Viral Jesus Give-Away
I’m incredibly excited to be reading Viral Jesus by Ross Rohde. For those of you who don’t know Ross, he has been blogging for almost two years about initiating Jesus movements similar to what God has done in the New Testament and in China. He’s also an organic church planter who has experience starting multiple house churches in places that are resistant to the gospel. Needless to say, he’s the kind of guy we like here at Pursuing Glory.
So to help get the word out about Ross’ book and promote some more discussion about spawning Jesus movements in the West, I’ve decided to give away a free copy of Viral Jesus here on the blog. Now most blog giveaways I’ve seen require you to subscribe to an email list, follow someone on Twitter, or follow you on your Facebook group. And while you’re welcome to get involved at a deeper level with what we’re doing here, we’re going to do this a bit differently.
In order to win “Viral Jesus” I want you to answer the question that Ross asks with his book: “What will it take to see a rapidly reproducing movement of Jesus followers take root in the West?” Anyone who writes an answer and posts it online for others to see will be entered into our give away. You can post it on your blog, your Facebook Notes, your Tumblr account, or your Google+ account. Really anywhere people can see it will be great. Then email me, tweet me, message me on Facebook, or leave me a comment in comment field about how to find your response. I will read the responses and publish the best response here on the blog on March 5th, 2012, along with the links to the other responses. The winner will receive a free copy of “Viral Jesus.”
The Apostolic Pattern (Why Are Multiplying Churches Necessary? Part 3)
This is Part 3 in the Series “Why Are Multiplying Churches Necessary?” It would be helpful to read Part 1 and Part 2.
“Jesus lives on in an apostolic mission that advances by church multiplication.” – Wolfgang Simson
If you’re familiar with the New Testament, you know Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke as a historical account of Jesus before, during, and immediately after the cross. What some don’t realize is the book of Acts is Luke’s historical account of the resurrected Jesus’ activity as He leads and guides the church into the very activities that characterized His ministry on Earth (cf. John 14:12-14, Acts 1:1-3). The heart of the matter is this: Jesus’ post resurrection ministry was lived out through the church in the book of Acts in the form of a multiplying church movement.
Let’s look at some quick facts. The Church Jesus left was insubstantial compared to the crowds who had followed Him before His death. Paul speaks of Christ appearing to 500 people after His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Since this is the highest number of post-resurrection numbers spoken of and Paul refers to these men as brothers, my assumption is they were the lump some of Jesus’ followers. Yet, by the early third century, this relatively obscure band of five hundred had become somewhere between 5 and 10% of the Roman Empire and up to 30% of some major cities.
The book of Acts records the harvest in language that should both stun us and move us to action. When Peter preaches at Pentecost in Acts Chapter 2, a massive harvest of 3,000 new believers come to the Lord. Luke describes it this way: and there were added that day about three thousand souls (Acts 2:41). This continued on for a season in the life of the early church (Acts 2:47, 5:14) and the results were significant growth that all of us would love to have.
However, eventually the church began to feel the burden of it’s growth. The result was a decision to multiply leadership beyond the apostles to the men we refer to as deacons in Acts 6. When this multiplication of ministry happened, a small but significant shift occurs in Luke’s story. Instead of the church having new members added to them, the church begins to multiply (Acts 6:7). The church didn’t just multiply one time. It multiplied several times (Acts 9:31, 12:24)
This is more than just semantics. The shift in language represents the fact that instead of just a few people doing much of the work, many people were embracing the mission of God. See, addition works like this: 2+2+2+2+2+2=12. Multiplication works like this: 2x2x2x2x2x2=64. The more multiplication you have happening the bigger the results. This is why Paul would tell Timothy to take what he had taught him and teach it to faithful men who would teach it to other faithful men (2 Timothy 2:2). It was a God-sized idea to expand the Kingdom.
And you couldn’t stop this multiplying church. Its multiplication made it hard to know where it started or ended. Before you knew it, this little group of Jesus followers became a multitude that had no visible leader. You could kill one of the leaders, but another would rise in its place. It’s why human’s hate viruses: they multiply out of control. This is what allowed the first century church to reach an unprecedented amount of people in such a short period of time.
Beloved we find ourselves in a season of history where we must recapture the spirit of evangelism and multiplication that gripped the early church. This isn’t a call to return to only first century practices, but to capture those elements that made them vital and caused the Gospel to spread like a virus throughout earth. Jesus is worthy of His name going forth and redeeming many in this hour. May we, like them, be consumed for His name’s sake and see the church multiply in the Earth.
Photo Credit: Onion Cells by Kaibara87
Antioch 2009, All Things Starfish, and Haven In The Hood
About two years ago Christy and I by the providence of God found ourselves at the Tribal Gathering hosted by Rock International. While Christy and I try to make a habit of going to the Tribal Gathering as often as possible, this year God seemed to have something up His sleeve. A work schedule that should have been impossible to navigate opened up and we found ourselves in the middle of a series of meetings that blew our minds.
The Rock’s guest that year was Wolfgang Simson, a German missions expert who wrote the mind-bending book, Houses That Change the World. To make a long story short, my life was dramatically shifted during that weekend in a way that’s hard to explain. Wolfgang unveiled his vision for multiplying house church movements being used to win masses for Jesus at the end of the age. He likened the process to a starfish, which can be multiplied many times over but never dies throughout the process.
Without going into a ton of detail, this “Starfish Vision” called for a gathering of believers to meet in Antioch in 2009 to gather before the Lord and repent for having missionary agendas that were not the Lord’s. This meeting, however, was only to serve as a springboard to a more significant gathering where house church leaders from around the world would gather to hear God’s plan for gathering in the last great harvest. I think it may look something like this.
Needless to say I was intrigued by the idea of the Antioch meeting and never forgot about it. Well, two years have come and gone and this meeting finally occurred. In the last few weeks, several of those who were there have written about what happened. You can read Guy Muse’s very personal observations here. You can get Tony Dale’s perspective here. And last but not least get the thoughts of the guy who called the whole thing together (Wolf) here.
And as if that wasn’t enough at the gathering, Wolfgang and Mercy released the finalized version of the Starfish Manifesto. The Starfish Manifesto is the culmination of a couple of years of waiting on the Lord, hearing His voice, and pairing apostolic strategy with prophetic insight. I have not read this version, but the early version I saw was amazing and challenged me to go deeper in the things that God started in me that weekend two years ago. You can download the final version of the Starfish Manifesto here.
And finally, turning our attention from Antioch back a little closer to home, I want recommend to my readers a new blog “Haven In The Hood.” The blog features two new friends of ours who moved out of suburbia and into a neighborhood not too far from us. The blog is their story about creating a little place of refuge where many think none could be had. You can check them out here.
Cluster Map
