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Keys to missional community: 1. Go to the people 2. People of Peace. 3. Living Kingdom lives

One of the hallmarks of the simple church movement is that it seeks to be what the church, in fact, is: missional. Jesus went everywhere proclaiming and demonstrating the reality, love, and power of the Kingdom (healing the brokenhearted, setting captives free, proclaiming God’s acceptance, etc.) The church (the people of God) goes and does the same.

Have you ever heard of Dunbar’s Number? According to Robin Dunbar, there is a maximum number of relationships a person can have due to cognitive limitations and social group sizes. According to Dunbar, the average person can have a maximum of 150 meaningful relationships with a broader range of 100-230 relationships. The larger the number, the more restrictive or superficial the relationships become.

I would venture to say that most of us don’t think very strategically about the limitations of our relationships. Of course we have our immediate relations to our family and extended family. Beyond that we have our friends and church family. Once you factor in the “given’s”, the number of available meaningful relationships is relatively small. That means we need to be careful in how we invest our lives cognitively and missionally for the sake of the gospel.

Knowing these limitations, why not come up with a plan on how to leverage your relational margin for the sake of gospel advance? How many relationships could be acquaintances? Neighbors? Friends? You can’t change the world with 500 relationships, but you can change a neighborhood with 10. I fear the problem with most of us is that we have failed to consider these limitations and leverage our relational margin at all for gospel causes. To correct that, we need to begin with examining our relationships and make efforts to demonstrate personal hospitality, receptivity, and availability for God to use us in the lives of others.

Hello, We would like to thank for your participation in the Simple Church Website. It is our desire that this website would be an encouragement to you and a profitable resource for your ministry.

 In case you have not noticed, we have added a new component to our website. This new area of the site is called Community. We are still perfecting it, but our desire is that the community part of the site will look and work very similar to Facebook. It will be a place for you to put a photo and info about yourself. You can share articles, weblinks, videos and photos with others on the site. You will be able to create groups, have discussions, and even chat with others who are online. We are very excited about this new component to our site. We feel we have placed lots of good articles and information on the site, but now the greatest need is to have more community among the users of the site. 

There’s a great scene at the end of the film, “The Big Kahuna” where Danny DeVito’s character counsels a young co-worker about his overt mode of evangelism.

He says, “It doesn't matter whether you're selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or 'How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.' That doesn't make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are - just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch. And you're not a human being; you're a marketing rep.”

That scene sums up, for me, how the world sees the insincerity in our attempts to sell our faith the way a door-to-door salesman sells magazine subscriptions.

As a young college student, I was very passionate about Christian Apologetics. I read book after book dealing with how to “give to every man an answer, a reason for the hope that lies within” using science, history, archaeology, and logic to convince the skeptic and the unbeliever that Jesus really was the answer.

“Greater love has no one than this,  than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.  No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” John 15:13- 15

The One who legitimately could claim all position, title, honor, glory and authority did not do so!  He looked into the eyes of men who would soon betray Him and called them His friends. When He did this He absolutely, totally and for all time destroyed all possibility of any hierarchy representing His kingdom. Pyramids are for dead people!

Hypocrisy Defined

A woman once asked me, "What do they call you at your church?" I told her, "Earle." But," she replied, "shouldn't they show you more respect as a minister?" I answered, "Respect? In our church? Are you kidding?" She didn't quite catch the joke, but I explained to her that someone's using a title to address me does not really give me respect. Rather it is the condition of their heart that is the issue. In Luke 12, Jesus clearly warns his disciples about the tendency to believe that our outward behavior alone determines the quality of our righteousness and the authenticity of our Christianity. He points out to them a subtle yet important difference between authentic Christianity and Theatrical Christianity . Luke 12:1 reads:

Under these circumstances, after so many thousands of the multitude had gathered together that they were stepping on one another, he began saying to his disciples first of all, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

Slavic Church – Return To The Roots

The church in every generation needs to be a church which is participating in reforming itself to follow the words and life of its founder and source – Jesus Christ. (RETURN TO THE ROOTS) After several decades of wonderful growth, the Slavic Church finds itself in need of just such a reformation to reverse the current stagnation (Crisis) of its health and growth.

While some would like to repeat the 1990’s or modify today’s church, the only way forward is to fully return to the life, work, words, and model of Jesus Christ, and to follow His examples. Jesus gave us His example of suffering, sacrifice, obedience, submission, servant hood, mercy and love, and simplicity. Jesus was a missional (sending), itinerant, and incarnational God.

The promise of the New Covenant is this: “„I will put My laws into their minds, I will write them upon their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach every one his fellow-citizen, and everyone his brother saying, „Know the Lord,‟ for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.‟”

 “All shall know Me” . . . this is the beating heart of God. I‟ll be blunt: Either you and I can  know God intimately, or the gospel is a sham. One of the rewards of our Lord’s suffering is that we all shall know Him . . . “from the least to the greatest.”

 Living in organic Body life for many years has taught me the reality of a major teaching in the New Testament. Namely, the Lord dwells in all of us, and He is a speaking God. But the primary vehicle He uses as His mouthpiece is His Body.

I remember well my days of pastoring and working in a denominational district office. Back then, I would get the occasional call from a pastor or church leader asking for a reference concerning a former church member or adherent.

In some cases, they would ask for a letter of recommendation assuring their staff that this person (or family) had been members in good standing and weren’t subject to church discipline. They especially wanted to know if the person or family in question had a reputation of trouble-making.

The practice of “letters of commendation” is thoroughly biblical. In the New Testament era, if you relocated from one church to another, a “letter of commendation” went ahead of you. That letter was to inform the church to which you were relocating if you had a “good report” or if you had a “bad report.”

Christians have made the gospel about so many things … things other than Christ.
Jesus Christ is the gravitational pull that brings everything together and gives them significance, reality, and meaning. Without him, all things lose their value. Without him, all things are but detached pieces floating around in space.
It is possible to emphasize a spiritual truth, value, virtue, or gift, yet miss Christ . . . who is the embodiment and incarnation of all spiritual truth, values, virtues, and gifts.
Seek a truth, a value, a virtue, or a spiritual gift, and you have obtained something dead.
Seek Christ, embrace Christ, know Christ, and you have touched him who is Life. And in him resides all Truth, Values, Virtues and Gifts in living color. Beauty has its meaning in the beauty of Christ, in whom is found all that makes us lovely and loveable.