Photo credit: Stef Lewandowski (Creative Commons) When we started a church in the low income housing projects, the first thing we did was to prepare the ground in prayer. In Matthew 12, Jesus gives an illustration in his defense against an attack by the Pharisees. They accused him of casting out demons by the power… Read More
Category: Simple Church
There was an experiment conducted several years ago by a church in Phoenix, AZ. Intercessors randomly selected 160 names from a local phone book. They divided the names into two groups–and prayed regularly for one of the groups, ie for 80 homes. The other 80 homes were not prayed for. After 90 days they called… Read More
I sometimes think the Lord gave us the experience with Rosa and starting church in the projects because it so closely parallels Luke 10. In Luke 10:1, Jesus commissions 72 disciples to go ahead of him in pairs to all the towns and places he plans to visit. Jesus had a strategy for the area–the… Read More
Continuing the story that starts here: Photo credit: urbaneapts (Creative Commons) When God answered Rosa's prayers in such a clear way, we asked Rosa: "Would you be willing to bring together some of your family and friends to hear about this Jesus who has been answering your prayers?" Rosa jumped at the idea. But that… Read More
Continuing the story of how we started a church in the low-income housing projects. A few months later, Tony (my husband) and I happened to be driving along Oltorf. We had some time to spare. "Let's prayer walk Springfield," Tony suggested. So we parked the car well away from the housing project and walked… Read More
In my normal time with the Lord one morning, Jesus spoke to me–not an audible voice, just that thought from nowhere that I've learned is often the way he speaks to me. "Walk Oltorf," was what he seemed to say. I would like to tell you that I immediately obeyed him, but that would not… Read More
We love to work with groups of not-yet-believers, and we've learned many lessons along the way–mostly from our own mistakes. Here are a few of them: We've taken mature believers with us. Too often, those who have been Christians for a while think that a group of young believers or not-yet-Christians will benefit from their… Read More
Starting here, several blog posts told the story of how we started a church with people who didn't yet know the Lord. Here are some more principles for working with people who don't yet know Jesus. Open ended questions are great. We love to ask people, "Tell us where you are on your spiritual journey."… Read More
The last few posts (starting here) told the story of how we started a church with not-yet-believers. Here are some of the principles: God is already at work in the lives of not-yet-believers and they are happy to tell you about it. We have a friend who once sat at a cafe with a sign… Read More
The first part of this story can be found here and here. Another interesting thing happened a few weeks later (at around the 3 month point). We had some friends visit us from Houston. "Can we come to church with you," they asked. Normally we try to keep Christians away from the groups we start… Read More