Do any Baptists....

I was just reading a book called "Why We're Not Emergent" and they were saying that these terms are terms used by the emergent churches too. Interesting because I had never heard of them before.

 

I'll also answer for our cell group.

We have a designated leader - the person who is responsible for the group and will go to the cell leader's trainings and who report back to the pastor that is in charge of that "zone" of cell groups. It just makes it easier to have one or two leaders for communication issues and such. However, that doesn't mean that the leader leads every group. In our group, my hubby and I are the leaders but DH has gotten tired of being "on" all the time with also being worship leader and leading the college ministry so we started doing it where the husband and wife team who's house we are meeting at will run the group. It's worked out really well so far.

As for what materials we use, we always use the "pulpit curriculum" - speaking about the message and how to apply it to our lives. Infrequently a group will decide to take a bit of a detour here and there for a special purpose that is needed in their group and I know in our own group, we've also had weeks where we decided to focus on prayer and worship rather than the teaching/discussion time because that is what was needed by the group members. It will vary depending on the message, member's needs, who else is there (visitors, unsaved spouses, etc.).

 

I have also seen house churches that have been rebellious (as in "no church here is good enough for us" or " we've been hurt by too many organized churches that we don't want to go to another one") but then I've also seen house churches that were church plants. I've never heard of an organized one other than some group that some people from our old church joined and I'm not too sure about it - it sounds cultish. There were things that the daughter told us that just doesn't sound right so I'm not too sure about it. It sounds like it's part of a larger group because the different house churches will meet together for "fellowship" but no matter how we've asked over the last 2 years, this girl won't tell us the name of the group (we drive her home from school often). Weird.