Just a note to let you know that I'll be with the West Coast Worship Conference next week for Night Owl Café on Thursday and Friday nights, after the evening meetings. Our
guests will be Ryan Bell, the creative, activist pastor of the Hollywood church,
and Simon Liversedge of "The Place," the fastest growing church in the
SoCal conference. |
To the Point
"That God is good is taught or implied on every page of the Bible
and must be received as an article of faith as impregnable as the
throne of God."
- A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
"The doctrines of the gospel are meant to
mould us so that our lives begin to 'set' in the likeness of Christ. We
have made little or no impression upon the world, for the very reason
that the gospel doctrine has made a correspondingly slight impression
upon us. It cannot be overemphasized that men and women who have
accomplished anything in God's strength have always done so on the
basis of their grasp of truth."
- Sinclair Ferguson, The Christian Life
"No one can move from conviction to pardon simply by examining one's
own conscience or by the force of will or by limited human reasoning.
Pardon is exclusively an act of grace offered and revealed by the
incomparably holy and merciful One who pardons. My own word of pardon to myself is always finally self-contrived,
hence insufficient, artificial, shallow, and ungrounded. Pardon must be
based upon the valid pardoning agent. This can only be the eternal One
who is infinitely just, holy, and merciful. Only this One can be full
of grace without ceasing to be full of truth."
- Thomas Oden, The Justification Reader |
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 Simple Church:
a very old new idea
by Milton Adams, Florida Conference
Is the Adventist denomination ready for house churches?
The idea came one day when I read, "Please give my greetings to the church that meets in their home" (Romans 16:5). Though I had read this verse numerous times it had never clicked - probably because of a tendency to make Scripture fit into my existing church paradigm. This time it hit home. The result: my wife and I started a church in our home. We call it Simple Church. This house church will never grow up and become a "real" church. It will continue to meet in our home and we hope that it will grow into house church network across North America. About our house church:- We have been meeting for nine months. Our conference administration is supportive and we have seen God's blessings.
- Average weekly attendance per location; 27, about 15 adults and 12 children
- 33% of the adults are unchurched, and 65% of these return.
- 2 additional Simple Churches have grown from ours, for a total attendance of 60.
- 6 people are training to start church in their own homes, and we have many lay people and seminary students interested in the training.
- 6 people have been baptized and others are preparing to be.
- We've received approximately $43,000 in tithe and offerings. Since there are no church mortgages, building funds, building maintenance, Bible workers, etc., our offerings help people in real, practical ways.
- What happens to tithe? It goes to the local conference.
- How are Simple Churches connected to the Adventist world church? The same as other churches: we support conference sponsored events, use Adventist publications, and support Adventist education.
- How does Simple Church maintain doctrinal purity? In Simple Church we build in accountability. Leaders make commitments to raise up a house church each year, lead a weekly one-on-one Bible study, attend leader's meetings, quarterly gatherings, and conduct yearly harvest events.
- Why do we need more churches when we cannot fill up and support the ones we have? The answer might be found in the question.
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Reading for Pastors
by Best Practices Editor, Loren Seibold
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. I've never heard of an Adventist church doing Lent, but perhaps someone has; I believe there are some profound lessons in it about self-denial. The WSJ has a piece about giving up Facebook for Lent. On the other hand, the Church of England is asking people to Twitter and Facebook through the lenten season. From the Chicago Trib: an amusing discussion of small lenten sacrifices. Quote: " A
friend's son gravely informed me several years ago that he was giving up using his Sony PlayStation for Lent. 'That should be tough for you,' I said, knowing his fondness for video games. 'Not really,' he said. 'We also have Xbox.'" (My friend Tim Mitchell claims to be giving up football for lent. Much of a sacrifice?) How do you feel about opening political events with a prayer? Helpful, problematic in a church-state way, or simply pandering to religious people? Attractional vs. Missional: You've heard the words - what do they mean?An interesting piece on the highly secular Dutch, and how the financial crunch is turning some back to studying Calvin. |
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