At a recent simple church training, we discussed the importance of clearly communicating the values and vision of simple church. We challenged the leaders from each simple church to visualize simple church alliance. Below are a few of the images. How would you visualize simple church multiplication?
Below is a link to a video produced by the Southern Baptists explaining church planting movements (CPMs). Essentially, this video lays out why we believe that simple church is in fact a response to what God is doing throughout the world (and yes, here in the USA) rather than a reaction to traditional church structures. We pray that by God’s grace the ten common characteristics identified in CPMs around the world, as highlighted at the end of this video, would also exist throughout the simple churches in our region. May we see something like a “mighty wave” of God move… Read More »Like A Might Wave: Church Planting Movements (Video)
Can you cause a person to grow spiritually? When it comes to disciple making, what is our responsibility? At a recent Greenhouse Training event hosted by CMA Resources, we examined the following text from Mark 4: 26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon… Read More »Our Role and God’s Role
I thought this excerpt from the book The Rabbit and The Elephant by Tony and Felicity Dale was helpful when addressing the question of, “When and how should our simple church multiply?” I think it also speaks to how someone (I’d recommend a couple of believing families) might possibly start a simple church… How do we multiply our church? The first church we started grew to more than fifty before we split it down the middle into two groups. For a year after that, people told us that the split felt like a divorce. Because of this, we no… Read More »When to multiply?
This past Sunday I had the privileged to speak during both services at First Alliance (Lexington, KY). The message I shared was in many ways a summary of the main truths that God has shown me so far in the simple church journey. Click the link below to download to your computer or listen online to the message. The audio quality is not the best but hopefully it will be a blessing to you… Click to Download: Mission Possible: Six Truths That Will Make the Mission Possible Message Points: 1. It’s Mission Not Missions 2. God Desires To Release the… Read More »Mission Possible? (Audio)
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. – Ephesians 4:11-13 In the passage, Paul is writing to all believers (not just the church leaders) and states that Christ has gifted His body with people equipped to function in different roles. Alan Hirsch, author of The… Read More »APEST
Well sort of a live blog… I’m going to attempt to post insights I gather from the conference below. I’m not completely sure if this will work so hang with me. 11:24AM – heading out from hotel. Looking forward to the day and all the the Lord is going to teach us. Marylin Walker just arrived and we got our entire crew together now! A couple of websites to take note of on the conference and on Exponential in general: http://www.exponential.org http://www.exponentialconference.org 8:54PM – Well the whole “live blog” thing really didn’t work very well. Couldn’t figure out how to… Read More »“Exponential Conference” Live Blog (Day 1)
I found this quote on a recent post over at movements.net. It’s a great illustration that I think you will enjoy. The notes below are from Bill Hodgson on why Geckos are Better role models than elephants (Movements.net is a great site and worth spending some time on!). The simplest form of church is the most adaptable, flexible, versatile, resilient and reproducible to multiply out in different contexts. Asian Elephants – Life span: may live more than 50 years?Gestation: 21 to 22 months?Number of young at birth: 1. Asian elephants a considered rare, especially in the wild. They are… Read More »Geckos and Elephants
This Sunday will mark the third week of the No More Spectators class at First Alliance Church. While not a “book study,” the class name as well as many of the big ideas were taken from a book written by Mark Nysewander with the same title. Mark spoke several months ago at our church and passed his book along to me. Like Robert Coleman’s book, The Master Plan of Evangelism, Mark issues a challenge to all believers to engage in the Great Commission following the model that Jesus gave us. I especially like how Mark compares and contrasts “spectator” Christians… Read More »No More Spectators