simplechurch.eu

“What Would Jesus Do?” a great question to ask in our daily lives. Gayle Erwin gives an exhaustive study on the nature of Jesus. Summarized by a list of His attributes: servant, not lord it over, example, child, younger, least, last, no force, no blind ambition, no reputation, human, obedient, and death. The book boldly discusses problems Jesus would have had with many modern day institutions and cultural norms, and what he would have done differently. The ultimate conclusion is that Jesus was a leader who led by deliberately choosing to be a servant to all. If you want to know how to effectively lead or serve in any capacity, read this summary.

In this article David Watson describes four ways to kill a church plant:
1) Establish a “Come To” environment, instead of a “Go To” environment.
2) Make converts, instead of disciples.
3) Grow churches, instead of establishing new churches.
4) Teach stuff, instead of obedience to all the commands of Christ.

What can we learn from people who have seen Church Planting Movement happen in the East? Jeff Sundell shares about his experiences in fueling church planting movements (CPM) in Nepal. In the first interview Jeff talks about the keys to a CPM in Nepal. One of them is a strategy coordinator: someone who strategically thinks, prays and plans about reaching a whole segment of society or people group. Another key point is the houses of peace concept (that does work in a Western context!). In the second interview Jeff talks about how to apply these principles in the West. He found that people in the West needed a paradigm shift. Their minds needed to be renewed on questions like: what is church? How to make disicples? Besides this they needed obedience oriented training. Jeffs tells great stories how they applied the house of peace concept in a Western context. Listen and be inspired!

In the New Testament the Kingdom grew through establishing house churches. Roger Gehring describes in his book how Jesus, his disciples (before and after Easter) and Paul planted house churches. The gospel travelled and bore fruit in the early church through oiki (extended family around one household). Leaders of the house churches were the leaders of their oikos prior to conversion. The house churches served as a mission base, from where people were send out so that the Kingdom of God could expand to entire cities and regions. Enjoy reading this great resource!

Cultivating a life for God helps us to change our mind to live a life where we focus on the main thing: making disciples. Neil takes us on a journey to receive a burden for the lost and to make disciples in the harvest. In his book, he describes a great, simple, easy, reproducible tool to make followers of Jesus: Life Transformation Groups (LTG). LTG’s are groups of three men or women who hold each other accountable, read repetitive chunks of Scripture and pray for non-believers they know. Several simple church networks use this tool to make disciples and plant churches.

“Teach about obedience to Christ.” “Find resources in the harvest.” Two keys to see church planting movements happen in the world. Steve Addison spend about four days together with church planting practitioners in Singapore. Some of them were part of a movement with multiple generations of disciples and churches. Steve shares what he learned. Obedience to Christ, proclaiming the gospel, find resources in the harvest, equip the saints, slay giants are a few lessons. Read on to learn more!

There is much talk these days about missional church. I am more interested in missional living. When we speak of the church we can easily point out the church’s faults and irrelevance but exclude ourselves from the criticism. It is easy to find fault with “the church” but much more difficult when we accept that we are the church.