House church

A House Church is a church meeting in a private home, rather than a designated building.

In the free world, house churches sometimes meet because they wish to start their own church but do not have the resources to build a designated building and have not found (or cannot afford) suitable temporary space. However, there is a movement which considers traditional churches to be "apostate" and see the house church as how Christianity should best operate.

Under oppressive governments, house churches usually meet because it is the only relatively safe way to do so as their faith dictates. Public churches under such oppression are usually watched closely by the government, often operated only for show to visiting delegates from other countries (as a deceptive means of claiming they practice freedom of religion), usually attended only by hand-picked supporters of the regime.