Dwellings is a relational network of everyday believers cultivating communities and house churches around the presence of Jesus. We have taken cues from the early church and we’ve been learning from the areas of the world where the church is growing the fastest - like Africa, Iran, China, and Nepal.

We are a decentralized movement — each community is autonomous, finding wisdom and accountability in its local sphere. What unites our relational network is not central human authority but shared values and beliefs centered in Scripture. We have four values: presence, family, transformation, and participation. You’ll find our beliefs lower on this page as well.

God’s presence is the reason we gather. From Eden to the early church to today, God has always desired to dwell with his people. When we meet as a community our first priority is to welcome his presence, not to perform or impress. We resist the pull toward being excessively prescriptive or structured and instead create space for worship, prayer and listening. We desire everything we do to be oriented to God’s presence among us.

We are also making three shifts in the way we do discipleship. You’ll see that we are shifting toward our next three values: family, transformation, and participation.

  • There are many lonely people, outside the church but also within. We don’t think we can change the whole world at once, but we can follow Jesus’s method of investing deeply in a small group of people. We believe that tight-knit and authentic spiritual family is an important remedy to the individualism and loneliness of today. We invite isolated people into our living rooms and our lives. We engage with the lost and the poor in our communities, desiring to extend the spiritual family. We gather adults and children together, involving everyone in conversations and discipleship. We multiply into additional, small expressions as we grow, retaining relational connection. We promote unity with the broader church family. We love the Church and don’t take pride in our own expression, but love the thought of helping to build a thriving ecosystem for the future church.

  • In a world with access to all kinds of teaching and information, we recognize we can learn it all and still not know God. We are devoted to learning the Scriptures, but we intentionally invite the Spirit to bring life and power to the Word so that our lives might be transformed. We are not content with gaining second hand knowledge; instead, we want to experience God’s presence first hand, through the Word and Spirit, so that our lives actually look more like Jesus’s life. We commit to living out the primary issues of Scripture according to the way of Jesus rather than arguing over secondary issues of our faith.

  • In a church culture that tends to lean on a few professionals to lead, we want to activate the ordinary person. We help identify gifts in people, knowing we experience the presence of God more tangibly when the gifts are on display. We follow Jesus’s strategy of involving his disciples in conversation-based and practiced-based learning. We keep our forms and practices simple so that anyone can replicate them. We create spaces that encourage active participation - through dialogue and serving one another - because we value all in the body of Christ.

  • At Dwellings, anyone can use our free tools and resources. If you or your community desires to register with this movement and use our name, we want to make sure we share beliefs and values on primary areas of the faith and in some areas that, without clarity, tend to cause division in the Church.

    At Dwellings, we hold to the historic teachings of Christian orthodoxy as expressed in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. In a time of division within both culture and the Church, our heart is to pursue unity around the essentials of the faith, centering our lives and ministry on the presence of Jesus and the truths affirmed in these foundational creeds. We acknowledge that believers may differ on secondary matters, but we consider the core tenets of Christian faith non-negotiable.

    We believe the work and gifts of the Holy Spirit continue today and are vital to fulfilling the Great Commission.

    We ask our leaders to pursue Christlike holiness—living lives according to the scriptures and marked by the fruit of the Spirit in every area: relationships, conduct, work, and rest. Because we love and value both truth and people, we hold that sexual intimacy is designed by God to exist within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman. We expect our leaders to refrain from sexual relationships outside of this biblical vision, including premarital, extramarital, or same-sex sexual activity or marriage.