Frequently Asked Questions

We’ve had some pretty rough patches with the above as well, and yours must be uniquely hard for you. For whatever harm a true follower of Christ has caused you (there are many who don’t follow him but tragically act in his name), we apologize as the Church absolutely should. And WHC does our best to make amends for the Church as well, in the following ways. 

First, we don’t ask you to trust a pastor or institution here. Because our communities and teachings are varied, flexible, and global, no single leader, board, or agenda can betray your confidence.

Second, we don’t ask you to come to us…within four walls that may contain memories of fear, hatred, or rejection for you. We come to wherever, whenever, and whoever is life-giving and safe for you.

Third, we don’t ignore, overgeneralize, or fear tough topics or tough parts of the Bible, as many institutions do in efforts to please everyone. In fact, the first teaching series we list is dedicated to people just like you. You’re living in the details of faith’s tough questions, and we respect that enough to address them and every part of God’s word concerning them in our huge variety of teaching topics. And we let you add to those teachings if any of your questions remain unaddressed! Instead of just telling you to read the Bible, we want you to be able to make sense of the God who shares himself through it.

We believe you’ll benefit far more from WHC if you use it as your weekly church (See “The WHC Difference” for all the reasons!). But we also understand your reluctance to adventure beyond the aspects of an institution you’re attached to. After all, we were heavily involved at several church institutions we loved! But for the sake of those who Jesus loved, we explored and embraced house church. And honestly, we’ve never once regretted it!

In any case, here’s how to enjoy your church and WHC together, or how to make the transition to WHC easier…

1. Begin by participating in our Financial House Church, a global family of donors wanting a no-commitment way to make their giving/tithing hundreds of times more effective for those in greatest need than it would be at a church institution, even if your involvement there is otherwise unchanged.
   
   
2. If you have friends or a small group who could benefit from our globally-diverse, topically-arranged database of teachings, worship, and accountability options (in addition to giving effectively), simply “Create a Meetup” under the main menu whenever! Or register a Small Group House Church in less than 5 minutes to become WHC members. Once you receive your member login, you’ll get your own adjustable house church profile on our site, and your group members can submit new teachings and worship suggestions/links! Here you can grow together anytime, anywhere, and with no-prep required! WHC makes it super easy to run church, campus, or any similar small group meetups, always customizable to your members’ current situations.

    

3. Then if WHC seems a more personal, relevant, and productive use of time than getting yourselves to a service, get more out of your weekly church time with us instead! Whether sickness, travel, or stress makes WHC a helpful alternative church option, or whether WHC is your church every week, we’re always here for you!    

Yes, and often even more! High-quality researchers of charity impact, along with consistent multi-department US government research, confirm that significant interventions like saving lives cost at least 2000 times as much in the US compared to the poorest nations.

Our recommended charities prioritize the latter, embracing the causes and approaches best proven by research to be the most effective. Church institutions primarily focus on the former, via approaches focused less on proven impact and more on those who can return the benefit in the form of new attendees, advocates, or donors. WHC primarily aids those who will likely never aid us, because they need to-and will-benefit most.

Also, church institutions only give an average of 10% of their budget to people in need; we give 100%. That’s 2000 times the efficiency and 10 times the percentage of donations, which can make your money 20,000 times more impactful at WHC! Scientific research on the causes, approaches, and populations we prioritize confirm this exponential multiplication of impact. Visit the websites of our independent charity evaluators (listed in the expandable text here) and of our recommended charities to validate that evidence firsthand. Anyone with any amount of money can make a beautifully huge difference! Jesus is serious about maximizing impact (Matthew 25:14-30), so we think his Church should be too.

Probably nothing. Christians give 97% of their money to the Christians who are typically the wealthiest in the world, and Americans give 94% of their donations to domestic populations that already have exceedingly greater access to the Gospel, faith communities, and humanitarian aid than those most in need globally. Therefore, Western Christians will be more than happy to cover your domestic church giving if you decide to make a far greater difference abroad. 

Please do…children, parents, and friends are dying every second because our tithes and donations primarily get spent on us. WHC doesn’t depend on the massive facility, staff, and maintenance costs that create most of this injustice. That allows us to help you help the world’s most neglected so much more effectively, just like Jesus did!

Very different. An institution’s online teaching content is limited to 1-2 pastoral perspectives once a week, with few if any online worship options. WHC offers hundreds of very biblical teaching and worship options 24/7 from myriad pastors, professors, and laypeople all over the world…maybe even you!

Institutional online content typically does not offer a “whole church service experience” for groups or helpful accountability during the week, as WHC does.

Finally, maintaining an expensively competitive online and physical presence means these institutions can devote even less of your donations to those most in need, compared to 100% of your donations through WHC.

Again, very different. First, typical house church movements hold their house church leaders-often newer believers-primarily responsible for producing worship and teaching content, with training often very brief or absent. This creates unsustainable and theologically inappropriate expectations for these unpaid laypeople. In contrast, we let fully-trained worship leaders and biblical teachers of Christ’s global Body provide a diversity of content for you, requiring no prep or theological expertise from you at all!

Second, typical house church movements are still institutions that collect donations to fund themselves. But the volunteer crew at WHC covers our own operating expenses, so you can’t fund us. Instead, 100% of your donations given through us go to your choice of the research-proven, best-of-the-best organizations aiding those in greatest need.

Nope. In fact, you can’t give us your money! You can only let us help you save the most lives through the causes and charities you choose.

Using our services is free, easy, and completely online. If you want to exponentially increase the impact of your giving, you can do so instantly through our Financial House Church.

To enjoy a customizable House Church Service, just click “Create a Meetup” under the main menu! If you and any others want to become Small Group House Church members, simply complete the 5 minute registration process. Members receive an adjustable house church profile on our site and can login to submit new teaching or worship suggestions/links! The person who registers will also receive training/FAQ tailored for new coordinators to make your experience easy and enjoyiable. You’ll also have the option to receive a phone call for us to introduce ourselves, get to know you a bit, and have any remaining questions answered.

Coordinating a house church meetup or service is even easier; there’s literally no prep! All you need to do is gather two or more people anytime and anywhere there’s internet, speakers, and a screen. Everything is already provided for you or gets decided by your group at the meetup, to be as relevant and applicable as possible. Meetups typically take 60-90 minutes, and we highly encourage eating and hanging out afterwards.

We like transparency, so we’ll acknowledge that we can’t offer a room with hundreds of people for you to mingle with. That’s a necessary cost of being able to physically and spiritually save a lot more lives. But because you need a faith community to support and be supported by, it’s a cost we address seriously in three ways. 

First, all of our house churches are encouraged to be open to new member requests on their profile, whether you live across the street or across the planet, so check out “Our House Churches” and find a good fit!

Second, many people prefer the convenience, flexibility, and diversity of wholly online communities already, so your WHC can be partially or completely virtual by using your favorite communication app!

Third, most people visiting large faith communities actually crave and grow better in smaller, more intentional ones. Well, Jesus promises he’ll commune with you wherever just two or three are gathered in his name (Matthew 18:20), and the Greek word for church (Ekklesia) simply means “gathering.” So as long as you can gather one or more others in Jesus’ name, you’ve got yourself a biblical Worldwide House Church!

Our church model necessitates no paid staff or facility. Our expenses (website maintenance and marketing) are low enough to be completely covered by a fraction of our volunteer Crew’s personal charity funds, allowing everything else that both we and you give through WHC to benefit the wonderful people our recommended charities serve!

We are not a business entity or institution, just an online hub where the worldwide Church can come together to actually operate like the interdependent global Body that God created it to be. It is run entirely by unpaid volunteers, gladly using their own finances to cover all costs and donate to WHC recommended charities.

At WHC we put our money where our mouth is…if we could find a more biblical church model or more effective way to do good with our resources and time, we would do it and make it available to you! That’s why we absolutely love WHC, and we can’t wait for you to benefit from it and make a massive difference for God through it too!

Yes, and often even more! High-quality researchers of charity impact, along with consistent multi-department US government research, confirm that significant interventions like saving lives cost at least 2000 times as much in the US compared to the poorest nations.

Our recommended charities prioritize the latter, embracing the causes and approaches best proven by research to be the most effective. Church institutions primarily focus on the former, via approaches focused less on proven impact and more on those who can return the benefit in the form of new attendees, advocates, or donors. WHC primarily aids those who will likely never aid us, because they need to – and will – benefit most.

Also, church institutions only give an average of 10% of their budget to people in need; we give 100%. That’s 2000 times the efficiency and 10 times the percentage of donations, which can make your money 20,000 times more impactful at WHC! Anyone with any amount of money can make a beautifully huge difference here! Jesus is serious about maximizing impact (Matthew 25:14-30), so we think his Church should be too.

There are more than 300 teachings on more than 100 specific topics, covering questions about family to science to money to sex to theology to mental health to community to the afterlife to politics to the Gospel to God, and much more! They come from professors, pastors, and laypeople all over the world. 

Our worship options are organized by numerous attributes of God, so it’s always easy to genuinely express what you currently appreciate about him most. There are nine musical genre groups represented, with over a thousand songs from all over the world. And for all you non-singers, or anyone who likes diversity in worship, there are several options for appreciating God through nature, reflection, and artistic expression!

Our teaching and worship content is recommended and created by a huge diversity of individuals and groups all over the world. We love benefiting from the collective talent of a global Body of Christ! We believe God has empowered pastors, professors, and (especially in the Bible) laypeople-you included-to teach us all what God has taught them.

Because God has only given us one canonized and consistent autobiography, the Bible, our only teaching content criterion determining the options we post is a clear effort to value God’s comprehensive biblical opinion on the teaching topic. The goal of Christianity – what heaven is most characterized by biblically – is the pursuit of a perfect marriage with who God is (Revelation 19:7-9, 21:2-4). Therefore, we simply require that our teachings reference and marry themselves primarily to his opinions about himself, and less to others’ opinions about him. We suppose you’d want the same if a person’s goal was getting to know you! 

The only content criteria for our worship options is that they accurately represent who God says he is and avoid sweeping, impossible promises that encourage dishonesty instead of genuine worship.

WHC has found significant biblical wisdom and truth in aspects of virtually every Christian denomination, so we do not affiliate ourselves with any one of them in particular. Our teaching, worship, and charity options reflect values from multiple subgroups. Although we personally don’t agree with them in every detail, we believe the options we specifically recommend truly strive to accurately represent God’s biblical character and goals.

No. All of our charity organization recommendations are solely merit-based, involving no influence from the charities themselves. All teaching and worship recommendations that weren’t submissions from WHC members involved no interaction between their creators and WHC, and none of our teaching and worship recommendations involved any type of favor or compensation.

Why yes, and wow, thanks! We won’t take your money – just deal with it. 🙂 But there’s a diversity of ways to share WHC with all the amazing people who have the privilege of knowing you! Go to “Volunteer” in the top menu to do so however you’re best fit…we need you and appreciate your enthusiasm tons!

After participating in at least four WHC meetups, members will know our content and style well. They can then submit links to any new teachings or new worship options that meet our criteria at any time. Depending on how many submissions we get, it may take awhile for us to process requests and respond. But we will, because you or someone you recommend just might be the perfect teacher or artist for so many others!

If your gifts involve administration or advocacy, there are plenty of ways to “Volunteer” or share us with others! We need you; you can make such a huge difference here! Because we operate without a paid staff, allowing us and you to save the most lives possible, we are not offering paid positions at this time.

Lots of ways; we embrace the energy and creativity of kids! First, our diverse worship options welcome many more types of indoor and outdoor physical activity than a church institution does. Let your children embrace them, teach you new ways to do them, and even contribute their own worship ideas to add to our options! Second, our content is audio/visual heavy and vast, which gives kids many calming educational experiences they will enjoy focusing on. Third, you have more flexibility over the way you can use your unique gifts to teach your children…

We recommend adults and kids equally contributing to worship together, with rotating adults or older children to oversee the kids’ teaching time, while the other adults have their own. This, and our varied types of children’s teachings, help everyone practice their own valuable gifts and approaches in mentoring others’ faith. The overseer can use as many worship and/or teaching options necessary to give the other adults time to finish, or they can creatively encourage review, Scripture memorization, prayer, or play (e.g. role-playing the lesson) to do so instead. The “Make Your Meetup Matter” finale of the meetup can be done at this time for the children or with everyone together.

Alternatively, you may find it more helpful to do an adult meetup while children are at other activities or asleep, with the children’s portion done at a different time, and that’s great too!

We have volunteered in and our kids have participated in many top-tier church children’s ministries, so we know what they offer. Like you, we also desire the best spiritual care for our kids, and everyone in our family will consistently tell you that house church provides that much better than an institution, for the following reasons.

First, we offer a much greater diversity of teaching options/topics for multiple age groups. Second, there aren’t large groups of kids to limit the quality of teaching by constant refocusing and crowd control. Third, it’s one less petri dish for your child to get sick from. Fourth, instead of separating families during church services, WHC keeps them together, giving parents easy ways to develop roles of spiritual leadership, accountability, and encouragement with their kids. This bears fruit throughout the week, because you’re present with them while their institutional teacher is not. Our Crew’s families have greatly benefited from this organic growth, and yours will too!

We have similar material for young teens, but we respect teenagers’ maturity and readiness for complex topics by welcoming them to register their own peer house churches! These can be with or without an adult and use the same content adults do. The 17 years we’ve spent mentoring youth have proven that teens grow tremendously in these group meetups, because the diverse teaching topics we tackle and they wrestle with are often ignored or oversimplified by institutional teaching. And they can always pick the topic most relevant to them!

Because we can exist wherever there’s internet (pretty much everywhere!), WHC is missions work! It cost so much time, money, and stress to train people to work in a new culture with myriad logistical complications. And in our experience, unforeseen circumstances bring most of these well-intentioned, wonderful people back before they can even establish ongoing ministry.

Why not use house churches with members who will always exist in and understand their culture to reach their community instead, at no additional cost? Our teaching and worship options already come from all over the globe, with any community able to submit locally-relevant options as well. And all the money saved, given through our recommended charities, would far more effectively aid the people we’d be sending trips or missionaries to anyway! 

There will always be specific roles for the Western Church to send missionaries. But this group is only a part of the global Body, and its primary gifts of relative wealth and specialty education fit well with the developing world’s primary gifts of community gathering, manpower, and cultural/language proficiency. When each part plays to its strengths as a worldwide Church that needs each other, instead of one part trying to do it all, we experience the global fulfillment and fruit God intends, the model of missions WHC embraces.