No place like home: “House church” founder says you don’t need a church to pray

MONCTON, N.B. – A New Brunswick man says he believes organized religion is moving in a new and better direction with the advent of so-called house churches — groups of people who worship in living rooms and kitchens instead of parishes and pews.

Dan Lirette says the traditional Christian church system can make marginalized people — such as those living in poverty or struggling with addiction — feel unwelcome.

Lirette and his wife founded Revival House Fellowship in 2011, and he says members meet in homes in the Moncton and Riverview areas on Sundays and Wednesdays.

While it's a Christian organization, he says people from all sorts of religious backgrounds attend their meetings, adding that the group wants to focus on building community relationships instead of focusing on who's right and who's wrong when it comes to religion.

It's a model seen elsewhere in North America, but is relatively unknown on the Canadian East Coast — though Revival House Fellowship recently launched a network to connect Maritime house churches, and Lirette says they have plans to plant house churches in two more New Brunswick regions by summer's end.

A 2017 Angus Reid poll suggests more and more people are choosing to pray at home: while 40 per cent of 2,000 respondents say they still pray to God or some higher power, only 20 per cent say they attend religious services other than weddings and funerals at least once a month.