Photo credit: Donna Grayson (Creative Commons) Simple/organic church has become mainstream here in the United States. According to the statistics, although the rate of growth is slowing down, 3-5% of the adult population of this country now finds their primary form of fellowship within a home or similar context. While at most levels this is very… Read More
Category: Simple Church
The church landscape in this country is changing. Ecclesiology lies along a continuum. At one end churches are traditional, structured and liturgical; at the other end they are simple, organic, and missional. Most lie somewhere in between. But a shift is occurring. Many churches are taking steps towards the organic, missional end of the spectrum.… Read More
Photo credit: Gravitywave (Creative Commons) Over the past few months, we have had several people from a more traditional church background and who are in the process of leaving for the mission field visit the church that meets in our home. The exchange has been valuable. Our “Jesus family” has rubbed shoulders with people sold out… Read More
Photo Credit: Jon…in 3D (Creative Commons) Yesterday evening church met at our home. Rosaura had brought along a young man, maybe 16 or 17 years old, a relative. He gave his heart to Jesus last night. This was his story. "All my life I've felt as though I'm in a dark tunnel. I could see… Read More
Photo credit Stijn Vogels (Creative Commons) Tony and I have been privileged to travel to various countries in all five continents and to see missions at work first hand. First the good: I was brought up, in a Christian sense, on the biographies of those on the mission field. I learned from Hudson Taylor… Read More
Dan Hubbell is an apostolic father who works in many Third World countries where persecution of believers is common. Recently, he sent me a response he had given to a church leader from a Third World nation asking for prayer that his church could find a building to meet in. As I mentioned in the… Read More
Photo credit: alles-schlumpf (Creative Commons) God has used house churches in many nations to avoid persecution–think China, the Middle East. Thankfully, here in the West, we are not in that same persecuted situation. But maybe there is another reason for the rise of simple/organic/house churches. The world situation is becoming increasingly uncertain. Questions and confusion… Read More
Photo credit: SMBCollege (Creative Commons) We love to start churches with people who do not yet know the Lord. I’m often asked, “How do you do that? How do you transition a normal conversation into one about spiritual things?” The last two posts have been guest posts by John King on Discovery Bible Studies,… Read More
John King trains church planters in the use of inductive Bible studies called Discovery Bible Studies. This is proving to be an extremely effective church planting tool in many different cultures. I read his blog regularly. The first part of this post, the story about how a group trained in this pattern has been able… Read More
John King trains indigenous church planters to teach others to do simple inductive Bible studies. This approach has been used throughout sub-Saharan Africa and has contributed to the planting of thousands of new churches there. His blog can be found at: http://johnkking.wordpress.com/ I asked John to write this guest post to help people to understand Discovery… Read More