» Movement Characteristics

Stuart Robinson has stepped down as senior minister at Crossway, our home church. After 25 years he has some other giants to slay.

As a young pioneer missionary Stuart helped spark a church planting movement in Asia that is still going strong. He returned to Australia and built one of the nation’s most significant churches. Now [...]

Stuart Piggin gets it.

I bumped into him in Sydney last week and picked up a copy of his history of Australian evangelicalism, Spirit of a Nation.

He contends that true evangelicalism is experiential, Biblicist, and activist. It is concerned with the Spirit, the Word, and the world. It aims to produce right-heartedness (orthokardia), right thinking (orthodoxy), [...]

Movements are contagious. They have a cause that spreads like a virus.

Here’s what Chip and Dan Heath have to say about making ideas stick.
1. Simplicity. To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission—sound bites are [...]

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet Communist leader, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time in a surprise visit to the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, he spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb. “St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the [...]

Australia is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world and Terry Davidson is one of the most effective people I know who is planting churches to reach that diversity.

Actually, Terry doesn’t do much at all — except spot, grow, develop and empower the leaders who are planting those churches — Chinese, Iranian, [...]

Ralph Moore believes in “simple church”—it has to be simple and it has to reproduce.

1. MiniChurch

At the heart of Hope Chapel’s strategy of reproducing disciples, leaders and churches is the “MiniChurch”. Ralph intentionally name his small groups MiniChurches and their leaders “undershepherds”. The MiniChurch is the primary place of pastoral care and disciple-making.

MiniChurches meet weekly [...]

Wayne Pickford believes, “Wrestling is the opera of the working class.”

Wrestling is an important part of his strategy for reaching working class people in the steel mill town of Berkley, NSW.

That’s Wayne on the right just about to drive the other guy’s head into the canvas.

You can read about that part of his story in: [...]

I’m continuing my journey through Eckhard Schnabel’s study of Early Christian Mission.

He describes how Christianity from its beginnings has been a missionary movement with a drive for expansion. The early Church endeavored, with fearless commitment and sacrificial courage, to win other people to their convictions.

Schnable defines “mission” or “missions” as:
The activity of a community of [...]

Jesus and the woman taken in adultery — Paul Gustave Doré, 1865

According to the Age a record numbers of Australians—assume this is true for Americans, Chinese, Nigerians, Estonians ie human beings on the planet—are visiting pornographic websites on the internet, including sexually explicit dating sites.

We all know it’s a man’s problem but now kids are [...]

A key characteristic of a dynamic movement is the capacity to rapidly mobilize workers.

But you can’t sustain rapid mobilization without adequate support systems. That means you have to build a coaching movement as you multiply leaders in the field.

If you need advanced coach training, Keith Webb is running one of the best courses available in [...]