When we planted our first house church our planting coach, Todd Sovine said that we needed to establish three things from the beginning: 

• Beachheads of prayer.
• Beachheads of relationship.
• Beachheads of discipleship.  

Before anything else happened, we started praying, building relationships, and intentionally discipling one another.  That was all we did at first.  We didn't have services.  We didn't advertise.  We didn't plan events.  We focussed on prayer, relationships, and discipleship.