Is that allowed!?

Since I left Crossroads two years ago to head up to Sydney, a couple of house churches have started up. I've been lucky enough to go along to one of them while down for Christmas. It's been a positive, encouraging experience, and I'm told that they've been great for fostering community, and for including people who, for a variety of reasons, would find it difficult to go to a regular church service. I think house churches provide a wonderful opportunity for us individualistic Westerners to share our lives with people and be hospitable. They haven't had a lot of visitors along though and I wonder if non-church goers would find going to a stranger's house a bit intimidating.

I'm wondering if meeting in a community hall might be a good way of making church more accessible for non-Christians but also keeping the intimacy. One of the problems with this is that people would no longer come to your actual home - so it would cease to be this natural thing of having people pop over midweek to visit you and then again on Sunday for church. But I think that meeting in a community hall could be a symbolic way of showing that churches are at the centre of our communities. I imagine that local church buildings used to communicate this, but these days people see churches as archane religious institutions. I wonder if meeting in the same hall where people come for yoga and dance classes, market garden fairs and weddings will convey this message anew - as well as providing a space that people are already comfortable to come into.