big simple church?

Just discovered this fascinating book from over the pond.

Not, as you would first assume, about small, reproducible, organic churches but actually about what it takes to make your BIG church even more successful!

Click on the picture to go to their web page where you can download the first chapter and see a video of the author talking about the book.

"Church is done best when it's kept simple. Rainer's and Geiger's research in their new book, Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples, offers this insight — Churches with a simple process for reaching and maturing people are expanding the kingdom. Complex churches are struggling and anemic.

The authors have observed the simple church in action and they want others to see it, too. Simple churches are thriving, and they are doing so by taking four ideas to heart: Clarity. Movement. Alignment. Focus.

"We compared growing and vibrant churches to non-growing and struggling churches. Church leaders from both groups were asked to complete the same survey which was designed to measure how simple their church discipleship process was. We anticipated that there would be a relationship between a simple process and church vitality, but the results were greater than we imagined. Our statistical consultant told us that we had found something big."

"The vibrant churches were much more simple than the comparison churches. The difference was so big that the probability of the results occurring with one church by chance is less than one in a thousand."

The simple church revolution has begun. Are you in?"

Well this is very interesting! It seems to me that they have identified something of what God is doing and then attempted to shoe-horn it into their existing paradigm of church. Maybe they need to pull back a bit and see how God is using this concept of simplicity through a whole different shape of church - a shape which itself works with the simplicity rather than against it. And this is how most christians around the world are experiencing church now.

Also it is fascinating to see that once again when you strip everything else away you find simplicity and the disciple making process lies at the heart of church. Won't we ever learn? It takes a highly educated, trained, professional to complicate things.

BTW guys - like the book cover design.

posted by alexander @ 8:51 AM    0 comments

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