Simply Church

In China, it took Communist persecution to drive the church outside the four walls of the building and into the community.  We all know the result:  a vibrant movement of house churches has multiplied across that nation with the number of Christians increasing one hundred fold.  Could economic problems have the same result here in… Read More

  Frank Viola's new book, "From Eternity to Here" comes out this week.  This book is a beautiful portrayal of the church as the desire of God's heart.  It reveals God's intense passion for the Bride from the beginning of the ages. Taking the whole scope of the Bible from Old Testament love stories through… Read More

I had the privilege of reading the manuscript of Neil Cole's new book, Organic Leadership a few months ago.  I found myself saying a resounding "Yes!" on just about every page.  It is the best book on leadership written from a simple church perspective that I have read. On another note, I would appreciate your… Read More

The results of the survey on women in ministry are in!  We (the Women2WomenConnect team) are very grateful to those of you who responded so quickly.  And our definite  impression is that nearly all who filled in the survey think it would be good to do something to train women so that they can take… Read More

According to George Barna, research shows that there are now more than five million people involved regularly in simple church in this country.  These figures were confirmed in a similar study by Ed Stetzer. "Where are these people," Tony and I often wonder.  We often refer to them as "Barna's Five Million." Between us and… Read More

Last week, a group of around 25 people met together in Orlando to see how mega and micro churches can cooperate together for the Kingdom.  The group consisted of representatives from four mega churches, two denominations, a missions group and several simple church networks.  Those from the mega churches were very sympathetic to what simple… Read More

All over the world, God is using women in amazing ways.  They are working alongside men as equal co-laborers in the Kingdom of God.  However, here in the West, women often feel they do not have the necessary skills, for example, to start a church.  In an effort to address this, a group of us… Read More

Here is the second part of my response to Jon Zens' article on a dialog between Missionary Cram and Red Jacket: A classic example is the red dot on the forehead of an Indian woman.  Many missionaries have insisted that this is removed when a woman becomes a believer because it is a Hindu tradition. … Read More

Over the past few days I have been responding to an article by Jon Zens.  It details the interaction between an Indian named Red Jacket and Missionary Cram.  The dialog between the two demonstrates very clearly where we so often go wrong in missions, especially cross-cultural missions.  (Jon's website is at http://www.searchingtogether.org) Here is an… Read More

  As I investigated the Scriptures on the subject of commercial fishing in the Gospels, several things became apparent.  There are several passages that talk about fishing: Matthew 4:18-22 and Mark 1:16-19  Jesus calls the four disciples who are fishermen and tells them he will make them fishers of men. Luke 5:1-11  Jesus tells the… Read More