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Christianity Today, September, 2007 |

Go and Plant Churches of All Peoples

Crusades and personal witnessing are no longer the cutting edge of evangelism.

Tim Stafford | posted 9/27/2007 08:39AM

Fifty years ago, if you said evangelism in a word-association game, you would probably get back Billy Graham. Crusade evangelism dominated the American church's ideas about reaching out. When First Baptist ...

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andy christ

Posted: October 03, 2007 11:41 AM

Messages of discernment are seriuosly needed for Gods family to grow. Such as God is the main event. The #1 friend. Amen! Every second listen for him! Discern if it is satanic angel(rev 12:9). God gives his family eternity of great friendship, food , hugs clear lakes and other stuff. Glory! The tribes that i know of at the moment are sexual christian conservatives. Non sexual christian conservatives. Sexual ideas are big deal and sensitive ideas to people. We have a choice in tribes. Amen. The key idea is to ask partner about what movements to do. Not force movements. Every tribe should obey. Safety and military education is a must in each tribe. Churches should try to discern. It is a key Such as discpline techniques. Is it the same for each tribe? Thank you for your time 1corinth 14:26. Gal3 :2! Romans 3:23- Gods gonna work with us!

Robin

Posted: September 30, 2007 7:39 PM

Regarding the baptism as a requirement for church membership( I don't know if this is the right place, but it is where the discuss button sent me).....the more important question is, should DUES be a requirment?? It is for most churches. Most churches won't care if you baptised, where you where baptised and when you were baptised, but you must be a contributer. Unfortunately that doesn't mean tithing as a form of redistribution to the poor and oppressed, it is supporting six figure clergy salaries and building bigger golden cows while billions live on a dollar a day and church courtyards are populated with the sleeping homeless. Something is wrong with that picture when you contrast it to Pauls message.

Barry

Posted: September 29, 2007 4:13 AM

Yahweh/God would be blessing these church plantings if they were teaching and observing what Christ and the Apostles observed. First it is not neccesary to have huge congregations but groups that actually study the scriptures and believe what the bible teaches and not select out of it what is dogmatically true for that church or group. When Messiah and the Apopostles say they observed the Sabbath, thats what we should do and not observe Sunday. We should observe the feasts and Holy days in the bible not pagan festivals like Easter and Xmas. After all after Yahshua they continued to observe these days and they said so. If it was not correct they should have said so and not confirm it by observing these days. Even the Catholic church in the impramata book "Faith of our Fathers" admit that Saturday is correct and the observance of the first day of the week Sunday is their own franchise. Actually there is very little that because of tradition follows biblical example

Galen Currah

Posted: September 28, 2007 11:43 PM

There are very few NT formulae for evangelistic effectiveness. One such is found in 1 Corinthians 14:24-25. It will be in the intimate setting of face-to-face sharing between believers that listening unbelievers will become aware of their sins and need to be saved. This is perhaps how most folks round the globe come to faith in Jesus. There will always be a place for public and personal evangelistic efforts, but relying on superstars and brave loners will not get the job done.

Denise

Posted: September 28, 2007 7:48 PM

I found this piece to BE fascinating because many in the church world feels sometimes they think that they have God down to a science. God will use everyone differently. I have always stated to stay in your lane. Everyone has something to do in the kingdom. Too many times we got the numbers in the church but the lack of spiritual maturity is really starting to show. Unfortunately with a lot of churches today it is not "ONE SIZE FITS ALL". I think the danger today is that we expect God to keep coming in the ways that we become familiar with. There are different ministries to reach certain people. We get so caught up in methods that we forget that the Holy Spirit guides you into all Truths.

hyperetes

Posted: September 28, 2007 12:12 PM

First, Tamigirlrocks - Bravo on your response to POST-CHRISTIAN BUDDHIST. I could feel His love and Spirit in your reply. Second, to POST-CHRISTIAN BUDDHIST, wow, for an enlightened one you seem to be seething with more than a bit of anti-Chiristian bigotry of your own. No, many of Us Christians don't perform up to Christ's standards (actually none of us do) but that's the point, that's why we need Christ's salvation - because we know just what you are so astute to point out: that we fall short of the glory of God and will never attain it on our own but if we truly love and follow our Lord and Master we will be forgiven and redeemed. By the way, I said love AND FOLLOW - showing up for an hour on Sunday morning doesn't count - showing up every day, every hour, TRYING to follow His will in every act and every thought does count. Oh, and we don't peddle death but we do follow a Master who offers Life Eternal. Invite Jesus into your life today, He will make you a new & loving person.

Gil	Posted: September 28, 2007 10:36 AM

Things are obviously changing in ministry method outreaches, but the Gospel has not changed. I have found that each section of any particular country has its own perspective and receptivity when it comes to spiritual matters. One size does not fit all in structure or style. A significant danger is for young Christian leaders is to discover one ministry that seems to be successful because of numerical growth and adopt that style and methodology as their own without carefully doing a search of the Scriptures to discover what God's description and expectation is for a local church. A study of successful organizations and culture is not sufficient.

CJ	Posted: September 28, 2007 9:56 AM

Methinks someone is a tad bit racist with the pointing to white only racism. Just love how PostChristian/Buddhist claims to live in a "tolerant" community with gentle folks, but yet offers no grace and nothing but vitrolic hatred towards whites, Southern Baptists (which I am a member of and have yet to see the blanket racism people speak of - despite being a transplanted northerner), Idahodians, those who want to stand for the security and the good of our country. Way to show us Christians just how much we appreciate the grace we have recieved from Jesus Christ, none of claimed to be perfect, only to serve the perfect one...something Bhuddism never can lay claim to in its intolerance. and hatred. Blessings,

dana	Posted: September 28, 2007 7:37 AM

also gotta be careful on restricting a definition of "Christ-like" to things like mildness, tolerance and gentleness. that's but a very small tip of a very large iceberg of the character of Christ - working as a glassblower/designer (a rather hippy industry), i know a lot of post-Christians who wouldn't care for the more essential elements of Christ's character, but they've never read his words so they don't know what those are. i also wonder why so many post-Christians, those champions of tolerance and free speech, are so hostile towards others excercising free speech in the form of spreading the gospel. a bit incongruent, don't you think? also, it's not like churches are only being planted in Sonoma Valley, it just happens to be where the article writer is from. i'm interested to know why you feel so beleaguered and personally attacked.

Assaji Sanya

Posted: September 28, 2007 1:41 AM


Evangelism? church planting? what a waste of time and resources. Science and rationality have proven that Christianity is nothing but a superstitious cult.

Narayan Sharma

Posted: September 27, 2007 10:22 PM

This article is like watering to thirsty soul ! In my opinion a church which is not involved in seeing or doing God's love reaching to people of the world with Salvation message is almost dead( without real life).It is exciting to carry Goodnews to hurting world and bringing them one by one to His wonderful Kingdom.Jesus Christ is very real every where in the world.He is only hope for humanity.I am so glad that some one led me to Christ and made my life meaningful through serving Him in the dark parts of the world.

Bill Bray

Posted: September 27, 2007 8:26 PM

Yeah, I agree with the thrust of this article, but I still think it is the exception rather than the rule of what is happening. Let's vow to link missions and church-planting a little more closely and make it part of the DNA of every congregation--way too often we still divorce evangelism from discipleship and education. However, both are clearly part of the Great Commission which we traditionally quote to promote mostly evangelistic missions. I like the idea of automatically tithing to missions in every church and including the church planting outreach as part of the missions and evangelism budget. These activities should be integrated and funded together as a line item in every church budget including in the church plants themselves from day one.

Bill	Posted: September 27, 2007 4:02 PM

I understand that church planting can be an effective way to reach an area, but the bigger problem I see is that this allows everyone else not invovled with the plant thinking they don't have to evangelize. What we need to do is to start training those in the church how to listen and talk to the culture around them with gentleness and love. I have a heart for the lost, but have always been intimidated to reach out. I've taken it upon myself to learn how to do it since I'm never going to get any training in any church I've seen. Most of the training I've studied deals with how to listen effectively and how to ask good questions. Stand To Reason ministries is a good place to start for those who have the heart, but know they need more skills. Skills seemed to get knocked a lot, but why is it very few in any church are actually reaching their neighbors and friends? Because they're intimidated that they don't know what to say or how to say it without coming across arrogantly.

Mitch

Posted: September 27, 2007 3:18 PM


Awesome! This makes me so happy to be apart of a church plant. And to the post christian/buddist who posted above, watch out! we're coming for ya! =)

mindy

Posted: September 27, 2007 2:02 PM


Wow. Don't know that I've ever read anything about church planting that was so informative and helpful. Thank you!

POST-CHRISTIAN/BUDDHIST

Posted: September 27, 2007 10:21 AM

It always amazes me the blindness Christians exibit when it comes to spreading their faith. They see places like Sonoma County and San Francisco as 'benighted' places where the Gospel is needed. Well I can tell you that the people of these places act more like Jesus without being Christian, being mild, tolerant and gentle folk, where the last vestiges of the best of the '60 era still lives on. Not perfect mind you, a bit flaky sometimes, but good people, certainly more 'Christ-like' than many Christians I've met. If Chistian missionaries want to spread the Gospel of Jesus, why don't they go to places like Jena, Louisiana, where racist whites continue suppress blacks, or home region of the SBC in the old Confederacy where de factor segregation is still practised, or the forest of Idaho, where the racist-anti-semitic survivalist 'Militia Movement' thrives, or everywhere in America where anti-immigrant laws and sentiment thrives!? PLEASE LEAVE US 'POST-CHRISTIANS' ALONE!!!

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