» 2006 » December

Are you in the first two years of an Aussie church plant, or know someone who is? next1000 is awarding a prize of a $50 Koorong voucher for the best church planting story and photo submitted before February 28, 2007.

More information here.

I just hope a $50 voucher doesn’t qualify as “checkbook journalism”!

Church Plantingnext1000

Alan Hirsch’s new book is out. Creative thinker, mission strategist and the coolest guy I know.

“The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church” (Alan Hirsch)

Alan HirschEmerging church

Rodney Stark has been crunching the numbers on the spread of the Christian movement in its first century. He has examined data from 31 Roman cities that had populations of at least 30,000. Here are his findings on the spread of the Christian congregations.

1. Port cities tended to have Christian congregations sooner than inland cities.

Despite [...]

For this reason we may believe that God’s heart belongs to us.

He doesn’t give us a friendly nod of goodwill from heaven but he suffers the fate of a refugee with us as an inhospitable manger receives him and the flight into Egypt stretches before him.

That is why in the temptation in the wilderness he [...]

Enjoyed reading this post from Sam Metcalf: A day of diversity.

Here’s another good one from Seth Godin: I’d be a lousy pilot

Sam MetcalfSeth Godin

The world of biblical scholarship is in turmoil after the discovery of a lost epistle purporting to have been written by the Apostle Paul to an Australian church planter known only as “Bruce”.

Despite repeated attempts, the following NT scholars were unavailable for comment: F. F. Bruce, C. F. D. Moule, and Rudolf Bultmann.

In the interests [...]

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as of 5.27pm, December 12, 2006 there were 20,713,873 Australians.

Every two minutes the number goes up with a new baby born. Every four minutes it goes down with a death. With migration factored in, that’s a net gain of one person every two minutes.

Despite the steady increase in [...]

The (NCLS) facts on church planting drew this comment from John Sumulo:

How do you interpret the above in relation to what appears to be an extremely high rate of church plant failures in the early years of a new church? I support church planting fully, but the rate of closures of new churches seems to [...]

Let’s lay to rest the myth that somehow church planting “isn’t working” as an effective strategy.

Here are the hard facts from a National Church Life Survey (NCLS) study conducted on the Effectiveness of Church Planting.

1. Church plants are healthier than other churches

Church plants tend to have above average levels of vitality, including higher percentages of [...]

God is real. He is real in the absolute and final sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent upon His.

The great Reality is God the author of that lower and dependent reality which makes up the sum of created things including ourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any [...]