Category: Simple Church

Dear Church, Do you know how difficult it is to be a pastor in a traditional church? I do.  I was one for over 25 years.  Consider these statistics from an article called "Death by Ministry".  Pastors Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their… Read More

In Alcoholics Anonymous, The 12 Steps are read out loud at every meeting.  For those of us who are still in detox from programmatic Christianity, there is value in repeating what we have said before:  the simple church revolution (reformation?) is not about doing conventional church in a home.  It’s not “Honey, I shrunk the… Read More

"If you want to change society, then you must tell an alternative story" – Ivan Illich I just came across a new podcasting site created by Tim Pynes called Stories from the Revolution.  It currently includes interviews with Jim Mellon, Tony Dale, Wolfgang Simson and Neil Cole. 

Seth Godin recently posted this: Listen to this… What’s the point of talking to a group? I’m serious. We spend a lot of time in presentations, or at the United Nations, or sending our kids to school. We have orientation sessions and keynote speeches and long-winded oratory on the floor the Senate. Why? One reason:… Read More

This post is from the Ransomed Heart Daily Email. The family is . . . like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of some thing resembling anarchy. (G. K. Chesterton) Chesterton could have been talking about a little fellowship (our true family, because it is the family… Read More

This post is from the Ransomed Heart Daily Email. Of course, small groups have become a part of the programming most churches offer their people. For the most part, they are disappointing and short-lived—by the very admission of those who try them. There are two reasons. One, you can’t just throw a random group of… Read More

This post is from the Ransomed Heart Daily Email. Where will you find the Four Streams? The Four Streams are something we learn, and grow into, and offer one another, within a small fellowship. We hear each other’s stories. We discover each other’s glories. We learn to walk with God together. We pray for each… Read More

Here is a video of interest on the growing simple/micro church movement. Click on this link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/ Then scroll down and click on “Micro churches are big on faith” to watch the segment from NBC Nightly news that aired yesterday (Sunday).

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted… Ecc 3: 1-2 In this text from the wisest man on earth– King Solomon– the Hebrew word… Read More

This Spring I spent 2 days with the authors of The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century (by Australians Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch).  A couple of major things stand out for me that I wanted to pass on.