|
emerging church, emergent, simple church, house church, home church.Thursday, August 24
a passage to india A friend from Bristol brought an apostolic church planter from India over to Bath for the evening to hang out with a few of us. I first met John (not his real name) in South Africa earlier this year and heard some of his story then. Geoff, who brought him over has been visiting and helping him in India for several years. It was a very challenging, encouraging and provocative evening to put it mildly. Saved at 14 and called to ministry at 18 John left home to attend Bible school. In '98 having planted and grown a successful church he was challenged by Victor Choudhrie, an apostolic church planter, to begin training and sending house church planters. After training under Choudhrie he set off planting and training. Since 2000 they have planted over 400 churches, which have on average 30 people and each church usually always plants at least one more church beyond themselves; some go on and plant several more. They have a training centre and have trained 100's of leaders and planters. They have 40 full time planters, both men and women. Opposition and persecution is common and growing. Many are attacked and beaten or worse but all their planters are ready and willing to lay down even their lives to take the gospel to villages where Jesus is not known. John himself, with his wife is due in court next month facing charges of 'converting' people to christianity. They frequently receive threatening telephone calls; to which John replies 'you do your work and I will do mine. I am not frightened of you.' In pairs the church planters will first prayer-walk, while fasting, in a new village. They will continue to do this (binding the strongholds and inviting Gods power to fill the place) everyday for at least 3 months until they begin to see signs of responsiveness. They then open a house of prayer where they will pray for any who are sick or troubled. Miracles begin to happen and then they share Jesus with those who respond. From this one or two house churches are started. The planters identify one or two potential leaders and begin training them. These leaders also attend the 21 day church planters training at the taining centre. They are charged nothing for this but have to trust God to feed their families while they are away. It takes about a year to plant and establish each new church. We asked John what his thoughts were about the church in the UK. Alongside the usual challenges: materialism, reluctance to change etc, he said 'you think too much' and 'you have to be willing to take risks, to get out of the boat and walk on water.' For their planters the risks are obvious - and costly - even their lives, but for us it may mean risking our reputation or our material comforts. We were left in no doubt that without first binding the strongman in prayer & fasting then releasing Gods power into an area we will never see people respond. In India they tested this by sending 2 pairs of planters to similar and nearby villages. In one they spent 3 months prayer walking and in the other they went straight in to share the gospel and pray for people. In the former there is now a strong church of 40 in the latter they were chased out of the village within a month and have never been able to plant a church there. Selah... posted by alexander @ 11:25 AM 3 comments 
3 Comments:
I am absolutely no expert and probably someone who thinks too much but in your example of 2 pairs of church planters, did one pair just go in and spend 3 months getting to know people or go in gang busters giving folks "the message" instead of "being the message"? Nobody likes to be prosletized - what's your reaction to a couple of Mormons at the front door?
By
Ian hi, thnks for the thought provoking comments. I'm no expert either having barely managed to plant 2 churches. but I'm always ready to learn from a brother who has seen over 400 planted and in the midst of persecution, albeit from a very different culture. I dont really know the answer to your first question, though I suspect going in obedience, willing to suffer violent oppostion even death, having given up all security of home and work to share the good news with the poorest of the poor I reckon these men and women are probably doing a pretty good at "being the message" as well as giving the message.
Hi Alexander,
By For more posts check out the Archives or for a specific topic use site search tool. |
The aim of this site is to connect, report and resource these new groups.
If you'd like to know more check out the vision page.
previous posts | : :search this site | : :contribute | : :As an encouragement to others we want to collect stories of how new Simple/Organic Churches were started. be updated | : :
Or if you use rss feeds: blog archives | : :credits | : :
|
