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Wednesday March 5th- 10:30-17:30 General Encouragement and Vision for Simple Churches. Rich Correll will be in town to share and discuss principles of simple, reproducing churches with those who are doing it and those who are interested in it. This event is open to all interested people. It will take place at 4 Svitoshinskaya, Apartment 85 near Svitoshin Metro. Call Timmy 8 097 926-0675 for specific directions.

Please let us know if you will attend the event on March 5th by sending a simple response to Timmy Powers at this address- timmy.powers@gcmweb.org or to Maxim Nikolaev at m.nikolaeff@gmail.com.

Announcing a New Resource:

Please look in our resource section to find an excellent new article titled People of Purpose. This is a resource that Ed Waken shared with us at the conference in November. Whether you attended the conference or not, you will find this to be helpful information.

Also, if you are new to our site, please look under the resource page to find the books we have available in Russian.

Recently, a group of believers involved in simple churches in Kiev met together for encouragement and instruction.

A desire was expressed to meet together as simple churches at least every 6 weeks, and to also have special training times together.

We have already planned 4 such opportunities for the next couple of months. The first opportunity is a baptism for new believers from our simple churches. This will happen on Saturday, February 9th. If you are interested in your simple church taking part in the Baptism, or any of our other upcoming events. Please write Maxim Nikolaev at m.nikolaeff@gmail.com for more information.

UPD. Baptism. Photoreport

Picture yourself this fine day at the hospital and you have just come in from the waiting room to the doctor's office. What's the first question the doctor has for you?: "Tell me where it hurts?" You answer, "Oh, Doc, I had some bad food last night and my stomach hurts terribly." Now imagine that your "condition" has no obvious symptoms and that you have had this condition from birth.

Also imagine that it has been passed on to you from your father, who got it from his father, etc. If your doctor were to ask you where it hurts, you couldn't give him any answer, even though he could clearly see the problem on your X-ray. In some ways, I think this small scenario accurately describes the Church today, 2000 years after its inception. We aren't aware of any major "hurts" (i.e. symptoms) and, therefore, can't get an accurate diagnosis of our condition.

The premise of this e-letter is to explore with you the idea that New Testament Christianity died in the year 313 A.D., the year Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan and made Christianity a legal religion. The tragedy is that so many of us are completely unaware of the global impact this event had on the church of Jesus Christ for the last 1,700 years.

In 2008 we will regularly have gatherings of those involved in planting and leading simple churches. These will be times of encouragement, discussion, and training. Some of these events will be 1 day, and at other times there will be 2 day events.

The first event of this year will be on Saturday, January 19th from 9:30-5:30. The gathering will take place at 4 Svitoshinskaya, Apt. 85 (18th floor) not far from Svitoshin Metro Station in Kiev. Please let us know of your plans to attend on or before January 16th, so that we can make plans for food. If you would like to register or need more info, please contact Maxim Nikolaev at m.nikolaeff@gmail.com or (093) 571-99-44. This will be a great time to learn from and encourage one another, so we hope many of you can be with us.

Here is a simple approach to begin a new organic church. This simple approach is not 'easy' but if you follow these steps, a church will emerge. If you apply these principles, please write us and let us know about your experience. You can e-mail me(edwaken@cox.net) with your experiences.

The following steps are NOT meant to be followed in a prescribed order. These are principles that will more often be layered on top of another. The key is that all of these principles need to be practiced with various people all the time.

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Scripture seems to paint two contradictory portraits of the Living God—a terrible judge and a loving Father. Which is it? Can he be both?

 We read not only that God has prepared hell for the unbe­lieving, but also that he commanded Joshua to practice ethnic cleansing in Canaan, poured out fire from heaven to consume Sodom and Gomorrah and opened the earth to swallow those who opposed Moses. Unapproachable in his purity, even the most righteous fell on their faces near his presence paralyzed by their unworthiness. He demanded unquestioning obedience and punished with unspeakable anguish those who did not comply.

 No wonder we’re at least a little confused when he appears in the New Testament telling us how much he loves us and inviting us to be his children. We see Jesus healing the sick, forgiving prostitutes and murderers, going into the houses of sinners. He invited children in his lap and portrayed his Father as so tender that the most wayward sinner could run to his side in absolute safety.

 So what happened to God? Did he get saved somewhere between Malachi and Matthew? Had he reinvented himself into a nicer, gentler God? Of course not! He is unchanging, the same throughout all eternity.

"You want to know what I've learned this weekend?" the man said as he drove me to a Midwest airport early one morning. We'd just spent an incredible weekend together with a house church he'd helped foster and another group of believers who joined us when they heard I was in town. The latter were deeply conflicted about their current involvement with a congregation that sounded abusive. "I've been selling the wrong thing!" he continued.

"What's that?" I asked oblivious to what we were talking about.

"I've been selling house church," he said shaking his head with a sigh, "instead of Jesus." Obviously he wasn't talking about ‘selling' anything, but I love his discovery. Almost everywhere I go people are preoccupied with finding the right way to do church. It seems our hunger for church outstrips our hunger for Jesus.

As a missionary to China, Roland Allen asked the question, "Why do we choose to use methods that produce mediocre results rather than following the biblical example of the missionary methods of Paul which produced abundant fruit.  I believe he asked this question in both amazement and without comprehending the rationale behind using methods which were ineffective or marginal.  Why should we not just follow Paul's plain example.