In just 11 minutes Francis Chan describes what the Bible says about church and then he describes the short comings of church today. And even more importantly what we can do to get back on track.
Category Archives: Church as in the Book of Acts
DBS WITH NICKY
Nicky shares with us the A-B-C process of Discovery Bible Study. I love this simple explanation of how to make disciples. Allow God’s Word to speak into their lives and expect the Holy Spirit to do His work. As Nicky explains in this video, in a group of four or five people the Holy Spirit will use one verse to speak a different message into the lives of each of them. It is awesome and confirms what the following two scriptures tell us.
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Hebrews 4:12-13
“so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, Isaiah 55:11
We just need to bring God’s Word and our own testimony to people who are willing to listen and allow the Holy Spirit to do the rest. People need to experience God for themselves our words will accomplish little. I am reminded of the KISS principle.
KENYA HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT
I received the following email from Pastor Charles Otieno Owino. He is the leader of the Kenya House Church Movement which God is growing exponentially because it is all about making disciples who make disciples. There are no paid pastors nor church buildings. My followers would know that I have been connected with this group almost two years now. Moreover, my involvement as a Board Member of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) Australia has enabled me to connect the KHC group with the President of ICCC Kenya, Rene Kiamba who is introducing them to the ICCC training materials in particular the Transformed Working Life Series available for free on http://www.transformedworkinglife.net.
On a recent Zoom Meeting, which I organised when all of the KHC leaders were together with Charles in Migori, I had the opportunity to hear the testimonies of all the leaders. Not all had English so one of the leaders fluent in Swahili and English acted as interpreter. It was a humbling but wonderful occasion for me as I realised what a privilege it is to be able to support my brothers work in this relatively poor country.
The background to the following email was a request from Charles for a small amount of money to bring several of the KHC leaders to Migori for a meeting with a number of Catholics including a priest who are interested in starting a KHC group in their area. I asked Charles for more background information on the reason for the meeting and the priest.
Dear Ron. 22nd April 2021
The Roman Catholic priest is one of the priests under a chief priest in Nyarombo church, Oruba Paris, Migori county.
I connected with him through my aunt, who for many years had been a Roman Catholic sister at Rakwaro seminary, where she lived most of her life. As a sister in the church, she was unable to marry.
God gave me an opportunity, to share with her the word of God, something which did not take me a year, but nearly 3 years, until she came to the truth of God’s Word and came out of the convent. She is now a believer; a disciple of Jesus Christ and she is married.
I understand she knew this priest for many years back in her days as a Catholic sister. I am sure it is no coincidence that they are now neighbours that she is married. The opportunity came up for her to share with the priest her newfound faith. The Holy Spirit has given her favour with him and she has met with the priest regularly to share God’s Word.
She then knew it was time to tell him about me and organised for me to meet him in her home. I have been meeting with him and sharing the word of God over several months now.
As I have shared with you, my time with him has borne fruit and he has invited KHC leaders to meet him and other people, in his home this week.
Requesting your prayers for a positive outcome from our meeting with him and this Catholic group.
Shalom, Shalom.
Charles
If you feel led, please pray for Charles and the KHC leaders. I will let you know the outcome in another KHC post. Also, if you would like to join with me in supporting the KHC group then go to the DONATIONS link on the Home Page.
BIBLE BELIEVING COUNTER-CULTURAL CHURCHES THRIVING
The most common religious identity among young adults in the U.S. is “none,” and the majority of Americans don’t believe it’s necessary for a person to believe in God to be moral and have good values, a new survey has found. The survey on American Life investigating contemporary religion in the U.S. found that among young adults (age 18 to 29), the most common religious identity today is none. More than one in three (34%) young adults are religiously unaffiliated. Nearly nine in 10 (87%) Americans report they believe in God, but just over half (53%) report they believe in God without any doubts at all. Overall, 42% of Americans have a close social connection with someone who is religiously unaffiliated — up from 18% in 2004.
Additionally, most Americans say it’s not necessary for a person to believe in God to be moral and have good values. Close to six in 10 (59%) Americans say a belief in God is not a precondition to being moral and having good values, while 41% of the public say a belief in God is essential. These statistics, the authors say, mark a “remarkable shift in recent years. The study also found that Americans are almost equally divided over whether it is better to discuss religious beliefs and ideas with those who do not share the same perspective, and most Americans have never been invited to church. A majority (54%) of Americans say they have not been asked to participate in a religious service in the past 12 months or have never been asked.
The survey corroborates a 2019 Pew Study survey that documented the decline of Christians and rise of religiously unaffiliated. Pew noted that the religiously unaffiliated group rose to 22.8% share of the population in 2014, eclipsing the number of Catholics in America, who fell to 20.8%. Christians as a whole fell from 78.4 to 70% of the population between 2007 to 2014, with every major group experiencing a decline. Similarly, the 2018 General Social Survey found that the number of religious “nones” in the U.S. are now statistically equal to the number of evangelicals. Ryan Burge, a political science researcher at Eastern Illinois University who analyzed data from the survey, told The Christian Post that the religious “‘none’s’ are not slowing down.”
THE GOOD NEWS
Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, previously said the “increasing strangeness” of Christianity is actually “good news” for the church. “Christianity isn’t normal anymore. It never should have been. The increasing strangeness of Christianity might be bad news for America, but it’s good news for the church. The major newspapers are telling us today that Christianity is dying, according to this new study, but what is clear from this study is exactly the opposite: while mainline traditions plummet, evangelical churches are remaining remarkably steady,” Moore said.
He added that statistics indicate there are honest atheists in America today, and that they are rejecting what’s called “almost-Christianity,” or traditions that “jettison the historic teachings of the Church as soon as they become unfashionable.” “The churches that are thriving are the vibrant, counter-cultural congregations that aren’t afraid to not be seen as normal to the surrounding culture. This report actually leaves me hopeful. The Bible Belt may fall. So be it,” he continued. “Christianity emerged from a Roman Empire hostile to the core to the idea of a crucified and resurrected Messiah. We’ve been on the wrong side of history since Rome, and it was enough to turn the world upside down.”
OBEDIENCE AND LISTENING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT
These interviews and testimonies will help you to acknowledge the necessary actions we need to take to disciple and make a difference in other peoples lives. There is 6 minutes of introductory music so you can do something else while you listen to the delightful music but the testimonies that follow are worth the wait. The TLR movement is being used by God mightily to bring many into God’s Kingdom. The healings and the miracles demonstrate that the power is back in the church as disciples move out into the marketplace totally dependent upon the Holy Spirit to do ministry. For me in Australia it was wonderful to learn what God is doing in Eastern Europe. It is wonderful to see how God was moving in wonderful ways so it was obvious God was doing the work. His children were just doing His will. The testimony of the couple Abraham and Annemarie Levy is powerful. You must listen to them on “love”, Abraham makes three important observations of being a disciple that stand out: “You cannot follow Jesus without sacrifice”, “You must deliberately bury your own life”, “The flesh will always war against the spirit”, tough but exciting when you learn what God has done and is doing with their lives. If you live in Poland make sure you connect with this couple.
HOW GOD USES CATASTROPHES
The conflict in Armenia has taken the lives of many soldiers and displaced over 100,000 people. All the while, the world has kept silent and preferred not to know about it. In November a Russia-brokered peace deal was agreed between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It ended six weeks of war in which thousands of people were killed and displaced. In these conditions, the role of the Church has increased. People just have nowhere else to go. The church becomes the only place where people can be helped. The churches have become the beacons of hope for scared and suffering people. They don’t do services on Sundays because of the coronavirus but they continue serving refugees every day sharing their bread and their homes as well as words of comfort and hope. Even before the war, more than 32% of the population lived below the poverty line. Now with the conflict raging on, these alarming rates are growing every day. Asatur Nahapetyan, pastor and general secretary of the Baptist Union of Armenia, anticipates this conflict to linger and asks everyone to get ready for a hard winter. Over 100 families from Karabakh have been placed by Baptists in their homes and 42 people were accommodated in a conference hall in Razdan.
The church with a symbolic name Noah’s Ark (in Ararat) is providing shelter for 40 people. At first, the refugees were really afraid of Christians regarding them as sectarians but now they don’t want to leave. Pastor Araik says that people from Karabakh are not very religious and many of them still retain the Soviet spirit, but there are no atheists in trenches. The church in Ararat has 700 members. They all minister to refugees as one strong united team. “It’s the only place where we are welcomed,” say women refugees, who didn’t want to know anything about God just yesterday. They learned to pray in the church and when their husbands who are on the front lines call their wives many now say, “We didn’t believe in God but it was your prayers that kept us safe” women and children say to their pastor often, “When you pray we sleep well and we stop having nightmares.” Everyone lives on prayers here. It all started on the first day of war when the pastor called the mayor’s office and said that the church was ready to take in refugees. It’s been filled with people since then. It’s important to understand that the church prepared themselves for this ministry even before. The pastor says that successful work with young people changed the way the society viewed the church. “We fed 40 people every Saturday and took hot lunches to 20 families even before the war. Everyone knows us as the ark of hope and salvation. For people, we are not just a religious organization but a charitable organization. Although it’s interesting to see how the state church starts to imitate us. Priest David started doing what we do, preaching the Gospel, visiting people in their homes, meeting them and talking to them. Even the police say to people, ‘contact the church; they’ll help you there.’ Everyone respects us now.” Pastor Vazgen from the church in Abovyan says something similar: “Almost all the refugees that we received in our church have made a decision to follow Jesus.” The church in Artashat is also filled with refugees and it’s also filled with the spirit of hope.
While evangelical churches of Armenia are serving their people we have an opportunity, even responsibility to pray for this ancient Christian nation.
FUTURE OF AMERICA – Part 2
2020 has proven to be a challenging year for Christians. But I believe God is using Covid to get His church to move back to church as He had planned it as described in the Book of Acts, largely house churches. Good examples of how God has used catastrophe to refine His church are China and even more recently nations such as Iran. Persecution has refined His church to get it to be totally dependent upon Him, even for survival.
Christians must meet in person for corporate worship. On line communication is a dreadful replacement for real community. Come pandemic or martyrdom, we must find a way to meet in person. Isolated we are prone to wonder from the faith, tempted by the world’s allure, and even more prone to depression.
We were never promised safety in Christ. The opposite is true; we are promised persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). A time is approaching when going to church will be dangerous (and I do not mean because of a virus). Now is the time to prepare and reinforce healthy habits. Instill in your children the need and benefit of attending church weekly. Go and be fed the gospel. Even if your church is not perfect (none are), be present and love others.
On the importance of attending church, it is helpful to look at Mosaic Law. While Christians are no longer slaves to the law. The law reflects the character of God. The law is good, valuable, and worthy of our delight. We can learn much about God’s holiness and desires in the law. Consider the absolute seriousness by which God treats the Sabbath, the day of worship, and rest: Exodus 31:12-17.
God cares deeply about the Sabbath. He cares about how He is worshiped. At one point in time, failure to honor the Sabbath as God intended was a crime punishable by death! Friends, corporate, in-person worship is non-negotiable for Christians. Go to church and do not stop.
If Christians are to spiritually flourish in a nation that hates them, they must dedicate time to understanding the significance of worldview, how it is formed, and how it can rightly engage our culture. The following summary of a Biblical world view is the only one that presents an accurate history of the cosmos:- 1. Creation by God of a perfect cosmos 6000 years ago. 2. Entrance of sin and death by man’s rebellion against God. 3. God’s judgement of the World with the worldwide flood of Noah’s day. 4. Confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel that established the nations. 5. God establishes his nation Israel that would birth the Redeemer, Jesus, God’s Son, born of a virgin. 6. Birth of the church at Pentecost. 7. 2000 year history of the church which is soon coming to its prophesied end with Jesus return, first to rescue the Saints at which time His wrath will be poured out on an unbelieving world. Then Jesus returns to earth with the Saints to rescue His nation Israel at the battle of Armageddon. 8.We then have the Millennium. Jesus will rule the nations with the glorified Saints with a rod of iron for 1000 years.
Part an extract from the article in Patheos: Persecution: The New Reality for Biblical Christianity in America by Jack lee
GOD IS USING COVID 19 TO SHAKE UP THE CHURCH
Parker and Jessi Green started feeling what they described as a Holy Spirit restlessness amid full-time ministry in New York City. Despite being well-compensated and “successful” by several measures, something was amiss and the couple could not ignore how God was tugging at their hearts.
For the past four years, the Greens have been active with SALT churches, a network of micro churches they started in the region of Southern California. Earlier this year, they led Saturate OC, worship on the beach evangelistic outreach.
If you ask Parker, a micro church is around 10 to 40 people reaching those who do not yet know Jesus, making disciples, and most importantly, are on mission together. That “being on mission” aspect distinguishes it from previous home-based church movements.
“Doing what Jesus is doing [in realtime], I find, is super helpful,” he said, chuckling lightly, in a recent interview with The Christian Post. Jessi added: “We definitely think that this is the trajectory that the Church is going to move in and it’s funny because I think especially because of social media we’re so afraid to almost innovate when it comes to church because we don’t want to appear like we’re bashing or against the current thing.”
“But if you look at church history, what we see right now is how many people would define ‘church’ is actually pretty new as of the last 100 years. What we see now as almost untouchable when it comes to church and how it’s done, most of the world would not define that as church at all.” And distinctly missional micro churches are actually closer to what is seen in the pages of Scripture, they maintained. The “traditional” model that has become the norm for many in the Western world is not as normal as many think.
As many of you know, I have said for many years that the church in the “last days” before Jesus returns will be like the church described in the Book of Acts. God is refining His church with tribulation which will only escalate as prophesied “birth pangs” increase. Francis Chan was the first pastor of a major church that I saw God challenge to walk away from the mega-church model. It has been wonderful to follow his walk since, Home Groups in the USA, then to Hong Kong and ministering to the unreached in places such as Myanmar (Burma). Moreover in Myanmar, for the first time, he has walked in the power of the Holy Spirit with healings and miracles.
WHY DO WE MAKE DISCIPLES?
Great to see God raising up young people who understand the purpose of the church is to make disciples who complete the Great Commission. Watch this young couple as they explain the 411 Discipleship Training Course. This is just one of the many initiatives God is raising up for His purposes in the “last days”. You will be encouraged as you learn what is being accomplished to build God’s Kingdom here on earth. I hope you embark on Troy’s 411 program with your partner. It asks the following four questions. WHY?, WHO?, WHAT? & WHEN? Go watch the video and find out why.
CHURCH IN THE END TIMES
The following article by Roger E Olson October 10, 2020 “What Should “Church” Be Like? Answering the Question” is excellent, it is reproduced here in its entirety.
I believe a true Christian church should be one where God is very busy changing lives and influencing its social environment with compassionate actions.
I believe a true Christian church should be countercultural in the sense of resisting accommodation to secular and pagan culture while communicating the gospel in ways people of the culture can at least understand (but without letting go of anything essential to the gospel).
I believe a true Christian church should be an extended family where at least members and regular attenders know each other, share their lives with one another, share their property with each other (not as a common purse necessarily but with genuine generosity), and love one another in spite of differences of race, gender, ethnicity, economic and social status, educational level, etc.
I believe a true Christian church should be one where the preaching and teaching covers the whole of God’s revelation including judgment, conviction, repentance, and conversion—including the call to take great risks for God’s kingdom.
I believe a true Christian Church should be one where the people know the Bible well and are led by the teaching leaders into deeper understanding of its implications for being in the world but not of it.
I believe a true Christian church should select as leaders and teachers only persons deeply committed to Jesus Christ as God, Lord, Savior, and Coming King. The leaders should be broadly and generously orthodox in terms of belief in the Trinity, the inspiration and authority of Scripture, salvation through Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone without neglecting works of love.
I believe a true Christian church should practice loving discipline of members and regular attenders who fall into sin and who do not repent and seek to change.
I believe a true Christian church should require members (including leaders) to avoid worldliness in the sense of ungodly entertainment, conspicuous consumption, immodest dress, membership in organizations that require beliefs and/or ceremonies contrary to the sole Lordship of Jesus Christ (idolatry), sexual immorality, divorce (except in cases of abandonment, abuse, or adultery), identification with hate groups and ideologies, violence (except for self-defense or defense of vulnerable people under attack), gluttony, and extreme individualism manifested in lack of faithful participation in God’s people and their mission.
I believe a true Christian church should never hide its Christian identity.
I believe a true Christian church should preach and teach the Word of God, the gospel, faithfully and in all its dimensions and aspects, live life together in love, worship God enthusiastically, train members and attenders in Christian discipleship for everyday life, reach out to help hurting and vulnerable people live human lives, care for the environment, expect miracles to happen especially in response to fervent prayer, pray for the sick and the hurting, hold members and leaders accountable to their Christian callings, speak truth to power prophetically, encourage members to seek and use the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and never be ashamed of Jesus Christ even for the sake of attracting visitors and others to fill empty pews or seats.
Finally, I believe a true Christian church should celebrate the sacraments of water baptism and the Lord’s Supper regularly.
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 