Photo credit: williamcho (Creative Commons)
Simple/organic church is a great way to not only conserve the harvest, but also to multiply it.
We have a friend who is an evangelist in countries that are hostile to the Gospel. We originally contacted him because we were interested in the large healing/evangelistic meetings that, amazingly, he is able to hold in these countries. When he discovered we are involved in simple church, he asked to spend some time with Tony and me because the Lord had told him that he was to be involved in a different kind of church. So we spent a weekend with him, explained the principles of Luke 10 and answered his myriad questions.
A few weeks later he conducted a major meeting again, but this time, instead of his usual training for the church workers who were going to be involved in follow up of those who responded to the message, he trained them in Luke 10 principles, teaching them to look for people of peace, to pray for the sick and to start churches in homes.
The people came to the meeting in buses, often 150 to a bus. The harvest workers looked for people of peace in the buses on the way home after the meeting.
A few months after this meeting we traveled with him to this country to discover what had happened. The results were extraordinary.
A typical story went like this: "I started four churches following the meeting, but the people have told their friends and relatives in other villages about Jesus and now I have eight."
Two young men, aged 24 and 26, were so excited after one of the subsequent trainings that they didn't wait for the next harvest meeting. They started spreading the Good News right away, and six months later had 700 new believers in 25 churches.
The typical results of an evangelistic crusade in the West is that around 1% of those who respond are going on with the Lord a year later. In the nation we visited, thousands of churches have started.
What might happen if new believers were followed up using Luke 10 principles?
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