Articles for tag: Church Planting Movements

Salty Church Marks 9 Years of Sunrise Services on Beach (Plus News Briefs)

Compiled by Chris Moon and Jim Nieman Salty Church in Ormond Beach, Fla., recently celebrated the ninth anniversary of its weekly sunrise worship service on the beach.  The service launched in May 2010 and is held at 7 a.m. at the Granada Beach Approach. It is a way to attract “beach people”—surfers, bikers, and tourists. But the service tends to attract all kinds of folks, lead pastor Robbie O’Brien told the Ormond Beach Observer, which wrote a story about the milestone. “The beach is typically a great equalizer,” O’Brien said. “We don’t know who’s rich or poor, or sometimes, we don’t know who’s homeless

Growing the Kingdom

By Bruce Webster The Bible”s mandate is to grow quickly, not to grow large. Look what happens when believers today take their strategy from the New Testament instead of the church in the West.  Are you like me? For many years when I read the parable of the mustard seed1, I pictured a tiny seed growing slowly like an oak tree, attaining good height as it matured. But when the people listening to Jesus heard him tell that parable, they had a very different picture. They knew the mustard plant didn”t grow very big””maximum height about 10 feet””but it grew

How Team Expansion Missionaries Define Success

By Doug Lucas We”ve tried and learned from a variety of approaches, each with a different definition of success. Here”s where we”ve been and how we”re seeing God bless the approach we”re taking now. When we were starting Team Expansion in 1978, we organized several brainstorming conferences that included some of the nation”s top thinkers and leaders in missions and other fields. At these events, we would ask questions like, “What should Team Expansion try to be? What should be its main goal? In fact, what IS Team Expansion?” It took a while to hone the vision (about 37 years,

For the Love of a Child

Child sponsorship programs are changing lives””in distant lands and right here in the United States. Discover the facts. Listen to the testimonies. And realize how this is happening. By Doug Priest “Our people sponsor nearly 400 children, and congregational giving continues to grow. In fact, the more we give to others outside our walls, the more our general fund has grown.” “”Steve Reeves, Connection Pointe Christian Church (Brownsburg, Indiana) Alice was conceived out of wedlock. She never knew her father. After the birth, her mother entrusted Alice to her grandmother and moved to another country. Alice lived in the Mathare

Unreached People Groups

By Doug Lucas In spite of tremendous strides forward in Bible translations, religious satellite broadcasts, and Internet-based evangelism, God”s good news still has not yet penetrated numerous pockets of the planet”s population. To make matters more complex, these pockets sometimes do not follow political boundaries. Rather, they often follow ethnic and/or linguistic boundaries that are much harder to document. Ralph Winter was among the first to articulate the concept of people groups back in 1974 at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. (See Stephen Burris”s article for more on the origin, biblical roots, and history of the development of this

Praying for Tunisia As Never Before

Most Christians want to obey Jesus” command to “ask the Lord of the harvest . . . to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matthew 9:38), but they struggle to know how to pray for a nation they”ve never visited and missionaries they seldom see. Do you want to join thousands of other Christians in united prayer for unreached people? Do you want to receive daily, specific, insightful prayer requests that will empower and intensify your prayers? The website and associated movement www.Pray4Tunisia.com is bringing God”s people together and changing the way we approach prayer for the harvest fields.

Restoration Revolution: Goals to Challenge All of Us

By Mark A. Taylor “What”s not to like when you see the values expressed in Restoration Revolution?” Ben Cachiaras asked the rhetorical question in a February presentation to Cincinnati ministers. Most rhetorical questions go unanswered, but this one deserves a response. My reaction is twofold. First: All of us can agree with the lofty visions cast by those promoting Restoration Revolution, a 10-year project that kicks off at this year”s National Missionary Convention in Lexington, Kentucky, November 18-21. The goals are contained in an easily remembered acrostic: Almighty is an invitation to prayer. Restoration Revolution challenges Christian churches around the world to

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