Berean Home Fellowship (BHF) is a home church ministry based out of Toledo, Ohio which was formed in July of 2008 by husband and wife team David and Margot Washington. After over a decade of being involved with traditional and cell churches, they felt the Lord moving them towards forming a home church. They are grateful what the Lord has taught them in their former churches and the priceless relationships that were formed from them.
The vision of BHF is to plant home churches at God’s leading while adhering to sound, biblical teaching that will edify, encourage, and embolden the saints. This website is meant as a tool not only to help the body of Christ generally but to help home churches specifically have a model of the biblical church.
Berean Home Fellowship is built on five key but simple foundational biblical concepts.
1. The centrality of Jesus Christ and His Word. (John 17:17)
We believe that the word of God, which is Jesus Christ (John 1:1), should be central to our very lives and that the Bible is the inerrant, everlasting truth of the most High God. We exemplify this by teaching through books of the Bible expositionally — line by line, verse by verse — one chapter at a time, letting the Lord speak to us through the Word and sound, biblical doctrine.
2. The reality of covenant community. (Hebrews 10:25, Acts 2:44-47)
We believe in covenant community which goes beyond just a Sunday assembly. The church is an organism, interconnected and interdepedent on each other. We seek to strengthen this connection as much as possible by connecting with others in the church throughout the week, helping them to grow spiritually as well as provide emotional and practical support when possible.
3. The mandate for church elders. (2 Timothy 3:1-13, Titus 1:5-9)
We adhere to the mandate to have elders and leaders in the church. We have a pastor who leads and guides our gathering, teaching as well as facilitating the gathering, ensuring that it is in order and godly. He has been ordained by other pastors and is held accountable by them as well.
4. The importance of prayer. (1 Timothy 2:1)
We believe prayer is the privilege of believers to be in on and a part of what God is doing and what He wants to do. This is so He may be glorified and His will may be done in our lives. Prayer is instrumental in not only changing our communities and the world around us, but changing us.
4. Growing in holiness. (1 Peter 1:16, James 2:20)
We believe that our lives should reflect God’s character as Ephesians 5:1 proclaims:
Be ye therefore imitators of God.
We realize that no one is ever going to be perfect while here on earth. Even so, our lives should reflect God’s glory and we should be growing in holiness. We’ll never be sinless but if we are truly walking with the Lord and pursuing Him with more and more abandon, we should be sinning less. Our desire is to put into practice those things which we read in His word. As it says in first Samuel, to obey is better than sacrifice.
5. Spreading the gospel. (Matthew 28:19,20)
The call of the Christian directly from the Lord is made clear for us to go into all the world and preach the gospel. If we truly have compassion and love for the souls that God has created, we will tell them about the glorious gospel of grace and how they can be free from the sin that so easily besets them.
For additional background information, feel free to listen to the podcast where Pastor David explains some other details of Berean Home Fellowship.
