Articles for tag: House Churches

A Life of Cross-Cultural Relationships

A Life of Cross-Cultural Relationships

By Laura McKillip Wood  As a child in the 1950s and ’60s, Harry Douglass sat in the pew at Mountain View Church of Christ in Phoenix every Sunday morning and Sunday night. He loved church, and he loved listening to his pastor, Don Mitchel, passionately preach interesting sermons. What he really loved, though, was listening to visiting missionaries who stopped in for Sunday night services. They showed slides of the people they worked with and told stories about their lives in faraway places. They not only told of their work but of the need for more people to follow their

September 1, 2021

Erik Tryggestad

The State of Noninstrumental Churches of Christ . . . Before and After the Pandemic

“I don’t want things to go back like they were. I want things to be better.” Oklahoma minister Randy Roper’s words are echoed by people in Churches of Christ across the nation as they emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic. Roper preaches for the Edmond Church of Christ in the suburbs of Oklahoma City. The congregation, which was averaging about 1,250 for weekly worship prior to the pandemic, is one of about 12,000 autonomous congregations in the U.S. that seek to share Jesus through the practice of simple, New Testament Christianity without manmade creeds. Churches of Christ share roots with

Laura-McKillip-Wood

Drinking Tea, Sharing Meals, and Making Disciples

Musa* lives in a Muslim country in the Middle East. Since he grew up hearing stories about the great prophet Jesus, he thought he knew all about him. That changed when he became roommates with Yosef*. Yosef shared his faith in Christ as the Messiah with Musa, and they began studying the Bible together. Before long, Musa accepted Jesus and wanted to be baptized. Christians in his country usually baptize new believers in a river, but because of the pandemic occurring at the time, public beaches were all closed. Musa’s baptism would have to wait. As time passed, Musa became

Laura-McKillip-Wood

River of Life

By Laura McKillip Wood “When I was 14 years old, I traveled with my father to a little town in the middle of nowhere to teach one man. This man was planting a church in his house. My dad went there every month to teach him, and when I saw this, it really touched my heart. He left the city where we lived, a classroom full of students, and a big church where he ministered to go to just one person in a small town.” Jeff Fife watched his father on that trip. He saw his father’s care for that

The Rules Have Changed

By Jerry Harris The January issue of Christian Standard focuses on the business side of church. Leaders make decisions every day about spending, staff, volunteers, fundraising, organizational structure, leader development, staff and volunteer education, debt, facility management, marketing, media, and online presence. Yet, despite all of that, it is rather amazing how little most church leaders know about business, finance, real estate, administration, or management. Many mainly rural and small churches are closing daily because they can no longer manage their own existence. Attendance and giving might be dwindling; the churches may no longer be able to pay for a

The Phenomenon of Disciple-Making Movements

Rural areas in the U.S. may be the best places for rapid multiplication of disciples and churches!   By Doug Lucas Over the past two decades, God has been working mightily through an approach commonly referred to as disciple-making movements (or DMMs. Some use the term CPM, short for church-planting movements, while others use T4T, meaning Training for Trainers. These three acronyms are, in many ways, synonymous, with only slight differences between them.) David Garrison was the first to write a book about this phenomenon, and his definition has become somewhat of the standard. In Church Planting Movements (2004), he

A Day with Jesus: What He Teaches Us About Discipleship

By Ryan Rasmussen As a pastor of a large church, I often question whether we’re discipling our people effectively. Though large churches have more resources and staff than small churches, they are often no better equipped to help people take steps forward with Jesus. The truth is, churches of every size seem to struggle with knowing whether their discipleship processes are effective. This might be the case because, well, it’s all a bit confusing. Multiple discipleship models are available: house churches, Sunday school, small groups, missional communities, and many others. Discipleship in its many forms has been the subject of

From House Churches to Church Houses

Where early Christians worshipped and why By Pat Magness and Lee Magness How have believers through the centuries used church buildings to express and extend the gospel? A simple survey can lend insight to those making church building decisions today. Where have believers worshipped God over the centuries? The Psalms picture ancient Israelites giving praise to God as individuals in a variety of settings. But the construction of the tabernacle, the building of the temple, and the development and spread of synagogues demonstrate that the use of buildings for corporate worship was also a high priority among God”s chosen people.

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

“˜A Dream in My Heart”

By Jennifer Johnson It all began with a sermon. Several years ago, Josh Howard, director of leadership training at Central India Christian Mission, was listening to a message called “Born to Reproduce” by Dawson Trotman, founder of The Navigators. “He made a comment that it was possible for us to reach the entire world in 10 years,” Howard says. “I thought, There”s no way that”s true. So I got out my calculator and did the math. I realized that if every person reached one person every six months, in 15 years we could reach all of India”s 1.1 billion people.

Opening Doors: Sharing the Gospel in Closed Countries

By Name Withheld Unreached need not mean unreachable, even in countries where Christian evangelism is forbidden. Sousida goes to sleep afraid every night. She never knows what the spirits are going to do to her or her family. She thinks she”s done enough to appease them, but she has no way of knowing. She”s never heard of Jesus. In fact, no one she knows has ever met a Christian or seen a Bible. They have no idea they could experience freedom. Generations of her people have lived and died in total darkness. Further complicating her hopelessness, Sousida”s country is openly

Our Missional Experiment

By Greg Hubbard It was shared life with a purpose. We laughed together. We cried together. We prayed together. We ate together. When somebody around us had a need, we spontaneously served them together. Meaningful spiritual conversations were frequent. We caught a glimpse of kingdom life as we had rarely experienced it before. In the early 2000s, a church known as Apex came to experience all of this in Las Vegas, Nevada. Quite a journey had brought us to that place. Apex began as an outreach of Canyon Ridge Christian Church as a means to reach young adults. At first

Travel Light

By Neal Windham “We must learn to travel light if we hope to keep pace with Christ,” remarked Neville Ward, and who could argue the point? When times are good, it seems the church can afford “reasonable” debt and a growing staff, but when the economy turns sour, then what? In the best of all worlds the church and her mission should not be hampered in any way by a smoldering economy. In fact, the reverse is true. It is precisely the tough times that test our claim to be the loving people of Christ. For example, the early church”s

Sponsor An Evangelist In India

By Jennifer Taylor Central India Christian Mission not only offers the opportunity to sponsor children in northern India and Nepal (just $18 each month provides food, clothing, vitamins, school supplies and even extras like mosquito nets and sports equipment), but also allows groups or individuals to sponsor an evangelist. Between $200 and $400 per month (depending on the evangelist”s location) provides support for his ministry. “CICM”s evangelists faithfully serve existing churches and plant new churches in the villages, towns, and cities of central and northern India and the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal,” CICM writes. “The evangelists visit their

The Jonathan Project

By Graydon Jessup The objective of The Jonathan Project is to plant multiplying churches among the least-reached people groups on the planet. These are people who live under oppressive regimes, in inaccessible locations, and in areas where Christianity and Christians are the “infidel.” Nearly 2 billion people fall into this “least-reached” category. They have never heard the name of Jesus. They don”t have the faintest concept what a church is about. This 10-year-old ministry was designed by missionaries on the field in East Asia. The original goal was to plant a church a year, but the magnitude of the task soon

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