planting churches with the unchurched
Excellent time here in Bath over the weekend with the Dales. Several local home churches came together to eat, worship, fellowship,
learn and dialogue together about how we can reach and disciple the unchurched. God was challenging us afresh to become missionaries in our own context. We left infected with the Luke 10:2b virus - to pray that the Lord of the harvest will raise up and thrust out labourers into the harvest field.

Other pics by clicking pic.

posted by alexander @ 3:15 PM    4 comments

4 Comments:

Hi alexander! we hate to be the ones to inform you but the pictures of you prophetically miming seem to have gone missing from your site? any suggestions how we can retrieve them? much love and let us know if we can be of any help in this crisis Heidi and Shannon

By  Heidi, at 10:30 AM  

Don't worry I have my entire tech department plus the guys at Blogger & Flickr working flat out to locate these missing pictures; interpol have been informed and all airports and bus stations are being monitored. will keep you informed as things develop.

By  alexander, at 10:42 AM  

thanks for the rapid response AC! we will be scanning the internet to see if we can locate them also, if you have not retrieved them let us know and we can send out a request for help in this urgent matter to the european network. Heidi and Shan

By  Heidi, at 10:56 AM  

Latest news flash: pictures are beginning to flood in to our headquarters. for latest information and news of a possible new ministry being launched to help those afflicted with Repetitive Interpretive Mime Condition (RIMC) please visit www.alexandercampbell.blogspot.com

By  alexander, at 11:20 AM  

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dales roundtable

Since my brief trip out to Romania things have continued pretty busy. Last Friday we held a Roundtable event at CMS head office near Waterloo (Just up the road from the shooting at Stockwell). It was an opportunity for a number of practitioners and strategists to meet and hear from Tony & Felicity Dale. Most of those gathered share a common desire & vision to see a movement of church planting generated.

The Dales shared some of what is going on around the world and particularly in the US. George Barna now reckons there are around 1 million in the US meeting outside of the existing church structures. On the death of Bill Bright a large legacy was left to his ministry and it was decided to put it towards the planting of 5 million new home churches in order to see 1 billion new believers in the Kingdom.

After some story telling, which people particularly welcomed, we broke out into questions covering issues such as leadership, how effective mission (local & global) can be resourced through household churches, whether the 'model' they were reflecting could be transferred to any context (though it was recognised that we were discussing core values and understandings rather than specific models), how 'teaching' is delivered in these small contexts, and how reproducible forms of discipling are emerging.

It was a great time of connecting and dialogue; thanks CMS for hosting us so well.

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romania's john knox
Just returned from a brief visit to Romania; delivering our daughter to Cluj where she is getting her first taste of foreign missions; and talking to some folks about church planting movements.

Also had the priveledge to meet with Gavi Moldovan who heads up United World Mission
in Romania and is responsible for Romania's national church planting strategy. With 4 teams in the field they are about to embark on a second phase of research in preparation for their next national congress in 2007.

Although it has been long, slow work they have seen some very encouraging signs since the early 90's. The number of evangelicals has grown from 350,000 in 1990 to over 500,000 in 2000. And from 2,300 churches to over 5000 in 2000. In 1990 there were no foreign missionaries from Romania now there are more than 100.

They have to constantly battle with both the former communist and Orthodox mindsets which still largely prevail particularly in the rural areas.

Gavi and his teams are working hard to communicate an understanding of the need for church planting by multiplication - churches that are able to plant other churches and so on.

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simple church weekend: shropshire
(click on pic for more) Zipped up to Shropshire to meet folks attending the Simple Church weekend with Tony & Felicity Dale. Great place, good company and lots of inspiring conversation and input from the Dales. Tony is currently reading the manuscript of a book by George Barna which is due out later this year. Called 'Revolutionaries' it refers to the estimated 20 million in Nth America who have rejected fruitless religion and are embracing a full on passionate relationship with God. He has recognised over his 20+ years of researching the church in the US that it is just not cutting it, 'why' he asks 'if the local church is "Gods answer", is it that most churched christians are still so pitifully immature?'

The Dales guestimate is that over the past 5 years the organic church movement has grown from 200 to over 5000 churches in the US. Barna & his team laughed at this as their research indicates many thousands more.

We have started to make some conservative guestimates for the UK. To do that I need to know how many towns and cities there are in GB. Anybody know?

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mission shaped leadership training
(sorry about the lousy pic!)
As mentioned below, I sat in on the Mission Shaped Leadership course. Church planter, Dick Whitehouse was teaching on Principles of Multiplication. For many there, a real challenge to their thinking. Dick has many years experience and more recently has been studying church planting movements and the DNA that underpins them.

Using some of
David Garrison's material on CPM's he flagged up what constitutes a CPM:

Rapid
Multiplicative
Indigenous
Churches plant churches, not missionaries, etc.




And - 10. Elements of CPMs

1. Prayer
2. Abundant Gospel sowing
3. Intentional Church Planting
4. Scriptural authority
5. Local leadership
6. Lay leadership
7. Cell or house churches
8. Churches planting churches
9. Rapid reproduction
10. Healthy churches

posted by alexander @ 7:24 AM    0 comments

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templeton to lincoln



Busy last few days. Monday saw me stop off for another meeting with Mike Moynagh in Templeton College, a cool modern building for rocket scientists or something like that! We were reviewing the training research project and talking about some wider issues to do with church planting in our culture. I love our conversations as they stretch my thinking and ability to articulate some of those thoughts.

Next on to the nation of Lincolnshire; yes coming from Somerset it really is a foreign country. Spent time with
Pete & Kath Atkins leaders of Threshold church which meets together every other week then inbetween as several smaller more local gatherings called clusters. The clusters themselves are made up of reproducing home or cell churches. Each has full freedom to outwork church in whatever way is going to most effectively bring the Kingdom to their community.

Pete & Kath (as well as being parents of 5 and a part time GP) are also spearheading a cross-denominational strategy to see churches planted all over their region, entitled 'Humber to the Wash'. Although the vision has been in preparation for several years it is steadily building steam on a number of fronts. It enjoys widespread support from church leaders across the board and the region.

One of the key components is a Mission Shaped Leadership training course which is now in its 4th year and currently has 70 students, ranging from a rural Dean, several Methodist area superintendants, Vicars, free church and new church pastors and lots of cell/small group leaders. A small but growing number of new works have been started by former students and their vision is to have 500 pass through the course, with a healthy percentage of those going on to initiate new churches.

It was remarkable to see so many from such diverse backgrounds learning together. A sign of hope for the future. The 'Humber to the Wash' project is a regional DAWN-type process which could well serve as a learning model for other regions in the future.

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church planting in the custard factory

Great day at the Custard Factory in Birmingham last Saturday to learn a bit more about Re:source.

The venue location was great though the theatre created a performance feel (understandably!) which wasn't everyones bag.

The day was a mix of worship (always great to see some creativity), stories - from mostly youth oriented fresh expressions, and Andrew Jones talking about custard powder; yeah!

There were 70+ people there, most of whom were church planters, which was very encouraging. Andrew talked about the organic ingredients of church which may produce the potential for growth by reproduction and multiplication rather than addition. Following the yeast analogy:

Organic Church Planting:
1. Happens by small steps.
2. It's invisible
3. It's complete, pervasive and permeating: 'hands off' ethos.

Too many churches being planted are too complex to be replicable. Without this simplicity we will never see a potential movement emerge.

Working from Luke 10 he then outlined a simple pattern for planting;

1. Ask the Lord of the harvest - Prayer.
2. Go - He sends us into the harvest field, where He will already be at work.
- We go to THEIR houses, stay there, eat, drink and hear their story
3. Heal the sick - look for where God's favour is already working.
4. Tell the Gospel story

Other random thoughts from my notes:

There is still structure in organic settings. But very flexible.

Old model of leadership development involved sending person off to college for several years, they then return older and 'wiser', and lead church for another 40 yrs; now leadership is dispersed, corporate and flexible and shifts from one to another as needs demand.

Old model tended to focus on Pastor/Teacher now it is more reflective of five fold giftings. Pastors/teachers ruled in the inherited church - Apostles/prophets in the EC.

Simple church/organic church is not about doing more cool things but a different way of thinking.

I was left with a few questions at the end; in terms of the Re:source training course, due to restart next year, from the last course about 9 or 10 new works were started which have survived. However not one of them was easily reproducible. Are we just repeating some of the mistakes of the 90's? Can we plant reproducible emerging churches? Or are most of these guys not interested in that concept at all?

I felt the contrast between what Andrew was sharing in terms of organic, reproducible and multiplication could not have been greater with the stories which were told; one of which for example involved raising £500,000 to build a brilliant indoor skate park. They're doing a fantastic job of contextual mission but not easily reproducible I suspect!

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making disciples in a churchless age

I did say I would post up some more thoughts and my notes from the Organic Church Rountable in Northampton, so here goes;

It was an excellent time with input from Stuart Murray Williams and plenty of interaction and dialogue throughout. Not everyone may concur with Stuart's take on Christendom but he brought some challenging and helpful thoughts on 'Making disciples in a churchless age'.

Stuart is comfortable (or maybe just plain wise) taking a wait-and-see approach to the whole emerging church scene. He wonders whether the real hope may lie in the 'evolving church' ie. new shapes of church evolving from the existing.
(Apologies for the pic quality not sure what went wrong!)
He pressed the case for a more radical theological re-examination of the Gospel if we are going to connect with todays culture.

I resonated with some of his conclusions and proposals; that we need a 'simple' church, freed of much of the 'Christendom' baggage, but one that is able to sustain communities of disciples in the long run through a robust spirituality and lifestyle of accountability.

I also strongly agreed with his suggestion illustrated by the story of Peter at Cornelius's house that 'the future church will grow out of conversations between the inherited church and the emerging church.' With such a diverse group of people present, the day itself was a good outworking of that.

In the attached notes there is more stuff including:

- Post-Christendom: A Summary
- Emerging Church: A Tentative Classification
- Rehabilitating Evangelism
- Why People leave Church
- Anabaptist Network Core Convictions

OCRT combined notes.doc

It was a good chance to catch up with a number of people coming from very different settings who are travelling down similar paths. There were discernable commonalities amongst our stories but the outworking in each setting has it's own personality. And that's how it should be.

posted by alexander @ 7:16 PM    2 comments

2 Comments:

Did you record his message and is it available for general consumption.

Thanks

Tim

By  Tim, at 1:39 PM  

Yes it was recorded; for info try Graham at geold177@aol.com

By  alexander, at 1:49 PM  

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global mapping founder loses his way


Was supposed to be meeting with Bob Waymire founder of missionary research organisation Global Mapping International; sadly he is lost somewhere in the UK and the person organising the meeting hasn't been able to contact him! So much for technology! Never mind, maybe next time.

posted by alexander @ 9:32 AM    0 comments

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