Lancaster House Church Network

[Elmer]

Who knows anything about the Lancaster House Church Network?

Are they involved at all with ChurchEngaged.org or with KingdomChannels.org?

[Josh]

Who knows anything about the Lancaster House Church Network?

Are they involved at all with ChurchEngaged.org or with KingdomChannels.org?

They appear to be part of this crowd of people.

https://housetohousemcn.com/

This, in turn, is part of the DOVE USA network (https://doveusa.org/) which is a fairly sizeable organisation headquarter in Lititz. (Their office building at 11 Toll Gate Rd in Lititz is fairly impressive.) They have a "standard" evangelical statement of faith.

The last names on the "About Us" page of the House to House Micro-Church Network are Zimmerman, Kreider, and Johnston. The first two are Mennonite- or Amish-background names; the latter person is not of a plain background.

Likewise, the "house churches" in the "House to House" network are all in the Lancaster area, save for one in the Philadelphia-Trenton metro area, which is a "standard' place for that Lancaster-based Mennonite-background groups do outreach.

The Lancaster-based ones are all in Mennonite "strongholds": Litiz, East Earl, Mohrsville, Akron, and Ephrata, plus one in Lancaster city itself. (Having one outreach to downtown Lancaster is also a "standard" thing for Mennonite-background groups to do.)

The DOVE USA people are, likewise, based in the Lancaster area; their leadership's last names are Fricke, Good, Hurst, Myer, Prokopchak, Lehman, Alger, DeMatos, Ford, Miller, Bunton, and Payne; five of those names are plain background (Fricke may be of Lutheran Pennsylvania Dutch background, either directly or via the Holdemans).

The DOVE family of churches has been in existence since 1980 when our first congregation was planted in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We grew to numerous gatherings, meeting at various locations in seven counties in Pennsylvania. However, we were still considered to be one church. We also planted three churches internationally. In 1994, we made the decision to go from being a “mother church” with church plants in other nations to becoming a “family of churches.” We established local pastors and elder teams to give leadership to these churches in Pennsylvania that were previously functioning together as one church. Additionally, we established an Apostolic Council to give oversight to these lead elders (lead pastors) and elder teams. This was the starting point of what we now call an “apostolic movement” that began January of 1996.

This church is the "Dove Christian Fellowship" church. They basically are a small denomination now. In their network of churches there is one that is relatively close to me (Identity Church in Ohio) and I happen to know someone who goes there. His wife's family is of (drumroll please) Amish background.

The original church in Ephrata is somewhat of a "mega-church". The leadership team's last names are Weaver, Bollinger, Neff, Hurst, Zimmerman, and Ringler. Amongst the administrative staff an Eberly, Martin, Hertzog, and and Weaver also caught my eye.

As far as I can tell, this network of house churches has nothing to do with Steve and Suvilla Fisher's network of house churches, also in Lancaster, who is part of the oversight board of whatever KingdomChannels.org is.

It is truly amazing how many "stealth Mennonite" denominations and churches and so forth there are.

[Elmer]

As far as I can tell, this network of house churches has nothing to do with Steve and Suvilla Fisher's network of house churches, also in Lancaster, who is part of the oversight board of whatever KingdomChannels.org is.

Do you know anything else about Steve Fisher's Lancaster network of house churches? It appears he has preached at www.onekingdomcommunity.org. Is One Kingdom Community the same as Steve Fisher's network or is it a congregation in their network or is it not affiliated with the network at all?

[Josh]

As far as I can tell, this network of house churches has nothing to do with Steve and Suvilla Fisher's network of house churches, also in Lancaster, who is part of the oversight board of whatever KingdomChannels.org is.

Do you know anything else about Steve Fisher's Lancaster network of house churches? It appears he has preached at www.onekingdomcommunity.org. Is One Kingdom Community the same as Steve Fisher's network or is it a congregation in their network or is it not affiliated with the network at all?

No, I don't... I suppose one could reach out to him and ask.

[Ernie]

As far as I can tell, this network of house churches has nothing to do with Steve and Suvilla Fisher's network of house churches, also in Lancaster, who is part of the oversight board of whatever KingdomChannels.org is.

Do you know anything else about Steve Fisher's Lancaster network of house churches? It appears he has preached at www.onekingdomcommunity.org. Is One Kingdom Community the same as Steve Fisher's network or is it a congregation in their network or is it not affiliated with the network at all?

I know Steve Fisher fairly well. He relates to the Lapp brothers but is not in a formal affiliation. Steve is starting a number of house churches of ex-Amish who relate to each other more regularly. I think I am saying this correctly that Steve views conservative Anabaptists as missing the mark just about as badly as conservative Evangelicals. He supports Penal Substitionary Atonement, etc.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Who knows anything about the Lancaster House Church Network?

Are they involved at all with ChurchEngaged.org or with KingdomChannels.org?

They appear to be part of this crowd of people.

https://housetohousemcn.com/

This, in turn, is part of the DOVE USA network (https://doveusa.org/) which is a fairly sizeable organisation headquarter in Lititz. (Their office building at 11 Toll Gate Rd in Lititz is fairly impressive.) They have a "standard" evangelical statement of faith.

The last names on the "About Us" page of the House to House Micro-Church Network are Zimmerman, Kreider, and Johnston. The first two are Mennonite- or Amish-background names; the latter person is not of a plain background.

Likewise, the "house churches" in the "House to House" network are all in the Lancaster area, save for one in the Philadelphia-Trenton metro area, which is a "standard' place for that Lancaster-based Mennonite-background groups do outreach.

The Lancaster-based ones are all in Mennonite "strongholds": Litiz, East Earl, Mohrsville, Akron, and Ephrata, plus one in Lancaster city itself. (Having one outreach to downtown Lancaster is also a "standard" thing for Mennonite-background groups to do.)

The DOVE USA people are, likewise, based in the Lancaster area; their leadership's last names are Fricke, Good, Hurst, Myer, Prokopchak, Lehman, Alger, DeMatos, Ford, Miller, Bunton, and Payne; five of those names are plain background (Fricke may be of Lutheran Pennsylvania Dutch background, either directly or via the Holdemans).

The DOVE family of churches has been in existence since 1980 when our first congregation was planted in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We grew to numerous gatherings, meeting at various locations in seven counties in Pennsylvania. However, we were still considered to be one church. We also planted three churches internationally. In 1994, we made the decision to go from being a “mother church” with church plants in other nations to becoming a “family of churches.” We established local pastors and elder teams to give leadership to these churches in Pennsylvania that were previously functioning together as one church. Additionally, we established an Apostolic Council to give oversight to these lead elders (lead pastors) and elder teams. This was the starting point of what we now call an “apostolic movement” that began January of 1996.

This church is the "Dove Christian Fellowship" church. They basically are a small denomination now. In their network of churches there is one that is relatively close to me (Identity Church in Ohio) and I happen to know someone who goes there. His wife's family is of (drumroll please) Amish background.

The original church in Ephrata is somewhat of a "mega-church". The leadership team's last names are Weaver, Bollinger, Neff, Hurst, Zimmerman, and Ringler. Amongst the administrative staff an Eberly, Martin, Hertzog, and and Weaver also caught my eye.

As far as I can tell, this network of house churches has nothing to do with Steve and Suvilla Fisher's network of house churches, also in Lancaster, who is part of the oversight board of whatever KingdomChannels.org is.

It is truly amazing how many "stealth Mennonite" denominations and churches and so forth there are.

The “Dove” churches down here tend to the Pentecostal side. Don’t know if that is .universally true.

[Josh]

I know Steve Fisher fairly well. He relates to the Lapp brothers but is not in a formal affiliation. Steve is starting a number of house churches of ex-Amish who relate to each other more regularly. I think I am saying this correctly that Steve views conservative Anabaptists as missing the mark just about as badly as conservative Evangelicals. He supports Penal Substitionary Atonement, etc.

Are these the "Glory Barn" Lapp brothers?

[Samuel-Stoltzfus]

Lancaster House Church Network is a group of 6 house churches in Lancaster County and has no connection to DOVE.
3 of them are expansions out of Steve Fishers original Fellowship. Most of the churches have a high percentage of ex-Amish, many of which have left in the past 4 years.

As far as Church Engaged, a few members were at that event but as far as I know the Church Engaged event only ever took place once.

The only connection to Kingdom Channels is Merle Weaver, who is one of the pastors at the Bowmansville Assembly (one of the churches part of the network) and he is also a board member of KC.
As far as the Lapp Bros, One Kingdom Community (the name and website associated with the Lapp Brothers Church) would technically be considered a part of the network but as Ernie already mentioned, it's not very formal.

The network (as far as all 6 churches) is fairly loosely connected, every 5th Sunday everyone gets together for church and occasionally the leadership meets together. Steve Fishers 4 churches would be a lot more connected.

I attend one of the churches and would gladly answer more questions if someone would like, feel free to PM me.

[Josh]

Believe it or not, there appear to be two Lancaster House Church Networks. It is unknown yet if there are switches or routers between them.

[Samuel-Stoltzfus]

Believe it or not, there appear to be two Lancaster House Church Networks. It is unknown yet if there are switches or routers between them.

I never knew that there was another one
There is no connection whatsoever to DOVE or https://housetohousemcn.com/ or whatever.