NewChurchLife

When writing to the churches he had planted the apostle Paul did not address a ‘leadership team’ – he wrote to the church (gathered disciples). ‘Leadership teams’ can restrict rather than enable – control rather than release. God’s vision is for disciples to make disciples – lead people to Jesus and experience the kind of [...]

See this 20 minute Clay Shirky presentation Institutions vs. Collaboration . What do you think could be implications for – 1. mission? 2. movements? 3. insider movements? 4. the way church exists in the global north?

In England this last Saturday I met Dusan Uzelac who is equipping community chaplains to connect with and support their neighborhoods. As Dusan says, ‘Everyone knows what a chaplain is – and they are respected!’ They work in pairs, wear a badge with name and contact details identifying their church plant. Assigned a small territory, [...]

Many Christians are opting for simpler forms of church – as they take faith to their friends and families, they are taking church home, out in the forest, beside a lake, or into a cafe! There they eat, pray, encourage, read the Bible, discuss, apply faith to life, share the Lord’s Supper, lead friends to [...]

Rebecca Walker, a resource writer for The Salvation Army’s Australia Southern Territory attended a recent equipping weekend – and has put some of the ideas we explored into a very succinct and readable form – Planting Churches that Multiply. (It is also available as a PDF.) Thanks Rebecca. Also, the Baptist Union Victoria has posted [...]

Check out www.simplechurchinfo.com for ideas on simple church – and there is also a page on small groups that is very helpful. While the material on simple church is designed specifically for Adventists, others will also find this an excellent resource.

Alphabet City Cafe is a bustling commercial cafe on High Street, Northcote (an inner northern suburb of Melbourne, Australia). There are four or five large crowded rooms – walls decorated with the works of local artists – where friends meet for coffee or a meal to talk, read, catch up. The rooms are open to each other – [...]

As the demographics of the northern suburbs of Melbourne changed, what were once vibrant churches declined. Northern Community Church of Christ came about through the merging of four of these dying churches. But this was not just a survival strategy. Phil McCredden – who has been the team leader for 12 years – had the [...]

Check out Dan Kimball’s book They like Jesus but not the Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons', unChristian (Grand Rapids, USA: Baker Books, 2007) and the Adventist Review article “They Love Jesus, They Don’t Love the Church”. The Review article gives an introduction – but a thoughtful church planter or leader [...]

There are no doubt many reasons for this development, including (1) it is the way church existed in the early centuries – and there is a strong desire to return to ‘original’ Christianity, (2) it is ‘simple’ – without the complexities of structure and the exhaustion of trying to keep a performance type church on [...]