stories of emerging church from around the world
Lausanne paper 2: The realities of the changing expressions of the Church.

Here's the 2nd paper from the Lausanne conference. There are some great stories of very different settings. I doubt some of them would qualify for the title 'emerging church' in most Western settings, but seeing how most of them are experiencing phenomenal growth I thnk we better sit up and learn from them!

Here are the conclusions of the report, beginning with an echo of Roland Allen:

"We are confident that the Spirit of Truth continues to guide the people of God in these matters as well as in other areas of Christian life if they remain open to the Lordship of Christ.

So as we conclude this report on our study and reflection, we wish to bring this message to the churches round the world:

The Holy Spirit is leading the Body of Christ into many new and creative works resulting in expansion and fresh expression of church today. Furthermore, engaging new generations, unreached peoples, and rapidly changing cultures with the gospel necessitates new expressions that are both contextually relevant and biblically counter-cultural.

Therefore,

• We call established churches and mission movements to acknowledge, understand, support and bless creative expressions of the church that are missionally motivated.

• We call emerging church movements to value the experience, history and theology of established churches and seek expressions of unity as well as diversity in the Body of Christ.

• We call established as well as emerging churches to engage in the ongoing task of contextualising of their ministries in light of their continuously changing culture.

• We call for the launching of creatively contextualised church planting movements amongst the unreached people groups, emerging subcultures and minimally reached populations of the world."

posted by alexander @ 11:39 AM    0 comments

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