CHILDREN (Singing): Yes, Jesus loves me.
LUCKY SEVERSON: It's Sunday morning, and this is church in Reverend David Smith's living room.
Reverend DAVID SMITH (Praying): Lord God, how great it is that we're able to come and worship you at this time, at this place.SEVERSON: Home groups sponsored by churches are nothing new, but there are an increasing number of independent groups not affiliated with any particular church that meet regularly, like this one in St. Albans, Vermont.
Rev. SMITH: Especially in these times, since 9/11 and all that's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think they're searching for a personal God -- a closeness that they may or may not get somewhere else.SEVERSON: House churches are as old as Christianity.
Rev. SMITH: If you were to read Acts, chapter 2, you would find that the disciples, the apostles -- they met in different homes. It's not something new. However, I see a resurgence of this type of thing.
SEVERSON: Diana Bennett is writing about small groups like hers, which is affiliated with a huge church in Boston. She says people find them attractive for many reasons. They feel more connected, more energized, and not lost in the crowd.
DIANA BENNETT (Vision New England): When you think of going to a worship service on a Sunday, what do you do? You sit in rows and you look at somebody's back and you listen to a sermon. You know, if you don't connect people when they come into a church, they don't feel cared for, and they'll go somewhere else.SEVERSON: Dr. Cecilia Schulte, an internist, recently started a house church group. She's a lifelong Catholic who found churches here in Austin, Texas, too conservative and confining.
Dr. CECILIA SCHULTE (Internist): I wasn't finding what I needed, all of what I needed by attending Mass or just following ritual, etc. We're spiritual beings, and that means exploring and changing and growing, and I felt inhibited in a traditional church setting.(Speaking at Home Church Group Meeting): Relax, start to let go of the worries and the hustle and bustle of the day.
SEVERSON: Typical of most home church groups, Cecilia's has about 12 regulars. Hers includes Catholics, Methodists, people who have explored different faiths. Several share the view that many organized churches rely too much on fear.
LAUREN SCHAEFER: And I have heard people being told, well, that you did something that made God do this to you.JOHN FORD: To me, spirituality equals religion minus fear.
SEVERSON: They say they're not delving into one religion so much as exploring spirituality through many kinds of theologies -- quite different from Reverend Smith's group in Vermont, which goes by the book.
Rev. SMITH: There are a lot of people who don't feel comfortable in a church or they've been hurt in the church or they're just real nervous being in a large grouping. And so I decided at one point that I need to have these people come to worship service, and the way to do that is to have it in a home.
Ms. SCHULTE (Reading from CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD): "Choose your state of beingness. It is you who are choosing in any moment to be happy or choosing to be sad." And that's from the CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD, Book One.
Ms. BENNETT: Whoever leads the group really needs to know how to approach Scripture, to know how to study it right and correctly with integrity, because you don't want shared ignorance. And that was always kind of a negative aspect of small groups for a long time.
Ms. BENNETT: It's huge and people really grow spiritually. I've seen God transform lives in unbelievable ways through the small group venue.
