THE CHURCH IN THE PHILIPPINES • Based on the official May 2000 census of the Philippines, the
National statistics office
published the Religious affiliations of the country’s population. • According to this report, • the constitute a combined of the entire population.

NUMBER OF CHURCHES IN THE PHILIPPINES
2001 – 2007 : 60,000

POPULATION OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES: • Approximately average • Approximately average • Approximately • Approximately • From average average - Ptr. Dave White

SIZE OF EVANGELICAL / PROTESTANT CHURCHES
CHURCHES
19,720 11,900 7,410 5,310 6,200 595 320 120 TOTAL: 51,575 Source: The church in the Philippines
MEMBERSHIP
BELOW 30 31-50 51-75 76-100 101-300 301-500 501-1000 1,001 & UP
%
38.20
23.05
14.35
10.28
12.01
1.15
.62
.33

THE CHURCH IN THE PHILIPPINES • PCEC STATED IN THEIR REPORT THAT IN THE PHILIPPINES THERE ARE STILL APPROXIMATELY

OBSERVATIONS on weekdays.
• No church workers on regular days. • Pastor not a resident of the area.
• Members are with their lives.

Why are Christian churches not growing? • What is the besetting Christian churches?

WHY ARE CHURCHES NOT GROWING?
• Most people who are called Christians are .
• They have to be sitting passively in a church service. by • That’s why improved sermons, bigger churches, and better trained pastors can’t help.

WHY ARE CHURCHES NOT GROWING?
• Church members are audiences. of the Laity is not encouraged.
• Lack of Participation the expression of inspiration, affirmation, information, celebration and transformation.
• We have forgotten to practice group Bible reading & .

WHY ARE CHURCHES NOT GROWING?
• Humanism is more popularly preached.
• Discussion Bible Study (DBS) or Participative Bible study is seldom practiced.
• Many Christians don’t have time for Bible studies.

SURVEY QUESTIONAIRE 1. COMPLETE NAME 2. NAME OF CHURCH 3. DESIGNATION/ RESPONSIBILITY

THE WHY CHURCHES ARE NOT GROWING:

Result of survey / Reasons cited: • They are don’t know • They are to approach people they • They are of rejection to share the Gospel with work

• each year to nominalism and secularism. Between doors each year in America. their • Approx. 98 million people are under the age of 25 in the United States & those between the ages of 18-25 are the least likely to attend a church.

D-GRP; G-12; CELL GRPS; CARE GROUP; etc PROBLEM: • Many leaders of these groups also understand the Gospel well. They are not equipped to handle groups. At best they only have fellowship & fun. • Many cell group leaders have reading the Bible from cover to cover. made a habit of • They are in the Word so they don’t know what to teach & how to lead their D-grp.

D-GRP; G-12; CELL GRPS; CARE GROUP; etc PROBLEM • They PRAYER.
• Most members are spend much time in committed .
• Many cell or D-grp members have a burden to serve & get involved in ministry.

D-GRP; G-12; CELL GRPS; CARE GROUP; etc PROBLEM • They are in the world.
.
• Many Christians their lives to GOD.

• CHRISTIANS THINK CHURCH IS A BUILDING LOCATED IN A CERTAIN PLACE. THEY HAVE CONFUSED CHURCH WITH A BUILDING.
• THE TRUE MEANING & DEFINITION OF CHURCH HAS BEEN OBLITERATED.
• WORSHIP HAS TAKEN ON A DIFFERENT MEANING. IT IS SINGING ON A SUNDAY SERVICE.
• WORSHIP IS DONE ONLY ONCE A WEEK.

• PASTORS FAILED TO EQUIP THEIR PEOPLE TO ACT AS A ROYAL PRIESTHOOD.
• CHRISTIANS THINK ONLY PASTORS ARE TASKED TO PLANT CHURCHES.
• CHRISTIANS THINK ONLY ORDAINED PASTORS ARE EQUIPPED & QUALIFIED TO DO THE WORK OF A MINISTER.

• CHRISTIANS NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE BELIEVER.
• THEY NEVER UNDERSTOOD THEIR CALLING. JN.15:16 • THEY ARE CONTENT TO SIT IN PEWS & LISTEN TO THE PASTOR. • CHRISTIANS HAVE BEEN UNWITTINGLY CONDITIONED TO ACT AS SPECTATORS IN CHURCH.

• MOST CHRISTIANS CAN BE CATEGORIZED AS NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. • THEY ARE REPRESENTED BY THOSE WHO PAUL WARNED TIMOTHY ABOUT • “AS HAVING A FORM OF GODLINESS, BUT DENYING THE POWER THEREIN.” THEY SIT IN CHURCH PEWS, BUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE GOSPEL SIMPLY GO OVER THEIR HEADS.

• LAYMEN HAVE NOT BEEN ENCOURAGED NOR TAPPED TO DO THE WORK OF CHURCH PLANTING.
• CHRISTIANS HAVE CREATED THE WRONG IMPRESSION THAT TO BE CALLED A CHRISTIAN YOU NEED TO GO TO CHURCH EVERY SUNDAY.
• MANY CHRISTIANS ARE AT BEST CHURCH GOERS OR ATTENDEES.

• PEOPLE ARE MORE PROTECTIVE OF THEIR POSITION & POSSESSIONS THAN THEY ARE OF THE GOSPEL AND ITS SPREAD.
• CHURCH HAS BECOME A LOCATION RATHER THAN US.
• MANY CHRISTIANS ARE NOT LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO DISCIPLE

An Unprecedented Movement • In China, there is an unprecedented movement that even surpasses that early growth of the church • and
this unparalleled revival is a house church movement.
• The following is taken from the Caleb Report in the 1990 Jan./Feb. issue of MINISTRIES MAGAZINE. The report is given by Loren Cunningham, founder and president of YWAM

An Unprecedented Movement • "According to the U.S. Center For World Mission, • more than Chinese are coming to Christ each day. • That is the equivalent of seven days of Pentecost every 24 hours and it is happening right now. • Most of this explosion of new belief is coming from China’s rural communities, where 80% of the population of China lives.

An Unprecedented Movement • Jonathan Chao, founder of the
Chinese Church Research Center in Hong Kong
, says the Chinese revival is being spread by young people, mostly ages . • The teenagers go to villages and share the gospel where it has never been heard before. • As converts are organized into small groups, the teens call for the ‘elders, ( ) to come and teach the newly formed home church while the younger Christians go on to reach the next village.

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA • There was Tawpaun, 33, a wife and mother in China, who planted churches in one year & baptized • There was even a 90-year-old Chinese lady who led people to Christ simply by putting up a little sign at a notorious “Lovers’ Leap” saying, “Before you commit suicide, come see me at ___________ (her address).”

Lily & Zhang From Open Doors’ Pierre Tschanz comes a charming report that will make you delighted or embarrassed or both: One of their workers took some bibles to a house church in Central China and gave them to
been saved that day in the house church. two new believers, Lily & Zhang, sisters who had
Around
two years later
, another member of their staff was in the same town and met Lily & Zhang. He wanted to know what they had done since becoming Christians.

Lily & Zhang Ashamed, the two girls blushed & bowed their heads, as though it were an exam.
“We planted churches,” they said.
“How many?” The girls looked at each other cautiously.
“ .” Astonished, the representative asked how many members the church had.
“In the smallest. . .
only come for prayer,” they said humbly.
“And in the largest, no more than… .
”

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA For 21 years Mrs. Chang had lain in bed at her home in China, unable to move her arms or legs. Finally, the pain got to be too much, and she asked her eldest son to take her to the hospital, 40 miles away. The doctors there discovered that some of her organs were almost dead, so they advised her son, “Take her home so she can die with your family.” But before she left, a Christian nurse came by her bed and . “Read this when you get home,” she whispered.

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA When Mrs. Chang got home, about the first thing she did was to ask her son to read something from the booklet.
Opening it to page one, he began: Before he could read any further, Mrs. Chang’s bones started to move.
Within moments, she sat up, completely healed!
healed you? We want to use him too!. She promptly gave her life to the Lord. The next day, on her way to the village well to draw water, she was asked by everyone, “Say, aren’t you Mrs. Chang? What doctor

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA Mrs. Chang invited all the women to her simple home. When a large group had assembled, she stood and began speaking:
“This is the good news of Jesus Christ….”
In only four (4) weeks, all people of the village decided to follow Jesus! From there, the story gets even more interesting: When the report got around, a police force arrived to stamp out this “new sect.”
They beat the villagers, shot their animals, burned the crops, and left, thinking that would be the last they would ever hear about this Jesus Christ.

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA They were oh, so wrong: The 600 converts remained steadfast, and within four years, turned to Christ throughout the whole region. The star of this story? The faithful nurse.

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA IN A RESTRICTED AREA, A GROUP OF BELIEVERS STARTED PROCLAIMING THE GOSPEL IN
.
BY
THEY : • PLANTED
• WON
• TO DATE THEY ESTIMATE THEY COULD WELL BE
OVER A MILLION CHRISTIANS NOW

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA • A WAS INTERVIEWED BY AN AMERICAN VISITOR IN 2004. THE INTERVIEWER NOTICED THAT MRS. NOAH WAS SUNBURNED BECAUSE SHE HAD PUT IN LONG HOURS IN THE FIELDS THAT DAY. A TYPICAL HARD-WORKING FARM FAMILY… • OVER DINNER WITH OTHER GUEATS, THE VISITOR ASKED NOAH, IN HIS BEGINNER’S CHINESE,

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA • HE GOT AN ANSWER THAT SOUNDED TO HIM LIKE • “NO,” HE OBJECTED. “I SAID, ‘HOW MANY FULL-TIME MISSIONARIES DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR CHURCH NETWORK?” • HE GOT THE SAME ANSWER

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA • SO HE WAVED AT HIS INTERPRETER.
• “HEY, I’M TRYING TO ASK THIS GUY NOAH HOW MANY CHURCH PLANTERS HE’S RESPONSIBLE FOR.” • THE INTERPRETER QUERRIED NOAH, THEN REPLIED, “HE SAYS ..

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA • THE AMERICAN COULD’NT QUITE HANDLE THAT . SO HE ASKED, • “WELL – • THE ANSWER WAS:

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA • THE AMERICAN SUDDENLY FELT EXTREMELY HUMBLE TO BE SITTING WITH • LATER IN THE SAME TRIP, HE WAS SMACKED BY AN EVEN LARGER WAVE OF HUMILITY WHEN

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA • AFTER THAT,
WHO LEADS
• AT THAT POINT THIS AMERICAN SAID HE FELT EXTREMELY TINY.
• HE PROBABLY WOULD HAVE FELT DOWNRIGHT INVISIBLE IF HE HAD MET “THE HEAVENLY MAN”

CHURCH GROWTH IN CHINA • THAT’S THE PET NAME OF
, A MUCH LOVED GENTLEMAN WHO PROVIDES LEADERSHIP FOR CHINA’S LARGEST NETWORK OF HOUSE CHURCHES, TOTALING •60,000,000
• HIS MOVEMENT IS PLANNING ON
THIS YEAR!

• Churches plant churches! plant churches! • God has used
willing to be faithful towards the carrying out of the Great Commission.

• As of 1995, India was probably seeing only a few hundred new churches planted per year (all traditional and institutional). • Then they adopted the house church model, where even the dalits (“untouchables”) could go out and plant ever-expanding networks of lay-led, home based congregation.

• With no need to finance buildings or pastors, growth exploded to 20,000 new house churches in 2002 • In 2005, they planted churches new house • Probably Indians became Christians just in 2005, and the numbers are growing fast.

Dramatic Church Growth “
The most dramatic church growth
in history, both in ancient times and in modern times occurred where there were .”

Meanwhile, in
In the small Southern Mexico village of Chiconamiel, an epidemic of black measles swept through in 1998 and quickly killed about forty people.
Two of the victims were teenage girls, daughters of a widow who was a fairly new Christian. By the time the girls died, there was no one left in town healthy enough to carry the girl’s bodies to the graveyard. So the poor woman had to drag both bodies there herself.

Meanwhile, in Mexico • Because of the plague, there were only two young men strong enough to dig graves, so there was a line of 21 corpses waiting to be buried. The woman tenderly laid the bodies at the end of the line, and since it was hot, sprinkled a lot of white lime powder over the bodies as disinfectant. Then she set off walking down the mountain. • The next morning, after eight hours of walking, she reached the town where her Christian contacts lived.

Meanwhile, in Mexico • But since the men were in the midst of a heavy prayer and fasting meeting, she had to wait two hours more to see them.
• By that time, they didn’t think they could climb back up the hill to Chiconamiel before nightfall, so they waited till the next morning. • When they finished the uphill trek, it was evening again, and the girls’ bodies were only three or four away from being buried.

Meanwhile, in Mexico The men gathered around the bodies in a circle, as the disciples did for Paul when he had been stoned and left for dead in Acts 14:19.
They prayed in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and they called the girls by name.
The young men then had a good laugh as they watched the girls trying to spit the lime out of their mouths.

Meanwhile, in Mexico This is but one of the many highly varied occurrences in Sothern Mexico (plus the highlands of Guatemala) that have sprung from the work of the Freedom Ministries staff.
(They’ve stopped counting.) This is the world’s major epicenter of resurrections.

James Rutz says: If you need anything else to persuade you to rethink your life, this is it: . I’m talking about many hundreds since the mid 80’s, perhaps over a thousand by now. There’s a blizzard of reports. And I’m not referring to “near-death experiences” (NDEs), the common phantasm with a tunnel and a light at the end, where Buddhists meet Buddha, Catholics meet Mary, etc. I’m talking about people who were stone dead for up to three days. Five years ago, I was amazed to hear of resurrection reports from eight countries. Now it exploded to .

Athet Pyan Shintaw Paulu was born in 1958 in the town of Bogale on the Irrawaddy Delta in Southern Burma (now Myanmar).
He became a zealous Buddhist monk and
died in 1998, remaining dead for three days.
Then at the end of his funeral, just moments before his coffin was to be shut and cremated,
in front of the hundreds of people, shouting:

“It’s all a lie! I saw our ancestors burning and being tortured in some kind of fire. I also saw Buddha and many other Buddhist holy men. They were all in a sea of fire!...

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ • One of the seven leaders of China’s Church Planting Movement is Wang Xin Cai, a tough-as nails, highly outspoken man about 5’3”.
• Wang spent 13 years in prison loading rocks onto trucks by hand.
His daily quota was a staggering 20 tons.
• By 1996, his health was broken, and he was near death. The government didn’t want the embarrassment of top religious leader dying in prison, so they sent him home to die with his family.

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ
• • God healed him! • The next year, he and his wife had a second child, another girl. The first was three years old at his arrest. He returned to find she was a

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ • Though things were going well for him, Wang was quite distressed by a major problem: At that time, there were just four major strands of the Chinese church that had ever cooperated with one another, and even they had unraveled from each other because of some minor differences. Suspicion and condemnation reigned all across the land.
• He saw this as a major threat to the future of the church in China, so in December he called for a summit meeting in his city in Henan province.

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ • On the morning the other three leaders were arriving, Wang’s daughter was hanging out clothes on a clothesline attached to their fourth floor apartment. She had the baby in a baby pack, but as she leaned out, • the baby twisted unexpectedly and fell out,
plunging three floors to instant death, her head split wide open.
• In a state of shock, Wang gathered up the remains, put the body on a blanket, and laid it on a couch in his living room.

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ • Then he prayed loudly,
“Lord, if this unity meeting is of You, then You have to heal my daughter.
If you don’t, I’m finished serving you because I just can’t take it anymore. And I’ll know that this unity vision is not of You.” • He then left his heart behind and staggered off to the meeting-to struggle earnestly for unity in the church.

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ • After a hard day of prayer and negotiation, Wang returned home and looked at the couch.
The baby was still dead, but amazingly, her head was together again, in one piece!
In faith, Wang gave thanks. • The next morning, there was no change, but instead of staying to pray, he left for another day of conference. That evening, he returned home to find the baby breathing! But she was in a deep coma. Again he gave thanks.

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ • The third morning, he put his feelings behind him as best he could and went to the meeting again.
• That was a day of salvation for the church in
China.
• In a breakthrough of immense importance,
the four brothers resolved their differences and found ways to work together as body of Christ.
The largest church on earth was saved from perhaps decades of fragmentation and destructive conflict.

The Most Important Resurrection Since Christ • Returning home that evening, Wang Xin Cai found his daughter awake, alert, eating happily, and perfectly whole in every way.

The Only Known Cure for AIDS If you have AIDS or are HIV positive, your best bet is a quick trip to Africa, where people are being cured in churches.
For instance, the Synagogue Church of all Nations was
founded 7 years ago with only 8 people.
give or take. Their pastor, T. B. Joshua, can’t pray for everyone who attends, but he prays for quite a few.

The Only Known Cure for AIDS So far, over have been cured of AIDS, each attested by
two medical certificates (before and after)
. In fact, to belong to their “AIDS Congregation,” you must present three certificates, the third one dated three months after your healing. (Caution: Opinions about Joshua are divided, A number of local leaders claim he is involved with the occult; others defend him in great detail.)

The Only Known Cure for AIDS John K. Nduati meets with universal approval.
He is currently seeing about a week healed at his church in Nairobi.
victims

• In June, 1999, two Korean women came to pray for a village in Uzbekistan. Although they spoke only Korean, they were invited (by gestures) to enter a home and pray for an old man, who was unable to move. • One of the ladies, Kim, said later,
“The lame man begin to wriggle, and then stood up as though someone has just cut his chains. He was healed”.
• But as he got to his feet, the Koreans suddenly realized that the impressed bystanders had no idea why the man was healed. So in desperation, Kim began explaining the gospel in Korean, hoping they would understand a word or two and catch the drift.

• To their amazement, the people listened in rapt attention for the next 20 minutes because More than 40 people became followers of Christ that day!
• “And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another… How can this be? We hear them speaking the languages of the lands where we were born.” Acts 2:7-8

IN ARGENTINA • Two years later and a half a world away,
a 12 year-old gypsy girl died in Argentina.
community had been rejected.
She had been a Christian for some months, but her attempts to be witness to the tightly knit gypsy • In the wee hours of the morning, in the middle of her funeral wake,
causing the people in attendance to jump up, rejoice and dance, and start dismantling the funeral setup.

IN ARGENTINA • “Don’t take anything down!” the girl warned.
• “Jesus told me to return just to tell you that
He loves you and that you have to accept Him if you want to be saved.
• That’s the only reason why I’m here. At ten o’clock, Jesus will come back for me, so leave everything like it is.” • At 10A.M., her Lord Jesus came back and took her home.
• Her gypsy friends swarmed into the kingdom.

A Most Intricate Miracle • Wolf Simson, editor of the Friday Fax , read by seven million readers, is at the vortex of information on church growth.
• In 1998 he began to feel God wanted him to leave India and move to a more strategic location. He asked a number of his Christian friends to seek God for guidance on his behalf.
• It wasn’t long in coming.

A Most Intricate Miracle • One of them (Bernard Ankoma of Ghana) said, “You’re going to go back to the homeland of your mother.” • Another said, “Borders. I see a place surrounded by national borders.” • Another said, “I see a nice, clean river. Your place is near a bend in the river.” • Yes, its hilly country, “ someone else chimed in, ”and I have the name of that river. It’s the Rhine.”

A Most Intricate Miracle • A YWAM staff member added, “Your home is the middle unit in a triplex. Its got green doors, green window frames, and there’s a chimney on one end.” • “And don’t worry about money,” one declared.
“I know you don’t have any, but God’s got it for you.”
• In all, ten friends responded to Wolfgang’s request for help. On that basis, he and his wife, Mercy, packed up and went to his mother’s homeland, Germany. Arriving there, they went to a town near the Rhine and soon found the triplex with the green windows and doors and the chimney.

A Most Intricate Miracle • (In July 2000, James Rutz, author of MegaShift, stayed with the Simsons, and he said their home was indeed in a little finger of German territory that juts out into Switzerland near Zurich; there are Swiss borders on three sides within 700 meters) • The unit was for sale, and he found the owner and introduced himself, “Hello, I’m Wolfgang Simson.” • “Oh, yeah, ”he replied, “ the guy who’s going to buy my house. God told me someone named Simson was going to buy it. You must be a Christian, too, so here’s the keys.
Don’t worry about money
, we’ll do the paperwork later. Just give me a down payment when you get it.”

A Most Intricate Miracle • After they got most of their things moved in, Wolfgang decided to clean out the mailbox, as the unit had been vacant for a while. One envelope in the pile was from Switzerland. • It was addressed only to the street number. Inside was a letter from a man he’d never heard of, saying, • “The Lord has given us this address & impressed
upon us that we are to send you fifty thousand Swiss francs. Please send your name and account information so we can wire the money.”

GOD INTERVENES • A lot of today’s miracles cannot be traced to any
human efforts-not our faith or obedience or evangelism or sensitive response to the voice of God.
• They just happen because God saw a need and
decided to handle it Himself.
• On Christmas Eve, 1998, a young Hindu named Mohan Kanojia rounded up 25 of his friends to form a hit squad and kill a church planter, a 55 year-old Mannu Lal. After a few drinks and sacrifices to evil spirits, they set out on their mission of murder.

GOD INTERVENES • They never got close to Lal. On the road,
Jesus himself suddenly appeared in great authority,
booming out one nerve-shattering command: • The shaken assassin repented and today is
planting churches
alongside Lal among leather workers in Madhya Pradesh state, India.

It’s Not About You
• Sometimes
God does a miracle unrelated to your needs, mostly to show us how wonderful He is.
• On several occasions,
specific mission He has brought someone back to life for a few set hours or days-for a
usually evangelistic.
• In the state of Bihar, India, there is a notoriously anti-Christian tribe called the Malto. When a crew with Campus Crusade’s Jesus film attempted to schedule a showing there in 1998, they were strongly rebuffed.

It’s Not About You
• A few days later, a 16-year-old Malto girl died. But that evening, just as her parents were about to bury her,
.
• As an awed crowd gathered around her, she told them that the God of the film crew has sent her back for seven days “to tell as many people as I can that He is real.”

It’s Not About You
• The girl and her mother went searching, and the next day, they found the crew in a nearby village and invited them back for a showing. For seven days she told her story in every village they could get to, drawing large crowds for the film.
.
• After seven days the girl still looked fine, but she collapsed and died once again

“
”

What is Church?
• “The Greek word for church, ekklesia, is composed of two words: “ek” meaning “out of,” and “kalleo,” meaning “I call.” • The full and simple meaning of “church” according to the original word is, “I call out from.” • When Jesus said, “I will build my church,” He was saying,
“I will call My people out of the world, and they will assemble in My name, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against them.”

What is Church?
being
Robert Fitts

What is Church?
Jesus said…
a. Make disciples b. Baptize them c. Teach them to obey all that I have commanded

The church is and not a building… • and not an organization • not a business • nor an institution are the people of God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who died on the cross to pay for our sins.
• We seek to relate to the whole body of Christ within our locality and not just to those who attend our fellowship.

What is Church?
• John Eldredge reminds us: • Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. • 'I go to First Baptist.' 'We are members of St. Luke's.' 'Is it time to go to church?‘ That is not how the Bible uses the term. That is it. Nothing more.
—those who are …

What is Church?
• My Filipino friend,
Molong Nacua
, wrote an excellent article entitled "Being Church" that reminds us of the true meaning of "church:" , not the place where we meet. • It is • a kingdom of priests for the purpose of winning against the works of the devil and establishing God's Kingdom (1 Cor. 3:17; Matt. 18:19; Ex. 19:6)

What is Church?
• Christianity is not about doing church, but being
the church.
• Church is not some place to go to participate in, but
it is about being who you are in Christ and thus experiencing His real life in you.
• Your Christianity was never defined by attending a particular church.
It is defined by Christ in you.
• In other words, because you participate in a two-hour worship service, but
day.
you are a Christian 24/7,
• because Christ lives in you every minute of every
Molong Nacua
not

• Wolfgang Simson describes his vision of what the church, unhindered, is becoming: • [I dream of a]
church, which does not need huge amounts of money, or rhetoric, control and manipulation
• which can do
without powerful and charismatic heroes
• which is non-religious at heart • which can thrill people to the core, make them lose their
tongues out of sheer joy and astonishment
• and simply teach us the Way to live. • A church which not only has a message, but is the message. • Something which spreads like an unstoppable virus, infects
whatever it touches, and ultimately covers the earth with the glory and knowledge of God

Before While After
Jesus was born, where would we have to go to be in the presence of God? The holy of holies in the Temple in Jerusalem Jesus was walking this planet, where would we have to go to be in God’s presence? Wherever Jesus was. the death, burial, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost, where do we need to go to be in the presence of God? Wherever God’s people are together (Matt. 18:20).

5 things we need to understand about church

24/7
lifestyle • The house church community is houses. about • Surrounded and supported by close, loyal friends—brothers and sisters who are committed to protecting you and helping you along in your walk with God.

• A house church is a !
• No frills. No ceremony. No rituals. No symbolism. • It is simply a time for the people of God to
come together with Jesus in the midst.

WHAT IS A HOUSE CHURCH?
• A house church is New Testament practice. • The of the early church was just that!
• They were not trying to follow a "pattern" that they read about somewhere.
• They were .

WHAT IS A HOUSE CHURCH?
• It is the Spirit of Jesus who guides us in all our gatherings. • He brings all the of his presence into each meeting by using anyone he chooses to minister.

They talk. They sing.
They pray. They eat a meal together. They share what God is doing in their lives. They intercede for people and for all kinds of needs all over the world. They minister one to another through the gifts God has given each one. They love one another They take the holy communion together They study the Bible.
They seek to encourage one another They build each other up in their faith.

House Church Based Church Planting are a communal expression that and functioning as a spiritual family with traits or characteristics of a New Testament Church.. Though it is a RELATIVELY NEW MODEL it is a viable option for young churches that have limited resources for land and buildings.

HOUSE CHURCHES ARE • To plant a house church you do not need to buy property or build a building. • You won’t need a pulpit or pews or hymnbooks or a piano. • You can do without a baptistery, a Sunday School and a youth pastor.

HOUSE CHURCHES ARE • You won’t have to belong to a denomination or be incorporated or meet on Sundays or have a church bulletin or meet in the same place every week.
• You won’t have to have a sign with the name of your church on it. • It won’t need a name.

HOUSE CHURCHES ARE • In fact, you don’t even have to call it a "church" as long as you know that it is "the church, which is His Body". • None of the above is bad or wrong, but neither are they essential. • The apostle Paul used none of the above in his church-planting ministry.

HOUSE CHURCHES ARE • We have left the of the New Testament and added so many extras, which are really not essential, that it has become more and more difficult to start a new church. • A HOUSE CHURCH IS • We make it too complex. • God is calling us back to simplicity and .

What does this tell you?
• It tells you that
since the rise of the priesthood class in the second century.

What does this tell you?
• What we are seeing today is the greatest mega-shift in the history of the church: • Which is to say,
are finally starting to take the ball and run with it.

What does this tell you?
• Empowerment of non-professional Christians
is behind most of the miracles we see today.
• Paid leaders are realizing (with great relief) that their job is not to do all the ministry work, but to equip others to do it • (which is exactly what Ephesians 4:12 says).

What does this tell you?
• In total contrast, a poll of several traditional U.S. churches asked members about the direction in which empowerment flows: • In your expression of the body of Christ, is it your experience that the resources are expected to flow… A. From you to the leaders, so that they might fulfill their ministries and visions.
B. From them to you, so that you might fulfill yours.
• Answer A was nearly unanimous.

The Holy Spirit is rapidly revising Christianity He is putting at the core of his new church small groups that are: • Interactive • Informal • Exciting and • Geared to rapid multiplication

This is the beginning of the end for Spectator Christianity • Suddenly,
except sitting in a row on Sundays, sometimes listening to the preacher & looking at the back of someone’s head, and wondering if your team will win in the afternoon game on TV.

This is the beginning of the end for Spectator Christianity • For centuries,
the main way to express your Christian identity has been by
“going to church”
• There, a lone, overworked pastor exhorted you to be holy, love your neighbor, be salt and light, and do great stuff for God.

The 100x Church Hits the Field Running
• The church’s “fighting force” is thus being
• as God
large, passive audiences into small, power-filled teams where .

The 100x Church Hits the Field Running
• Instead of one pastor doing the heavy lifting while 100 players watch (and often criticize), you may have
100
sharing the work of ministry while various people with pastoral gifts coach and equip from the sidelines. • This megashift to EMPOWERMENT is at the core of the .

• traditional churches tend to produce spiritual babies, • small simple house churches maturity tend to produce is an acronym for: orn gain ut s njoying iesta

• These
traditional congregations are smaller than • about 6-20 instead of 75 or so

• When a team enters a village, they ask God to show them the house of a (That’s a person of either sex who is hospitable, modestly influential, and open to the gospel. • In
Luke 10
, Jesus ordered His disciples to build their work in each town on such people rather than going door to door.)

• In every village, as they pray, the
Holy Spirit points out to them a certain house
- and reveals unknowable things about the occupants, such as hidden sins, special needs, or the presence of occult objects. • They just knock on the door.
Most of the people are so touched that they quickly accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and become the hub of a new house church.

• The potential of locking two elephants-or
-in a closet for three years. • Ignoring all practical problems and calculating the mere mathematics of gestation periods, litter size, etc.
• You would have
476 million rabbits
. • MORAL: • To think really big, think small.

An Example of the Group-by Group Approach
• A Vietnamese pastor named Ai was in jail for being a Christian. There he met a young man I’ll call Duc from the “Tai Dang” tribe and led him to Christ.
• After their releases, Ai started Duc in a Bible training course for remote church planters. It’s a four-level course.
• In the first level, the student has one month
to lead five others to the Lord.

An Example of the Group-by Group Approach
• After that month, Ai was surprised to get a phone call from Duc, asking if he would journey to the Tai Dang area to baptize his converts. His answer in brief was, • “Why should I travel all that way just to baptize five people?” (I would have added, “Baptize your own converts!”) • Duc replied,

Bigger example of Group-by Group
• In 1999, a Chinese man led an underground six-day Evangelism Explosion seminar in China. Near the end, he gave his students a vague assignment.
• “For the next sixteen weeks, do just what you’ve been doing here for the last six days.” • One of his students took him literally. For sixteen weeks, he trained his church in Evangelism Explosion techniques seven days a week. As a result of this error, • over
about Christians! people heard the gospel, and of them decided to become

Bigger example of Group-by Group
• In Goiania, Brazil (pop. 1,2000,000), the busy capital of Goias state.
• Back in 1989, a housewife and mother named Elizabeth Cornelio became concerned about Goiania because it was a major center for prayer with four women from other churches.

Bigger example of Group-by Group
• Then in 1993, she invited Christians all over the city to unite and pray.
• When
850 showed up,
her pastor kicked her out of the church, saying, “Members of other churches are not spiritual brothers and sisters; they are at most spiritual cousins.” • (A good example of the thinking you won’t find in today’s open fellowships.)

Bigger example of Group-by Group
• Currently, almost
200,000 women pray for the city everyday,
linked by her radio program. • When the program had to go off the air from March through May of 1999, the crime rate quickly ballooned by
. • The city sent a delegation including the mayor and police chief, beseeching her to get back on the air. • (She did and the crime rate sank.)

Bigger example of Group-by Group
Goiania does have own way: for people • a few that day.
rabbit teams, which on a typical weekend will start one new church
every believer in town gets into the act in his or her • Christian midwives anoint newborns with oil,
dedicating them to Jesus
• Christians walk the aisles in the supermarkets, praying
preach in bars,
(altogether). But to great effect and • some even get up at 4:00 a.m. to walk through the empty streetcars, praying that God will bless each rider

Bigger example of Group-by Group
• The result? • In seven years, evangelicals in Goiania went from 7% of the population to

With Facts Like These, Who Needs Theories?
• Kazakhstan went from 100 evangelicals in 1990 to
in 2000.
• Between 1990 and 2004, Christians in Cambodia grew from 200 to
.
• Until about 1990, the death rate from unnatural causes in Colombia’s Bellavista Prison was 600 a year ---all murders! It quickly sank to one a year when prisoners began receiving Christ in large numbers.

With Facts Like These, Who Needs Theories?
• Guatemala is now
Neighboring
El Salvador
born-again Christians. is at
.
• In 1981
Rio de Janeiro
had 30 spiritist center for each evangelical church. By 1996, that had flip flopped to 40 spiritist center.
evangelical churches for each • About 25,000 house churches were started in
India in 2002.
The more well-informed networks are growing at over 100% a year.

With Facts Like These, Who Needs Theories?
• In beleaguered Kurdistan, there were no believers in 1992. Today, there are .
• “In Mongolia the 500 believers have suddenly jumped to
.” • A confidential survey in India (about 1995) showed that
25% of the people would like to become Christians if they could stay in their family groupings! (House Church)
• In the Fugou area of china’s Henan province,
of the people are Christians now.

With Facts Like These, Who Needs Theories?
• Swedish radio mission IBRA estimates,
“In the Middle East, there are perhaps millions of isolated ‘radio Christians’
who have become Christians through hearing evangelistic transmissions…” • More Muslims have turned to Christ in the last
ten years
than in the previous 1,000 years.

With Facts Like These, Who Needs Theories?
More than 100,000 members of the Hmong tribe in northern Vietnam have turned to the Lord after listening to Christians radio programs.
No missionaries involved. This was discovered by accident because none of them were literate enough to write the station and report their massive response.

How Is Satan Going to Stop 707,000,000 Missionaries?
Very short story: An elderly man in India got saved, then started
churches-in his first year.
• The moral of the story:
1. It’s never too late to start planting churches.
2. You can move real fast if you don’t have to build buildings.
3. You can move even faster if you don’t have to hire pastors to do all the work (Just let the people do the work. What a concept!)

How Is Satan Going to Stop 707,000,000 Missionaries?
4. You don’t need an M.Div. (master of divinity), special ordination, or even a year of Bible study to start telling people about the new life in Christ. Its basically simple.
A famous German theologian was once asked if he could summarize his theology briefly. He replied with the classic children’s songs:
Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so.

How Is Satan Going to Stop 707,000,000 Missionaries?
5. It’s easy to start a
family-like church that meets in a house.
That elderly Indian was sharp, but not a world beater. He wasn’t very far ahead of the pack. For example, in 2001 JAMES RUTZ gave the contents of the book MEGA SHIFT as a 2-day seminar in India, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and one country where he had to go undercover. Total attendance was about 2,000 (
90% laymen!
).
At the end, he polled them, asking, are already doing it.
. And that wasn’t hot air; they

With Facts Like These, Who Needs Theories?
humans now have access to the entire Bible in their own language.
• As of 1970, Nepal had 5,200 Christians. As of 2000, it’s
.
• In Hainan province, China, a revival sparked in part by an American grew . During the annual “month of evangelism” there, they now expect each believer to try to bring at least one other person to faith in Christ.

WORKSHOP: Who will you send to start House church Discuss how to organize a house church Bible Study outline for House churches

Traditional vs. Simple
Institutional Approach
Seating: Rows only
Simple Approach
Circle(s) Environment: Anonymous Intimate Leader Source: From institutions of higher learning From the harvest Growth: Addition where it can be found Results: An audience is attracted Ministry Practitioners The Ordained Resources Imported to the harvest Primary Leadership: Pastoral/Teacher Multiplication at every level An army is raised up The Ordinary Discovered in the harvest Apostolic Team

Traditional vs. Simple
Institutional Approach
Learning Lab: Classroom-based education Cost: Expensive Ministry Location: The Meeting Place Goal: Deeper Knowledge Success: Full seating capacity Church Posture: Passive: Y’all Come!
Attraction: Felt Need Programming Expectations: Conversions are surprising
Simple Approach
Trench-based education Inexpensive The Marketplace Deeper Relationships Full sending capacity Active: We all Go!
Obvious Life Transformation Conversions are expected

PARADIGM SHIFT • But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are a , GOD’S holy nation, HIS very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of GOD, for HE called you out of the darkness into HIS wonderful light. 1Peter 2:9

PARADIGM SHIFT • We are a and are not dependent upon a "special" priesthood to understand the Bible.

PARADIGM SHIFT • "I have become the servant (of the church) by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness, the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery…" (Colossians 1:25-27)
. To them God has

PARADIGM SHIFT • The following words of the apostle, Paul, show that the New Testament was written for the .

PARADIGM SHIFT • Our goal is not just to start a church.
• Our goal is to .
• The house church meets that need.

PARADIGM SHIFT • We believe the house church concept is the
best way to train pastors and leaders.

PARADIGM SHIFT • In most countries today it is the only way to get a church planting movement going.
• God is calling his people to break with traditionalism and professionalism and get back to .

PARADIGM SHIFT • We are in competition with other churches. • We are with them to help fulfill the Great Commission.

PARADIGM SHIFT all the churches in every city, large or small, denominational, non-denominational, or inter-denominational.
• We are simply presenting Word of God and that has that is based on the .

PARADIGM SHIFT

PARADIGM SHIFT and • marrying • burying as a church, doing all the things that churches do, including: • baptizing • serving communion

PARADIGM SHIFT

PARADIGM SHIFT • God is calling us to take a further step and recognize that • God is stirring and shaking our present church structures and bringing us back to basics. Much of what we now have come to think of as essential is not really essential at all when we look at the

• TRAIN EVERY BELIEVER TO SHARE THE
GOSPEL & TO MAKE DISCIPLES!
• EQUIP & EMPOWER EVERY CHURCH
MEMBER TO BE A MINISTER!
• REMIND EVERY BELIEVER OF THE “
WE ALL NEED TO FULFILL ROYAL PRIESTHOOD” & “THE GREAT COMMISION”

I believe that the next breed of Believers will not be called by their denominational names but by His Name: They will not be merely called 'Christians,' but whose commission is to go &make disciples; not church-goers.
Molong Nacua