Multiply everything

Nine ‘take-aways’ from Viral Churches

I’ve been reading Viral Churches: helping church planters become movement makers as we look to plant 20 churches in Birmingham by the year 2020. Why should Birmingham churches make this an urgent priority? Let’s start with nine reasons in this post from Stetzer and Bird.

1. What this country needs is for each person to have an opportunity to hear the gospel in a way that they can understand and respond to.

‘Ultimately we need far more churches than we currently have in order to reach our ever-expanding and diversifying culture.’

2. Church planting must be our default mode for evangelism

‘The story of the book of Acts is that ‘the early church implemented the Great Commission primarily by planting churches’.

‘The reason why church planting is the new evangelism is the disproportionately high number of spiritual conversions experienced in new churches.’

3. No single congregation or denomination can reach a million people in our city of Birmingham.

4. It will take the planting of many new churches working alongside existing churches to reach every person in the city.

‘Among churches of all sizes, growing churches are rare. In fact, they only make up about 20 percent of our churches today. The Continue reading »

Play at your own risk

Too risky?

I’ve never bungee-jumped let alone thrown myself out of a plane in the optimistic hope that the pull of a cord might delay my descent and save my life so recklessly thrown away. I’m not a natural risk taker. But I’m learning the value of risky thinking.

Since helping to launch 2020birmingham -a church planting catalyst for Birmingham with the goal of planting 20 new churches by the year 2020 – I’ve been learning a vital lesson in ministry. If we want to fulfil the task that Jesus has given us in our generation we must take risks and part of that risk-taking is to reach out to work with those who are different from ourselves. It takes time, it takes Continue reading »

It’s not enough to plant churches

If we are to reach a city with the gospel it is not enough to plant churches. We have to plant churches that will plant churches.

From one plant comes many

Church-multiplication comes when it is not enough to see a new church planted but the goal becomes ‘multiple churches planting multiple new churches, which in turn plant multiple new churches. This is the basis of not just a network, but a movement.’ (Viral Churches: Stetzer & Bird)

And where do we learn that model? In the early church in which spontaneous expansion through multiplication of churches took the gospel across the world.

My God, my city, my church

Birmingham Skyline by Helen Ogbourn

I love living in Birmingham.

I’ve lived here for over 30 years and  at our church on Sunday we held our annual Serving the City Sunday. Three statistics highlight the challenges and the opportunities that face the church in Birmingham.

1) Birmingham has the highest unemployment rate of any major city in the UK.  At 12.5 per cent it is twice the national average.  Youth unemployment is a staggering 24.4 per cent. Unemployment rose more sharply here than in any other city during the recession.

2) The UK average for church attendance stands at around 10 per cent but for Birmingham it’s just 6.3 per cent. No wonder Birmingham has fewer evangelical churches than many large cities in the country.

3) The church must change to meet the rapidly changing make-up of the city.   The Muslim population, currently standing at over 14 per cent, is due to exceed 20 per cent over the same time. Many others are finding a home in Birmingham – how can we help them find Christ?

City Church is working with others as part of 2020birmingham, a network of churches working together to see 20 churches planted in the city by the year 2020.

Please pray with us and for us and for this great city.