2. Global: Eight streams of house church

The global house church movement has many faces. Wolfgang Simson observes eight streams of house church:

1. Regular house churches: groups of Christians that meet in homes. We see both single groups and organized networks, some of which have websites and are resourced by leadership/ministry teams.

2. Off-the-grid house churches with ‘Out of Church Christians’ that intentionally do not want to be known, listed or be on anybody’s radar. We find out about them by accident or through opinion polling or sampling, the kind of research George Barna does.

3. Business groups, either house churches within a company or those connecting folks in the business world.

4. More and more traditional churches are changing their home groups or even transitioning their whole lot into house churches.

5. Inside the Roman Catholic culture there is a surprisingly large amount of ’small churches’ that are intentionally set up to cut out the middle layer of clergy and directly connect the people with Jesus and the Bible. In many cases, these groups are supported by bishops and cardinals.

6. Many historical churches, like the Anglican Church, develop ’small missional communities’.

7. Insider movements. A staggering amount of under-the-radar house churches are emerging within religious megablocks like the Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, New Agers and even within certain cults. But they choose to stay within their religious culture for effectiveness and to build bridges of God. One example is a former Hindu priest, fully painted up and in his safran dress, who now very effectively plants house churches amongst Brahmins in India.

8. Media-birthed house churches, initiated by television, radio or online community facilitators.

Source: Wolfgang Simson, via JNI

Hi, we’re testing streaming video for Monday night Bible Studies. If there is enough interest, we will continue this in the new year, once we get started in the book of Acts.

Sorry about the ads, that’s how ustream offers this service for “free”.

Meanwhile, here’s a few of our first recorded streams:

sammy & mark’s coco-inspired curry concoction

worshipping together

Sharing about Jesus from the Gospel according to Luke.

Global: House church movement

200 Christian leaders from 40 nations met in New Delhi, India, Nov 11-14th, 2009, to explore the scope and significance of house-based discipling communities and emerging house church movements worldwide. Known best from the history of the underground house churches in China that report by now an estimated 100 million members, a similar phenomenon has emerged in the last 15 years in numerous nations outside of China. Conference reports indicate that, from very small beginnings, in many nations fairly sizeable house church movements have emerged, including on the continents of Africa and Latin America.

Missiologist Wolfgang Simson from Germany, author of ‘Houses that change the world’, states in a report of the Delhi summit that in his estimation the number of house churches in Europe have already reached or surpassed 10,000. Australia could have up to 10,000, and New Zealand up to 6,000 house churches. Research in the US by the Barna Research Group (published earlier in Joel News International) shows that between 6 and 12 million people are attending house churches, making house churches one of the three largest Christian groups in the country. In the case of Bangladesh or India, with many hundreds of thousands of house churches, the various networks of house churches have already become the largest Christian movements in their respective countries.

“Prayer walking and the breaking of curses placed on the land has, in a number of areas, resulted in unprecedented harvests.”

“But it is not about setting up house-based worshipping communities alone,” says Dr.Victor Choudhrie, one of the conveners of the summit. In India, many house churches are beginning to change not only the spiritual climate, but begin to model the wholistic life in the Kingdom of God at the village level, demonstrating God’s ability to restore families, health and even to ‘heal the land.’ Dr. Choudhrie stated: “For example, constant prayer walking and the breaking of curses placed on the land has, in a number of areas, resulted in unprecedented harvests and other agricultural breakthroughs, demonstrating tangibly the blessing by which God is able and willing to upgrade and empower everyday life.”

In addition to that, the development of house churches in many nations is experiencing such a fresh and positive response from people growing up in Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist communities that, compared with recent missions history, this could only be called historic. Many participants expressed the observation that “the house church movement is growing up” and is beginning to make its own very significant contribution to fulfilling the Great Commission of Jesus to disciple all the people groups of the world.

“There is a strong call to return to ‘the Gospel of the Kingdom’, the original message of Jesus.”

“Possibly the strongest emphasis at the Delhi Summit was the call to return to ‘the Gospel of the Kingdom’ in contrast to various truncated pseudo-gospels that have left many outside and even inside traditional churches with straw in their mouths,” says Wolfgang Simson. “This raised great hopes that even in the churched nations of the cultural West, a reevangelization and recalibration with the original message of Jesus will breathe new life into dim situations, and lead to a new level of genuine discipleship, authenticity and even authority in cultures that mistakenly thought they can safely close the chapter on Jesus.”

The participants at the summit agreed to encourage more trainers and catalysts, and started to seek God for appropriate next steps and strategies towards the planting of millions of new house churches in the next few years.

Source: Wolfgang Simson, via JNI

Nepal: Church grows exponentially to one million believers

The number of Christians in Nepal is growing exponentially. This is reported by American researcher Dr. Cindy Perry, who recently finished a study on the Nepali church. Many new churches have not just been planted in Nepal, but also in nations where Nepali workers have migrated to. “This is a special development,” Perry says. “When a Nepali comes to Christ, he apparently also becomes an evangelist straight away.”

Until 1951 Nepal was closed to the outside world. Nepali Christians were few and mainly lived in north India on the border with Nepal. For years, together with British missionaries, they prayed for open doors into the nation. When in 1951 the country opened up, the missionaries started a hospital in Pokhara, called ‘Shining Hospital’, and the Nepali Christian David Mukhia founded the first church. Out of these first fruits missions organizations International Nepal Fellowship and United Mission of Nepal (UMN) developed. They supported church planting and did medical work amoung tbc and lepra patients.

Until 1990 in the Kingdom of Nepal it was officially prohibited to have another religion than Hinduism. It was hard for Christians to fellowship and many were imprisoned. In 1990 a revolution broke out, followed by a new constitution that granted freedom of religion. In 50 years time the number of baptized Christians has grown from 26 in 1960 to one million today.

Source: Dr. Cindy Perry, via JNI

“You can feel the hate of the people who did this,” said Raymond Talavera, the pastor of Glory of Christ Church. “It being Christmastime exacerbates the pain.”

The early-morning blaze, which is being investigated as arson, caused more than $400,000 worth of damage, Talavera said.

A pentagram, “666″ and “Hail of Satan” were spray-painted on the walls of the charred sanctuary, along with an ominous message: “We hate Jews and Christians.”

The nondenominational congregation moved into the former synagogue more than eight years ago.

Alaska: The largest daily prayer meeting in the Arctic

Missionary radio station KICY, located on Alaska’s frigid shore of the Bering Sea in Nome, has been the radio home to thousands of listeners across the frozen tundra of Siberia for many years. The person on staff responsible for programs in the Russian language is Luda Kinok. Luda is a vibrant, young Russian citizen from a small village in Siberia. Prior to coming to the Alaska, Luda would often listen to the station. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Luda made her way to Nome to visit the station and offer her assistance in the Russian language division, which was an answer to prayer.

One of the most listened-to programs Luda hosts in the Russian language is called ‘CareForce’ and is devoted to prayer for the needs of the Russian listeners living in numerous towns and villages scattered over thousands of miles of frozen arctic tundra. Through the internet many of them are able to communicate their concerns and prayer needs, and together each night on KICY Luda shares the needs of fellow believers and goes before the Lord via the KICY microphone. Recently, Luda traveled back to Russia to renew her visa, and was amazed at the impact KICY’s programming was having. Everywhere she traveled, she was immediately known and given kind words of support for her radio efforts, even by the police and customs officials.

Sources: Luda Kinok, Dave Oseland, via JNI

New York magazine has an article called: “Tim Keller Wants to Save Your Yuppie Soul

it has sparked a rather lengthy discussion with over 180 comments — starting with:

Perpetuating anti-gay bigotry through religious beliefs is hateful and wrong.

to one of the latest:

But at the end of the day, it’s not about Redeemer and certainly not about Tim Keller (he will tell you that himself). It’s about Jesus, who He is, and what that means for humanity… God invites you to do that because it is a relationship, which in itself, is a radical notion. Just think about it.
“He who has ears, let him hear.” (Matthew 11:15)

from chloe:

NY Mag did an impressive 4-page spread on Tim Keller. I didn’t read the article in its entirety but it appears to have sparked mixed opinion regarding his influence in the city and Christianity in general. just wanted to pass it along, in case you were interested in what NY mag has to say about the christian community in the busy streets of NY. I think we should uphold Redeemer church and Tim Keller in our prayers – because the article could either (or do both) increase membership or make Tim Keller (and Redeemer) a target.

It is a pretty fair and balanced article actually, and it ends on an interesting note that draws attention to a recent fund drive that has even some long time Redeemer members wondering:

One morning in October, Keller addressed the congregation at Ethical Culture on the state of the church’s soul and its finances. Redeemer was at the end of a $20 million fund-raising drive intended to finance the new church building and eventually two more churches in town. The plan is wildly ambitious, but Keller was selling it with true believer’s zeal. “I’ve never been more excited except maybe when I started here,” he told the crowd. “In the last five years, we’ve prayed well but not desperately. Recently, my prayer life has gone through the roof.”

The three Redeemer churches, each with its own pastor, would serve as “regeneration centers,” Keller said, which would “plant” still more churches throughout Manhattan. Since coming to New York, Redeemer has helped start some 65 churches of various Protestant denominations, many of them of the small “storefront” variety, serving minority neighborhoods in and outside Manhattan. But the new ten-year “vision” is an order of magnitude grander, what Keller described as “almost a wall of services” at Redeemer or Redeemer-related churches serving the would-be spiritual seeker from 110th Street in Manhattan all the way downtown. “We want to be a movement,” he said at one point in the service. And he ended it, as he always does, with a prayer.

full article @ NYMag after the jump.

A number of Christians are side-stepping the politically and culturally-charged trappings of fundamentalist Christianity in favor of what they consider a radically simplified focus on Christ and his message of love. Among the leading spokesmen for this movement (which has attracted its own criticism for being too liberal and utopian) is Shane Claiborne. Whatever one may think about their theology, one useful attribute of voices like Claiborne’s is that they are far more accessible to modern, secular ears.

This piece for Esquire magazine called “Letter to Non-Believers” is a case in point. It is, in large part, an apology for the judgmental, self-righteous attitude of many Christians.

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends…I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity…I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating…[it] looks less and less like Jesus.

He uses this attempt at conciliation to emphasize salvation and love over condemnation and hell:

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it… it was because “God so loved the world.” That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven… but because he is good.

And he feels that traditional Christianity has also neglected the implications of the gospel for social justice:

I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God’s Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” On earth.

Such are the extremes of the Christian far-right that it was initially hard to tell whether The Conservative Bible Project was a hoax. Surely, the idea that current Bible translations require “correction” to explain the “full free-market meaning” of Jesus’ parables must be a joke—sly self-parody from Conservapedia, the Wikipedia alternative based on the notion that knowledge itself must be kept ideologically pure. Right?

Well, apparently not. Their translation of the Gospel of Mark is already on-line and clearly meant to be taken seriously. To be fair, they don’t seem to have altered the text in quite as ludicrous a way as originally suggested. That makes you wonder, though, why they are bothering in the first place. Perhaps it is a publicity stunt after all.

Is there a difference between pursuing peace with neighbors and assimilation? Is this what being ‘all thing to all people’ looks like?

“This year, a group of “Emergent Christians,” led by one of the United States’ most influential pastors, Brian McLaren have announced they will actually be ‘observing’ the Muslim holy month, along with a Muslim ‘partner,’” writes Joel Richardson in a WND commentary today. “Ramadan is the month that Muslims thank Allah, their god, for revealing the Quran to Muhammad, their prophet. On McLaren’s personal blog, he recently announced his intentions: ‘We, as Christians, humbly seek to join Muslims in this observance of Ramadan as a God-honoring expression of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness.’”

Paul reminded the Colossians: “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations — ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’…These have indeed an appearance of wisdom…” This message may be lost somewhere in the translation to expressing peace.

source: WND, via dana