Church Planting Movements » Steve Addison’s blog World Changers

Photo: Brendan Esposito

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Niall Reid, the head of the Uniting Church in NSW, has implored his church to start selling its underutilised churches, manses and halls and give the proceeds to the poor and disadvantaged.

Faced with dwindling congregations and conceding the church could all but disappear in 30 years, the Reverend Niall Reid says the church should let go of its “holy, sacred spaces as beautiful as they may be” and work to establish an “underground” community of faithful that connects with the spiritual needy in pubs, on beaches and in shopping malls.

Unfortunately, the problems of the Uniting Church will not be resolved by selling off some buildings and going “underground”. The story of the Uniting Church is one of the great tragedies of Australian church history.

For some reason there is a lack of interest or reflection on the reasons behind this spectacular decline. Perhaps a new generation is unaware of the recurring danger of drifting from our evangelical heritage.

I keep coming back to Stuart Piggin’s challenge to hold together the evangelical synthesis of Word, Spirit and mission.

UPDATE: Does the Uniting Church have a future? Yes, according to the Assembly of Confessing Congregations. They represent the many loyal evangelicals who have remained within the UCA and are calling the denomination to return to it’s true heritage.

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Everywhere you go in India they want to you teach and preach. But it’s amazing what you can learn if you assume you know nothing and listen to what God is already doing.

We caught up with some great folk in India. I’d better not tell you who and where. Conversion can be against the law in India and everyone is nervous following the outbreak of persecution in Orissa.

Anyway I was impressed with the IMB folk. What they are doing to fuel indigenous church planting movements is world missions best kept secret.

These guys have stayed true to the Gospel but are radical in methodology. There are two types of radical. There’s “trendy” radical and there’s “get the job done” radical. The IMB is the latter.

Simple, transferable, contagious strategies for multiplying disciples, workers and churches. I think the reason they keep it so quite is they’re getting on with the job and waiting for their reward in heaven.

If you’re interested, have a look at their training materials.

Here’s one version: BPI Training Manual.

Here’s another take on the same paradigm from the NorthEast Team.

If I was young again, I’d be looking to these guys for my training in church planting movements. They’re Southern Baptists but they care more about the Great Commission than denominational tags.

The real fun is starting as they move from multiplying indigenous church planters to multiplying “strategy co-ordinators” and trainers.

That’s why we’re sending all our overseas workers to be trained by them. We hope to have our first couple in India next year. I’m also looking for people who are crazy enough to try out the model in Australia.

Only people who don’t know what they are doing need apply.

Some Wesleyan friends introduced me to John Wesely’s Covenant Prayer.

I am no longer my own, but yours.

Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
exalted for you or brought low for you;
let me be full, let me be empty;
let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal

And now, O glorious and blessed God, Faither,
Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine, and I am yours.
So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen.

This prayer was the heart beat of one of the most dynamic movements for the renewal and expansion of the Christian movement.

My first trip to India just completed. When I think of the experience there’s one phrase that comes to mind, “A crush of people.”

In India, you’re not a serious player unless you’ve planted 2,000 churches. I keep meeting movement leaders who have done just that and more. One good friend has a goal of 100,000 churches and has made a good start.

But let’s say he succeeds. 100,000 churches of say an average of 50 people each. That’s 5,000,000 people reached. A drop in the ocean compared to India’s 1.1 billion people.

There just isn’t enough money, training, workers, organizations to reach this nation.

But it must be done.

Then you realise, we have to see the world differently. A bit of faith would not go astray. It’s not up to us alone to reach India. Let’s not forget we’ve been drawn into God’s mission and he has given us his Word and his Spirit. God loves to shame our wisdom with his foolishness. So expect some surprises. Expect some great leaders and movements to emerge from India that will play a decisive role in reaching the world.

Finally, make sure you drop the word “evangelical” or “missional” from your vocabulary if you don’t have a plan to take the gospel beyond your borders to the nations.

I’m working my way through George Beasley-Murray’s excellent commentary on Revelation.

Writing in 1974 he reflects on the state of the church around the world,

“Christians accustomed to leave out of reckoning the eschatological perspective of the New Testament might well join the company of the alarmed, in view of the catastrophic decrease in the Church in Europe, its disappearance in China, its perilous future in India, and its uncertain prospects in Africa.”

Well, he got it right about Europe.

Url Scaramanga announces the early demise of the “emerging church” in RIP Emerging Church: An overused and corrupted term now sleeps with the fishes. The overwhelming majority of movements don’t make it out of infancy alive. Will this be the fate of the EC?

HT: Alan Hirsch

UPDATE: Ed Stetzer’s article on The Emerging Church, the Emergent Church, and the Faith Once Delivered to the Saints.

HT: DashHouse via Matt Stone

India is a crazy place. The roads are jammed with people, bikes, stray dogs, motor-bikes, cars, camels, water buffalo, rickshaws, buses and trucks–going in any and every direction. When your side of the road clogs up you just cross to the other side and start dodging the oncoming traffic.

No-one wears seat belts. Not even the westerners. ‘Things are different in India.’

130,000 people die on Indian roads every year.

Christians in the state of Orissa are suffering terrible persecution.

The Taj Mahal was stunning.

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not professing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.

Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. To be steady on all the battlefields besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Heading out to India for a couple of weeks. If you don’t hear from me assume:

1. I’m sick or,
2. I don’t have internet access or,
3. Both of the above.

Hope to learn what I can about church planting movements in what will soon become the world’s most populous nation.

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An update on the sad story of Francis Macnab and St Michael’s Uniting Church.

The Uniting Church Synod voted today to request St Michael’s remove freeway signs and other media related to its “new faith” advertising campaign because it causes “deep offense to many Christians, Jews and Muslims”.

The denomination is in a dilemma. Macnab has pushed a secularized “faith” to it’s logical conclusion. If we’re free to recreate the Christian faith in our own image, what’s wrong with Macnab’s “new” form of Christianity?

The statement says nothing about the truth or otherwise of Macnab’s beliefs as a minister for life at St Michael’s. He was not censured because his message is untrue but because it may cause offense to some people. But if Macnab offends some Christians, Jews and Muslims by calling the 10 Commandments “negative”, what if he puts up a banner commending the 10 Commandments and that offends other people?

Macnab is out of step with the Synod because his actions have “the potential damage to ecumenical and interfaith relationships”. But what if the Uniting Church’s own statement of beliefs proclaims “Jesus is Lord” causes offense to other faiths?

Uniting Church moderator, Jason Kioa called for restraint by outraged church members, saying it was important to be aware how public statements would be perceived within and beyond the church. “I remind all members that we are called to be a fellowship of reconciliation,” he said.

In its Basis of Union, the Uniting Church aligns itself with the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the Reformation and the teachings of John Wesley.

It promises to:

. . . commit its ministers and instructors to study these [Reformation and Wesleyan] statements, so that the congregation of Christ’s people may again and again be reminded of the grace which justifies them through faith, of the centrality of the person and work of Christ the justifier, and of the need for a constant appeal to Holy Scripture.

The Uniting Church is in serious decline. Within the next 15 years, it will lose half of its adult constituency. Macnab is not the problem. He’s a symptom of a movement that has lost its way.

If he can not longer support the core beliefs of his denomination he should have the integrity to resign or be removed. If the church congregation wants to go with him, let them have the building.

The Uniting Church should return to its evangelical heritage and seek God’s forgiveness for straying from it. It’s not too late. And even if it is too late for the institution, God’s favour is worth far more than institutional survival.