In the growing body of theological and spiritual literature on the
family over recent years there is hardly any publication that does not
explicitly refer to the “domestic church”. In spite of this broad
interest, however, the concept itself today still remains unclear. Where
the model of the “church in miniature” is not used to further align the
family with the hierarchical ecclesiastical institution, it simply
serves as a pious metaphor to instil some spiritual dignity to the
Christian household. Likewise, theological treatises insist that the
church is not a family and so the domestic church has remained a
marginal and exotic note in ecclesiology as well. One may wonder,
however, whether small communities, as families are, have indeed so
little to tell the “new family of God” to which Christ has called his
disciples to belong. Can the churches afford to neglect the specific
competences that families have when it comes to serving and sharing with
each other, to dealing with differences and otherness of its members (be
they related to gender, age, ethnicity, or religious conviction), and to
encountering God in ordinary life with its everyday ties, duties and
responsibilities?


This volume is intended to critically revisit the notion of domestic
church and to explore both its pitfalls and potential for the life of
the churches and of families.