cultural and sociological forces at work. For example, there was a sense of experiential immediacy: everyone wanted to experience truth and reality directly. Traditions, structures, authority patterns seemed distant, mediated ways of discovering reality. Stated more positively, the student movement wanted total and unmediated participation in all decision making, in the whole process.
Included in this mood was an egalitarian view of individuals. The biblical phrase that every person has a gift or a ministry was often interpreted in the context of this mood to mean that everyone takes a turn at doing everything. Everyone should take his or her turn at moderation, leading, preaching, teaching, speaking, dancing, or whatever else might be happening.
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