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emerging church, emergent, simple church, house church, home church.Friday, March 31
latest from Spain A few weeks back I mentioned catching up with a church planter in Spain where they had suddenly seen an explosion of new churches recently; here's the latest: Since Nov. 1, 2005 we have seen at least 16 simple churches birthed (I don’t know what has happened yet in the last week). We have seen a lot of miracles, such as powerful healings etc. I have witnessed at least one miracle myself and have been present while five came to Christ. Interestingly, when we got to 16 churches it seemed that Jesus slowed down and almost stopped divine leading toward church planting. This seems to mean that he wants us to concentrate on discipleship at this point. Almost all the newcomers into the network have been by conversion, not transfer. Churches come into being all at once, not a convert at a time. The quality of discipleship going on with the new Christians is significantly different. They want to grow. They have never been laity, so they have not seen a passive type of Christianity. They assume from the beginning that God can work through them. That is one of the reasons why, once we get to this point, this can become a viral movement and not difficult, painful addition growth.More Lord, we want more! posted by alexander @ 1:10 PM 1 comments 
1 Comments:I am really encouraged by this post. So much of what we do in "big" church is met by passivity or apathy or indifference. Every now and then it is refreshing to find someone who actually wants to be a disciple and wants to grow! For the rest though it is very easy for the prevailing culture to quench the Spirit. This testimony reminds me to look at the ones who respond and not worry too much about those who don't.
By Thursday, March 30
organic church planting in germany Had a great chat with a young German organic church planter, David Schaefer who lives in Essen. (Sorry his website is for german speakers only!) David hosted Neil Cole from Church Multiplication Associates recently for their Greenhouse sessions on organic church planting in Germany. You can see a bit of one of these sessions and buy DVD's from www.de.igw.edu. David and his wife were sent out by their Baptist church to begin planting small, reproducible churches last year. Having been through a period of 'de-tox', during which they connected with a number of people through a local coffee shop - which sadly closed in the Autumn, they and the two other couples with them have had a wonderful door open up to them to bless a large group of mostly foreign students from the local university. A few minutes from their appartment is a student housing complex with around 400 students, only 5% of whom are German the rest coming from all over the world. Here they are simply being a friend to some of these students who are far away from home. They have made themselves available and offered support, coffee, an ear, even prayer when requested. They have made some good friendships which will probably last way beyond the university years. Their desire is to be true friends to these students not 'sell them Jesus'; however that doesn't mean they're slow to share their faith when invited to! posted by alexander @ 12:00 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:more churches than starbucks? In a masterly stroke of 'good' timing the guys at Christian Research issued this story to the press a few days before the Mission 21 congress in Sheffield. It strangely echoed a very similar press release put out by Mission 21 suggesting that "More new churches were planted in the UK than new Starbucks opened in the last few years!" Anyway, regardless of the apparent piggy-backing it was good to hear confirmation of the trends I also had found and presented in Sheffield. Here are some quotes: More than 1,000 new Christian churches have been created over the last seven years, double the number of Starbucks coffee shops, new research has found.For the full article in the Telegraph go here. posted by alexander @ 10:20 AM 2 comments
2 Comments:
Hi Alexander,
By
Don't be fooled by the numbers! They're only one indicator (among many) and as you identify probably not the best way to measure things! But they're about all Peter Brierley has to go on unless people pay him to do indepth research, which often can also be floored! Wednesday, March 29
what do simple churches look like? Often get asked this question. So here's a great picture from some guys in Equador who I know of. "1) 6:30 pm we began with around 20 adults and several children, meeting in the home of the church planter which also doubles as a beauty parlor during the week. All the hair dressing equipment had been moved to another room to make space for the plastic chairs that were set up in a circle around the small room. It was very hot and crowded, but nobody seemed to mind (except the visiting missionaries!) Go here for the full story. posted by alexander @ 12:27 PM 4 comments
4 Comments:It's nice to know we are on the same wavelength... Roland Allen etc. Did you know about these guys from Ecuador before I spotted their blog and posted a link?
By
Hi Ross
Ross and Alexander, We certainly will Guy. I get the xml feed from your blog so will keep an eye that way. A. church planter in benin Am always a little wary when I receive unsolicited emails from Africa, but would like to post this one from a couple who have seemingly planted 19 churches in Benin. (Names witheld, just incase) Dear Director, this history is personal it is what I passed through with my wife Before to start church planting work. God bless you as this is useful for you. Rev A F posted by alexander @ 10:56 AM 0 comments
0 Comments:Tuesday, March 28
church planting in wales Just read a report on the state of church planting in Wales prepared for a conference last Novemeber (wish I'd been there!). Not surprised but very encouraged to recognise some similar findings and conclusions to my own Mission 21 report: Many felt that there were already enough scattered Christians in most areas to pull together to make a start. The chapels of the heydays of Welsh Nonconformity grew out of seiadau : small meetings in homes for prayer, Bible study, pastoral care, and outreach. [Some wish they had not ‘developed’ into chapels!] Howell Harris, as did others, started hundreds of such small groups and with others travelled continuously to support, order and teach them. The same model would seem to be ideally suited for today, and would dispense with a dependence on buildings and traditional forms...To get a copy of the report email Cynthia Williams at cymru@eauk.org . posted by alexander @ 3:46 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:the legacy of roland allen Here's an excellent article outlining Roland Allen's missiology. Go here for the full article. His Philosophy of Missions By J. D. Payne One of the most controversial, yet most influential missionary thinkers in Church history, was Roland Allen. An examination of his missionary experience reveals nothing too impressive from a humanistic perspective. Rather, it was Allen’s insights into the expansion of the Church that sometimes equated him as being a prophet, a revolutionary, a radical, or a troublemaker... Allen’s legacy is incredible. Though he has been gone for several years and the majority of his writings are out-of-print, his missiology continues to impact missionaries in both Western and non-Western contexts. For example, Allen’s thinking was a major influence on Donald McGavran, the father of the contemporary Church Growth Movement. Also, throughout much of the world, the Church is experiencing church planting movements. These movements that consist of rapid church growth via the evangelization of different peoples and then congregationalizing those peoples into local churches, primarily rest upon the missiological foundation advocated by Allen years ago. Just as Hubert J. B. Allen noted in the subtitle of his work, Roland Allen was a “pioneer, priest, and prophet,” both during his day and ours. posted by alexander @ 10:07 AM 0 comments
0 Comments:bishop turns his denomination into a church planting movement  Malawi is known as the “Warm heart of Africa”. This relatively small country with the friendliest people on earth has been a target of Muammar el Gaddafi of Libya. He has invested millions of US Dollars in the building of hundreds of Mosques in Malawi. DAWN Africa, through GPS research found 579 Mosques just on the eastern shores of Lake Malawi and down to the town of Zomba. The estimated population of this area is about 1.1 million people. Bishop Harry Dwart Kaitano, heads up a denomination of over 500 churches comprising about 300 000 members. He felt it necessary to attend the church planting training that was conducted by Charles Gwengwe of the Association of Evangelicals in Malawi. Charles, using the Omega Course and “The Process of Planting a Church” said that Bishop Kaitano was the most faithful student in the class. To graduate, the students had to plant a church during the training. The Bishop planted four. At the graduation he remarked that he couldn’t wait to get all his pastors together so that he could train them to become church planter trainers. In the last 6 months Bishop Kaitano has trained over 200 church planters and as a result planted over 100 more churches. His closing remark at the graduation was,” I will never be the same again”. Source: Danie Vermeulen – dv@dawnafrica.co.za posted by alexander @ 9:40 AM 0 comments
0 Comments:Friday, March 24
report online at last!  Finally the Mission 21 report is available online (£5). Click on the logo. posted by alexander @ 5:14 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:Monday, March 20
words  Here's a fun way of looking at this site: a word cloud.posted by alexander @ 2:26 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:Friday, March 17
the leadership solution  There is a virus on the loose which is rapidly spreading across the globe. I have met people from many nations who have been infected with it and it is changing the face of nations as it spreads. It is the Luke 10:2b virus. After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."As people make a commitment to pray this prayer daily it is producing phenomenal results. A friend of mine in the US has been praying this prayer everyday together with a colleague for the last few years; they have seen remarkable results. Before they started praying regularly, Kenny, who was responsible for recruiting church planters for his denomination, usually saw 6 to 8 people over a 6 month period show interest in wanting to church plant, now there is hardly a day goes by without someone making an enquiry. Over 100 churches have been planted since they began praying Luke 10:2b. In our own setting, since we began praying this prayer daily we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of potential 'people of peace' approaching us with questions about church and God etc. As a result we are already discipling a number of folks towards Jesus, believing that new churches will be planted as a result. Jim Montgomery has a great article on this that is worth a read: Which comes first: strategy or prayer? posted by alexander @ 10:15 AM 6 comments
6 Comments:
Thanks - this sounds very exciting. Rob thanks for tipping me off! I have mended it now, it's not ideal but hopefully readable.
Hi Alexander
By Hi Ross, I certainly do pray for you, and agree with you for Luke 10:2b - that God would raise up and send you workers, from and into the Harvest; to work with you as you reach out. We pray this each day for the whole of the UK, so I will think of you when we do that.
Thanks Alexander
By Hi Alexander, I put a(n extra) link to you today :) Be blessed along with your family!!! Thursday, March 16
mission 21 thoughts - pt 5 So some final thoughts - where is the church in the UK? George Lings commented from the platform after the report presentation that the tone is no longer triumphalist amongst church leaders. There is a humility now that perhaps was lacking in the nineties. While there is still a long way to go among the often intransigent inherited churches there is currently a strong permission-giving atmosphere and a willingness to encourage the new stuff. Being cynical one could say this is because they have nothing to lose now – with decline and disintegration staring the established church in the face, but alongside of this is a very real and growing grass roots movement that is missional, organic, and has real potential to become a movement in the next decade. Some have been saying that there is an arrogance and closed-ness to foreign input here in the UK church. I do not believe that is the case and the evidence confirms this. However I have no doubt that some leaders will not have been wholly positive about the organic stuff I presented, why? Because at heart it threatens their very security, their authority, salaries and positions. I’d be a little uncomfortable in their shoes too! But for the sake of this nation we have got to choose to put the Kingdom ahead of our still declining denominations. One of the key objectives for M21 was to rehabilitate the idea of strategic church planting; I think we undoubtedly accomplished this. Overall I am encouraged. The research has demonstrated that there is a good amount of church planting going on within and on the edge of the existing church; they are wrestling with the important issues of ecclesiology and missiology and there is an openness to new ways. Then particularly encouraging are the signs of movement beyond the existing structures which undoubtedly reflect similar moves in much of the rest of the world. Will this grow and become more significant? I can't see it suddenly stopping and I have seen it visibly expanding just in the 2-3 years I have been observing it nationally and across Europe, so I am hopeful that this trend will continue and over the next decade we will see God doing something remarkable in this toughest of all mission fields. posted by alexander @ 8:16 AM 0 comments
0 Comments:Wednesday, March 15
from structure to anti structure - alan roxburgh  Alan Roxburgh's second article on the emerging church over on www.allelon.org raises an important issue; he discusses the polarity between the institutional and organic; the inherited church -v- the emerging; the structured church -v- the anti-structured. In flagging up this polarity he acknowledges the need for some form of co-operation and engagement between the two. He suggests: The way forward is in seeking together how Christian agents are formed within structures that shape the church as the polis of God in our time.While I wholeheartedly agree that we need conversation, relationship and engagement, I wonder why there always seems to be an ultimate demand/suggestion that those outside the existing structures will only find their full identity and effectiveness by re-entering those structures. It seems to me historically that when that happens, whatever dynamic movement was present is quickly stymied. The underlying issue is control; who will have ultimate control? My answer, maybe naively, is Jesus. let Him have the control then we don't need to get too het up over what our structures look like. Generally man-made structures are for the purpose of controlling things; we will NEVER see movement if we are constantly trying to impose our structures. I agree with Alan that there is no need to set up an either/or polarity on this issue. We all need structure, so I don't believe it's an issue of being anti-structure - that's nonsense; but as in the area of authority, in the new paradigm we are gradually shifting to, these elements take on a whole different shape and feel. Let's not assume then for legitimacy or "accountability" that the new has got to plug into the current structures. posted by alexander @ 2:18 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:“Church growing in more ways than we can count” (The official post conference press release) Research presented at the Mission 21 church planting conference in Sheffield indicated that the church is growing in ways that fall below the radar of most researchers. Results also showed that in the last 5 years more new churches have started in the UK than Starbucks stores. This growth isn’t confined to just a few denominations or church planting approaches. Experiences shared included the large projects such as Hillsong receiving 150 new converts every week and the Eden projects in Manchester even impacting the city’s crime levels. But the research also showed that up to 40,000 people gather informally in 2,500 tiny gatherings across the UK. The diversity of those attending the 8-10 March Mission 21 conference in Sheffield was in itself an impressive display of church unity. The 550 participants came from most Protestant church groupings and many parachurch church planting organisations. Speaker Bishop Graham Cray celebrated what he said was “a glorious diversity of expressions of the church”. General Superintendent of Assemblies of God Paul Weaver underlined the need to continue to find new forms of church saying, “We want to plant the answer, not the problem”. Pastor Agu Irukwu of Jesus House, London, stated: “God is looking for someone to come and sort out a community’s problems. God has a plan for each area.” Dr Martin Robinson, National Director of Together in Mission, concludes: “The UK church is growing in more ways than we can count. Just because we have trouble discovering it doesn’t mean that God isn’t doing amazing things. And this conference certainly indicates that he is.” posted by alexander @ 1:29 PM 4 comments
4 Comments:
Thanks for the opportunity to meet some amazing people at the conference, and for the chance to meet you at last.
By Thanks Vic for this, and good to meet you too at last! Look forward to hearing/seeing how the 3 plants you are helping move forward.
http://www.sliceoflaodicea.com/archives/2006/03/the_innovative.php
Tim hi, nice to hear from you. Not 100% sure what point you are making, so if I am misunderstanding you please forgive me! Mission 21, for all its other weaknesses, was not about equipping leaders to do more, better in their own strength; it was simply a time to reflect and re-envision based on what God is currently doing. mission 21 thoughts - pt 4  (pic Mark Berry)Since delivering the report I have had a deep sense of completion - mission accomplished. All that needed to be said has been communicated. Essentially (at the end of the report) we were identifying and articulating something of what is actually happening amongst the emerging, organic, simple church movement. Our suggestion was that there is quite a lot happening both within and without the existing structures and some of it could well be a reflection of what God is doing around the world through church planting movements. Perhaps even more encouraging was the networking time afterwards when we had 25 people who are involved or interested in organic, simple, home church. I expected 12! We had a really excellent time sharing and interacting in a way which for me was a proto-type of what I want to help initiate regionally around the UK and then Europe too. At the end of the day I feel called to serve this emerging movement any way I can, locally, nationally and internationally. Other highlights included:  • Ngwiza Mnkandla the International Director of DAWN http://www.dawnministries.org was invited to speak after the report presentation. He apologised on behalf of DAWN for the ‘let down’ factor in the nineties, and reflected that here in the UK we are now very cautious and like to carefully think through everything whereas in Africa they just believe God and get on with it! However he reminded us that many nations around the world still look to Britain for the way forward, so we still have a vital part to play globally. • Staying with Laurence & Beth from St Thom’s & meeting their cat Maisey. • Catching up with loads of folks. • Meeting a pile of people I had only spoken with on the phone or by email during the research. • Meeting Ian Aitkin, Church of Scotland minister from Aberdeen, who is doing simple church. • Meeting Andrew Pakes, a Methodist minister who has had to forgo his stipend and manse to pursue this stuff. • Meeting the AoG CP team at the networking time. • Meeting Nicholas, an AOG missionary from Malta who has a passion to reach that whole nation through planting simple, home churches. • Catching up with and hearing the latest news from a new church planting movement in Spain; where in the last 4 months they have seen 15 new churches planted and they have 70 people awaiting baptism – until the weather is a bit warmer! I’m hoping Ross will write some of the amazing stories that are emerging from this brand new movement so that I can post them here. (Nudge, nudge Ross!) • Having the KCM director there – a colleague and friend from Bath. KCM as a ministry generously supported the research report financially, such a blessing. posted by alexander @ 12:41 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:Tuesday, March 14
mission 21 thoughts - pt 3 So, Thursday morning after another great time of worship led by Roy Searle and the Northumbria Community, Martin and I presented the research. I was glad that we did it as a team, I think it worked well (from where I was anyway!). The report will be available to download (when they get their act together) from www.togetherinmission.org and recordings of the meetings from www.stream247.com. The presentation itself was a speedy run through some highlights of the report leaving much of the detail to be digested from the report itself. We set the scene globally: what is God doing around the nations? And locally (UK): the nineties and challenge 2000. We then took a glance at the big picture with numbers of church members and actual churches over the past 15 years; over 1 million down and a loss of 2,340 churches. Then we saw the figures for churches planted over the last 5-10 years (where available); this was only within the existing church structures; in total it was in excess of 500, and Peter Brierley’s recent church census seems to be indicating even more than that. This was positive; however the flip side is that the numbers of church closures still outweighs the plants! I then outlined the 3 categories of church planting activity and we looked at a quick story from each. These categories were: 1. CP activity within the existing structures of church planting 2. CP activity on the edge… 3. CP activity beyond the edge… I stressed that these categories were not important in themselves but were simply practical hooks to hang things in order to make it easy to quickly grasp the overall picture. I took some flack on this before the conference! Martin then summed up and made some observations on each of these categories. I spent a fair bit of time on the last category and as best I could tried to convey something of the new paradigm and what it looks like; I talked about it being: Apostolically committed Simple and reproducible Jesus led Family shaped Organic It seemed to flow pretty well; we then allowed people on the floor to discuss it in small groups for a few minutes then we took a few questions. Generally the first thing people said was how they had been encouraged by what they had heard. We had some good questions and as time ran out we were just getting to the more sensitive issues – like ‘where does the clergy fit in with all this organic stuff?’ hmmmm! There had been a humorous comment the night before in the form of a reply to a question posed by a denominational pastor who had visited the church in Cuba; he had asked his host (who had seen the number of house churches explode in Cuba following the closure of church buildings and the departure or arrest of all clergy) what his advice was for the church in the UK, the answer, ‘close all your church buildings and fire all your clergy’. This was greeted with a loudish cheer around the room! I (jokingly) reminded them of this in answer to this question! I did also comment that I believe they have a crucial role to play, pastorally, and theologically/strategically. Time for questions then ran out. But I had a stream of people coming up afterwards to ask more questions which was great. George Lings and Stuart Murray-Williams (the self styled grumpy old men in sweaters!) then responded to the report by asking each other questions. They raised some useful issues though some of it seemed a little pedantic. There was a suggestion that the DNA that I had identified seemed to lack any 'upward' element - very St Thom's type comment! And that it was dangerous to talk too definitively about any essential DNA at this stage. I would wholly disagree with this. Though I recognise that we are in as much danger of seizing on 'magic DNA' as 'magic models' for the key to 'success'; and that's definitely not what all this is about. However we do need to understand the underlying core DNA which allows multiplication to happen and how this differs from most of what we have been working with in the past. posted by alexander @ 11:17 AM 2 comments
2 Comments:
For me the most significant DNA are...
By yeah, I'd go with all of these. Thanks Mark, good to catch up in Sheffield. Monday, March 13
middle eastern country - 100 new churches! A christian woman with a vey good job received a death threat and had to leave her work. She went to Egypt in 2004 and was trained in church planting. She returned to her city and prayed with someone in the last stages of terminal cancer. There was a remarkable breakthrough in her health and many in her household including a Muslim housemaid became believers. Since then she has started 41 house churches in her city and 60 in other towns! (Source & location witheld for security reasons) posted by alexander @ 12:34 PM 2 comments
2 Comments:
I just spent a week with over 17 years experience in the Middle East and many of the past years in Irag. She was very sceptical about house church reports. They did not say it was not true. She had been in the south of Irag and had read a blurb from South Africa about dozens of house churches in the city she was living in. She asked about all over the city and no one thought the report was true. Unless we know for certain the character of the person who has said this or has actually met the people in the house churches I think we have to question reports about these statements.
By I was pretty amazed by this report too; however I got it from someone who knew this woman personally and they seemed to vouch for her trustworthiness. They had been involved with training her while in Egypt and have maintained contact. We are right to be cautious though, I know that other figures from parts of the ME have been exagerated. mission 21 thoughts - pt 2  Thanks again to Mark for the picIn the evening (don't worry I’m not going to cover every meeting!!) three ‘traditional’, existing paradigm leaders (AOG, NFI and RCCoG) were in conversation about church planting generally. It was zappy, interesting and encouraging BUT what it illustrated was very much the old paradigm of church and church planting. Much of what they said was just on a different page to what I now see. Not that one is right and the other wrong – it’s just that some of us are now in a different paradigm. This interweaving of the old and new was sprinkled throughout, though I think most of the workshop sessions were essentially old paradigm thinking. This was part of the reason (I think) why there were so few from the wider emerging church scene present. What concerned me was that we could have been sitting hearing exactly the same 3 people saying just the same stuff in 1994 – when there was the last national church planting conference; and the result was that we did not see the hoped for movement of church planting. It was for this reason that Martin and I the following morning presented the research report and focused heavily on what we have discovered is going on out there at the grassroots where over 1 million people have left the existing church structures; we were reflecting that some of this could contain movement potential which is absolutely vital if we are not going to end up going round in another big circle – having tried to create movement through planting churches by addition based on a single church model. This is not to say that we don’t need these churches, we do; there are still some who will only feel comfortable in this more traditional shape of church. But in order to see something akin to what God is doing around the world we have got to go with the new wineskins He is using. posted by alexander @ 10:30 AM 0 comments
0 Comments:Sunday, March 12
mission 21 thoughts - pt 1  (thanks to Mark Berry for the pic) Now the dust has all but settled here are some of my thoughts on the whole thing. 4-500 gathered for 3 days on the Philadelphia campus in Sheffield. The purpose: to take a pause to reflect and converse about where things have got to in church planting in the UK since the decade of evangelism. To start with there was some frank and honest reflection on the nineties which was definitely needed; also some honouring of individuals and work that has been done by some faithful people over the last 15 years. That’s always a good thing. Gerald Coates kicked us off in his usual pithy style. He kept it short which I appreciated! His observations included a reminder that when we set ourselves to plant churches we have to be extremely intentional about it as 101 things will immediately come to distract us. His desire for the younger generation is that they learn to live not just for the ‘moment’ but for movement. We shouldn’t spit on what others are doing, especially if they don’t see things the same way we do. For example, whatever else you may think about Hillsongs, each week they are seeing around 150 people come to the Lord. And finally he made a plea for the existing church to be supportive and caring of emerging forms of church. Graham Cray then gave us a theological underpinning for the way ahead. It was excellent and thought provoking stuff. I was excited to see that his whole message focused around the Mt 9 version of Luke 10 – the harvest is plentiful; we need to pray for labourers to be sent out. I believe this prayer to be foundational for the whole organic movement. He observed that for the C of E things have moved up a gear and he is now running to keep up. He sees this period of cultural change as a moment of grace, a moment of divine initiative; God sees the sheep without a shepherd and has compassion on them. He urged the church to prioritise its resources on the 40% of the population who are completely non-churched. To do this we desperately need labourers. We need to see what God is doing and join with that; be willing to leave our own culture and invest ourselves in someone else’s in order to reach them; a transferable DNA is needed at the heart of each one of these new expressions! He left us with 2 major challenges one of which was how were we going to make disciples in our culture and that the new churches we form must primarily be disciple-making communities. I was very encouraged by what he said, especially as I felt it had great relevance to the emerging, grassroots, organic movement that I see happening now in the UK. Whether he had that in mind or not I don't know (I suspect not!) but I referred to what he said in my presentation the following morning. posted by alexander @ 7:14 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:Saturday, March 11
(amended version!) 6,000 simple churches planted in USA last 5 years In North American there is a growing movement of simple churches, home-based small groups focused on Jesus and doing what He says. House church coach John White shared about what he calls 'the Luke 10:2b leadership solution' - a daily prayer for laborers in the harvest. Since he started praying this, and teaching this organic principle to other believers, God sent people on his way, one after the other, asking advice on how to plant churches, and he could simply coach them in doing that. In this way, the simple church networks in the United States are growing exponentially. More than 6,000 churches have been planted in the last 5 years. While they intended to train 530 church planters in 2005, they saw 1,000 church planters trained in the first two months of 2006 alone. With this kind exponential growth (the current growth rate is 70%) they might reach their target of 4 million simple churches in North America (in 400,000 networks, and with 40,000 network coaches, and 4,000 lead coaches) by the year 2018. (With thanks to Joel News) www.dawnministries.org posted by alexander @ 6:12 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:Wednesday, March 8
Mission 21 underway Up in Sheffield Mission 21 has started. I am blogging it over on www.alexandercampbell.co.uk posted by alexander @ 8:11 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:Tuesday, March 7
Luther's vision for home churches Martin Luther, believed in and understood the value of having Christians meet within homes. He wrote about three types of services. The Latin liturgy and the German service were for the unlearned people, many of whom were not even believers. Those services should continue, he believed, for the primary purpose of evangelism.Thanks to Stov at The Crowded House for this. posted by alexander @ 1:25 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:Wednesday, March 1
simple church makes Time magazine  "On a Sunday at their modest, gray ranch house in the Denver suburb of Englewood, Tim and Jeanine Pynes gather with four other Christians for an evening of fellowship, food and faith. Jeanine's spicy rigatoni precedes a yogurt-and-wafer confection by Ann Moore, none of the food violating the group's solemn commitment to Weight Watchers. The participants, who have pooled resources for baby sitting, discuss a planned missionary trip and sing along with a CD by the Christian crossover group Sixpence None the Richer. One of the lyrics, presumably written in Jesus' voice, runs, "I'm here, I'm closer than your breath/ I've conquered even death." That leads to earnest discussion of a friend's suicide, which flows into an exercise in which each participant brings something to the table--a personal issue, a faith question--and the group offers talk and prayer. Its members read from the New Testament's Epistle to the Hebrews, observe a mindful silence and share a hymn."Click on pic for full article. posted by alexander @ 12:25 PM 0 comments
0 Comments:africa's big five  Alongside my stories from the DAWN conference (over on www.alexandercampbell.co.uk) check out Marc's version of Africa's 'Big Five' by clicking on his picture.posted by alexander @ 11:48 AM 0 comments
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