There is a considerable amount of research regarding the prevailing model of the church. However, we are seeing a growing number of “alternative” expressions that are legitimate forms of church in their own right. While God has certainly worked through the prevailing ecclesial form of church and continues to do so, we believe there are other expressions that he is working through but are vastly under reported.

To gain a broader perspective, Exponential conducted a survey among networks of microchurches to better understand how God is working through these expressions of the church.

We are using the term “microchurch” in a broad sense to include any expression of church that meets your core ecclesiology (i.e., the self determined minimum requirements for an expression to be a church). These expressions would include but not be limited to house churches, simple churches, fresh expressions, dinner church, street church, etc.

It should be noted that this is exploratory research of the microchurch networks we could readily identify. Depending on the total number of microchurch networks in the US, these results, while important, may not be statistically significant. Research is in the early stages and the findings here should lead to further study.