Simply ChurchWhy the term, “simple church”? We love the story that gave the title to our book,The Rabbit and the Elephant, now republished in paperback as Small Is Big!: Unleashing the Big Impact of Intentionally Small Churches. It goes like this: Imagine you take two elephants, for our purposes, a male and a female, and you lock… Read More
Very occasionally, I experience the almost surreal experience of being the person learning most from what I am teaching. The context in this particular instance: I was part of a team that was training people in a country hostile to the Gospel in how to identify the person of peace and start multiplying simple organic… Read More
The New Testament uses a number of different pictures of church: church is Christ’s body (Rom 12:5); it is a temple built with living stones (I Pet 2:5), it is a family (Eph 2:19). The metaphor of family is very helpful. Family is neither a building nor an event. Healthy families will get together often,… Read More
In the last series of posts we looked at how a legacy church might transition to a network of simple/organic churches. A less disruptive way might be for a legacy church to run a second track where only those who have vision for the change get involved in the new expression of church. Whichever way… Read More
Photo credit: phill.d (Creative Commons) The way this country is trending, unless the Lord intervenes, it may not be long before the USA is a post-Christian nation. Only 4% of adults currently have a Biblical worldview as the basis of their decision-making. We are potentially only a generation away from being like many countries in… Read More
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
Roger and Brooks Thoman train and coach leaders in several developing countries, to multiply disciples and simple churches. The poor are empowered as part of the process of disciplemaking assisted by strategic investments in projects that are pioneered and managed by national leaders. Their ministry site can be found here, and Roger’s blog, Simple Church… Read More
Photo credit: antgirl (Creative Commons) Recently, God has spoken very specifically to Tony and me from the book of Haggai. His prophecy, “I am with you, says the Lord” was enough to get the Israelites to resume the work of building the temple after a 20 year hiatus. Those of us in organic/simple church believe… Read More
Photo credit: rightee (Creative Commons) Vision is one of our greatest challenges here in the West. We think too small, and act accordingly. Our dreams are limited by what we believe we can accomplish. This post is the second part of a vision statement put out by an apostle from Asia who is constantly seeing… Read More
First Corinthians 12: 27-28 says this: All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it. Here are some of the parts God has appointed for the church: first are apostles, second are prophets, third are teachers, then those who do miracles, those who have the gift of healing, those who can help others, those who… Read More