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“Now it came to pass in those days that Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and He continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles.”
Luke 6:12-13

Jesus selected apostolic leaders from among his new-found disciples. Finding leaders is the greatest challenge leaders face. Yet, some leaders attract more leaders and others struggle to find or keep any leaders. Why? Certainly part of the answer lies in the gift of a leader, but there are also certain truths we can practice that will make us attractive to the emerging leaders in our sphere of influence.

The most gifted leaders I know practice these seven laws of leadership selection ...

We are excited to announce the publishing of a new book in Russian - Reimagining the Church by Frank Viola. The book will be available in April, but until then we would like to share with you some excerpts to give you a taste of the book.

Open-participatory meetings do not preclude the idea of planning. Nor do they have to be disorderly. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul formulates a number of broad guidelines designed to keep the meeting running in an orderly fashion.

In Paul’s thought, there’s no tension between an open-participatory meeting and an orderly one that edifies the church. The order of the meeting is organic. It’s the by-product of each member seeking to edify the whole.

Many people regularly visit this site. More and more churches are adding their information to the list of churches on the site. Since many of you are putting into practice the Biblical principles that are discussed on this site, we would love to hear your testimonies of how God is working. What are you learning about incarnational evangelism, making disciples, practical priesthood of all believers, Christ Headship, nonhierarchical leadership, and participatory gatherings? Share just a few sentences, or even more if you would like. Post it under our forum

Also our blog section is a great place to share what God is personally teaching you. If you from time to time or even often write down your thoughts of what you are learning in your relationship with God, please write a blog and share it with the rest of us for our encouragement.

Finally, we have recently been organizing training events for those involved in simple churches. If you are involved in a simple church or a simple church network and would like to hear about training opportunities, please contact Maxim Nikolaev at m.nikolaeff@gmail.com or Timmy Powers at timmy.powers@gcmweb.org

A list of the values that we’ve observed to be commonly shared among those who are gathering together in simple ways.

The Kingdom of God

• Our emphasis as Christians is on building the kingdom, not a church, or even “The Church.”
• New churches are planted and outreaches are planned in an endeavor to build the Kingdom of God, not necessarily a church or an organization.
• Allegiance within our groups and networks is to the King, not to the leadership within those groups and networks.

Look at the birds of the air . . . . Consider the lilies of the field . . . —Matthew 6:26, 28

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin"— they simply are! Think of the sea, the air, the sun, the stars, and the moon— all of these simply are as well— yet what a ministry and service they render on our behalf! So often we impair God’s designed influence, which He desires to exhibit through us, because of our own conscious efforts to be consistent and useful. Jesus said there is only one way to develop and grow spiritually, and that is through focusing and concentrating on God.

Church planting is easy!” we thought. Within a few months of landing in a North African city, we already had a group of men and women meeting in our home. Joining that fellowship were some Muslim-background believers who had previously come to faith in the Lord through the testimony of others. We lined our living room with couches, in the local style, served sweet mint tea, and wore djellabas. We hoped a contextualized fellowship could grow into a solid church.

Tim, a seminary graduate, functioned as the pastor, but rotated leadership. We sang and studied the Bible in English, Arabic, and French. The participants came from Berber, Arab, French, Spanish, Scottish, and American backgrounds. We even collected an offering for the poor. We thought we had planted a truly multi-cultural New Testament house church.

We are excited to announce the publishing of a new book in Russian - Reimagining the Church by Frank Viola. The book will be available in April, but until then we would like to share with you some excerpts to give you a taste of the book.

The Bible draws a careful distinction between Christ’s headship and His Lordship. Throughout the New Testament, the headship of Christ virtually always has in view the Lord’s relationship with His body (Eph. 1:22–23; 4:15; 5:23; Col. 1:18; 2:19). The lordship of Christ virtually always has in view His relationship with His individual disciples (Matt. 7:21–22; 10:24–25; Luke 6:46).

What lordship is to the individual, headship is to the church. Headship and lordship are two dimensions of the same thing. Headship islordship worked out in the corporate lives of God’s people.

We are excited to announce the publishing of a new book in Russian- Reimagining the Church by Frank Viola. The book will be available in April, but until then we would like to share with you some excerpts to give you a taste of the book.

Surprisingly, the Bible never defines the church. Instead, it presents it through a number of different metaphors.One of the reasons why the New Testament gives us numerous metaphors to depict the church is because the church is too comprehensive and rich to be captured by a single definition or metaphor. Unfortunately, our tendency is to latch on to one particular metaphor and understand the ekklesia through it alone.

We are excited to announce the publishing of a new book in Russian- Reimagining the Church by Frank Viola. The book will be available in April, but until then we would like to share with you some excerpts to give you a taste of the book.

It’s important for you to know that reimagining the church as a living organism isn’t a pipe dream. The church actually can express herself organically just as she did in the first century. That said, the following letters were written by various people who have experienced organic church life in recent years. These are their impressions:

Letter 1

I never planned on leaving the old way of doing church. I wasn’t looking for a new church and couldn’t even conceive of what an organic church would look like ...

Dear Nicolay,

Do you remember when we traveled around Ukraine doing the Vision Conferences to encourage church planting as part of a saturation church planting strategy? Those were exciting days full of enthusiasm, in spite of the resistance from many brothers. We fully expected that God would enable us to begin 40,000 new churches by starting reproducing churches. We talked about reproduction, movements and starting new churches, and the glory of God.