#preaching — Public Fediverse posts

YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT & BIBLE RADIO LIVE STREAM |CLICK THE LINK BELOW

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YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLDTESTAMENT LIVE STREAM |CLICK THE LINK BELOW

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YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLDTESTAMENT LIVE STREAM |CLICK THE LINK BELOW

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YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT LIVE STREAM

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YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT LIVE STREAM

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YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT ONLY LIVE STREAM|CLICK THE LINK BELOW

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YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT ONLY LIVE STREAM|CLICK THE LINK BELOW

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YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT ONLY LIVE STREAM|CLICK THE LINK BELOW

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YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT ONLY LIVE STREAM|CLICK THE LINK BELOW

https://youtube.com/live/S7E4CjrR-Yg?is=95aif2qQkNMimWFI

YAH ONLY TV 100 BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT ONLY LIVE STREAM|CLICK THE LINK BELOW

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A quotation from Lyman Beecher

Eloquence is logic on fire.

Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) American minister, preacher, abolitionist
(Attributed)

More about this quote: wist.info/beecher-lyman/83457/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #lymanbeecher #eloquence #oratory #preaching #publicspeaking #speaking

I really despise this whole 'Your Silence Is Compliance' trip that people lay on us when it all gets political, because actually no, it's not, my silence is AuDHD, Complex Trauma and Borderline Personality Disorder trying VERY hard indeed not to call you out as a bullying, domineering piece of sh*t, and focus on functioning.

Some of us have some very much internal politics we need to do deal with, your politics just makes us lock up and spin out.

#Politics #Preaching #Headspace #MentalHealth

This morning I would ask that you please #pray for me and the congregation I serve. This is my last #sunday with them. It is a bittersweet moment… my family and I are excited to be heading towards reception into the #Anglican church, but I will miss ministering to this people through #preaching and #sacrament.

https://www.europesays.com/ch/31448/ AI use in the church, Evangelical Focus #ArtificialIntelligence #bias #chatbots #ChatGPT #ChristiansChristianNews #ChurchNews #churches #community #DigitalEvangelicalNews #Ethics #EvangelicalNews #Inclusion #Lausanne #LausanneMovement #Mission #pastors #practice #preaching #relationships #ReligionNews #sermon #technology #ToddKorpi #toil #worship

You can't work to obtain salvation. Jesus did the work, and through your faith in him - your faith in God, you are saved.

#NSBC #menandwomenofactivity #church #preach #preacher #preaching #pastor #christian #christ #god #jesus #gloryofgod #personofactivity #lord #leader #menofactivity #womenofactivity #purpose #salvation #work #eternallife #gift #sin #cross #love #testimony #teach #teaching #lordswork #servethelord #getinvolved #amen #community #baptist #southernbaptist #serve #faith

3 tips for good work ethics:
1. If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing right.
2. If you don't have time to do it right, you sure don't have time to do it again.
3. The world doesn't owe you a living, you have to get out and make it yourself.

#menandwomenofactivity #God #Christian #gospel #preacher #preaching #work #boss #job #business #goodjob #doyourbest #doitright #workethic #advice #lifelesson #halfhearted #takeyourtime #earnaliving #gloryofgod #discipline #responsible #obedient #NSBC

Whatever job we do, we need to do it as if we're doing it for the Lord.
(Discussing Genesis 47:1-11, Romans 12:10-11, Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:23)

#Genesis #Romans #Ephesians #Colossians #menandwomenofactivity #represent #God #Jesus #Bible #Christian #christianity #gospel #preacher #preaching #preach #Joseph #Pharaoh #praise #worship #employee #employer #work #boss #job #feverant #business #responsible #Christ #obedient

We're not supposed to just hang out in this world. We represent the Lord with our actions, so we need to be men and women of activity. (Genesis 47:1-11) Feel welcomed to join us in person or watch us live on Facebook!

#Genesis #menofactivity #womenofactivity #menandwomenofactivity #represent #God #Lord #Jesus #Bible #Christian #christianity #gospel #preacher #preaching #preach #NSBC #NewSalem #Baptist #SouthernBaptist #NewSalemBaptistChurch #Joseph #pharaoh #praise #worship #Christ #represent

Joseph brought his family to Egypt and the Pharoah was looking for men and women of activity. (Genesis 47:1-11)

#NSBC #menandwomenofactivity #church #preach #preacher #preaching #pastor #christian #christ #god #gloryofgod #personofactivity #lord #leader #menofactivity #womenofactivity #lordswork #purpose #salvation #work #Joseph #Pharoah #bible #bibleverses #verse #verses #scripture #Genesis #missouri #countrychurch #smalltownchurch #baptist #newkingjames #southernbaptist #bibleverse #jesus

What are good ways to preach #God 's word? 📖 Without annoying 😠 and angering 💢 others. Why time 🕑 and place 🏟️ matters if you're trying to win people over.

What do I mean by time 🕑 and place, 🏟️ and "good ways" to #preach and spread the word of God's creation?

If there is an event that might seem to 'encourage people to #sin "

Instead of interrupting those against peoples will and #preaching out of no where. (which is how people will view it therefore, making a bad look of #Christianity to others.)

Wouldn't it be better to set up a clearly organized event, maybe a social media page, where people might stumble upon your content. While not disturbing or interrupting someone elses event. (disturbing someones event is like distrupting their #movie viewing in #theatres.) 🍿

There is a distinction because as Christians we are suppose to share God's word with #love, and spread the word.

By rudely interrupting other events and talking over and preaching around people that don't want to hear. It gives Christianity a bad perception to those on the outside. It makes whoever is preaching in this way look rude, and selfish to those on the outside of Christianity.

When preaching to or around others, to an extent, the time and place matters.

#godsword #bible #christian #godscreation

#TedCruz is #citing the #Bible and #preaching on #Twitter in #defense of the #LGBT #community, after rightwing #pastor advocates #sentencing #LGBTQ #People to #prison and #death for simply #existing

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Texas #Florida #Religion #Hate #Bigotry #Violence #Genocide #Discrimination #Homophobia #Transphobia #EmptyThePews #RepublicanParty

https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/ted-cruz-is-citing-the-bible-and-preaching-on-twitter-in-defense-of-the-lgbt-community-and-its-quite-something/articleshow/100784182.cms

If no one died because of War – how different would worlds appear to be

If no one died because of War — how different would worlds appear to be.

You may wonder why there is so much trouble in this world. Some would say religion is the cause of all that trouble, but they should know that there are more killings by non-religious terror acts or secular related violence.

Man also should know he can do a lot to avoid friction and war. We have more in our hands than we think. In case more people would keep to the teachings of the Word of God we would already have a much better world and more peaceful to live in.

The year 2017 opened with people doing their utmost best to bring division between religious people. Men like Donald Trump who bring ridiculous measures which do not make sense, like not allowing people from different Muslim countries but those from the state who pays a lot of money to jihad fighters are allowed to enter the U.S.A. like they never provided terrorists for September 9 2001. It seems suddenly the president of the United States of America and lost of its citizens do not remember that attack any more or do not see any more the connection with Saudi Arabia. The cradle of the extreme Muslim faith stays untouched whilst people coming form other and often moderate groups or even Muslims who flee the conservative Muslim teachings are refused to enter the Courtney.

The land which was once the land of the free where many sought to find better pastures, has now lots of egoist citizens who have forgotten their ancestors roots. Many, not to say most of them, forget they once came from refugees and from people leaving their country because it was not offering what they wanted or hoped for. Now when their over-grand-kids have it so good they hate it to share some of their goodness and richness with others.

I may be that we are facing coming difficult times. For sure we  can see that lots of people who have it grand, and not have to worry about daily food and water and not having to face the horror of war, can not find themselves willing to come to help those in need. And everyone seems to be preoccupied and worried. Strange in the land where we can find a huge Bible-belt and hear from so many ‘active Christians’ we can see the least Christian attitude.

When more politicians in Europe also want to frighten people for the Muslim community and the Jewish community and want to bring on more protectionist regulations for their own country instead of working together making good commercial treaties, the world is going to become in a bigger mess. Many also have forgotten how some of the immigrants made their country big (look at those international corporations like Apple, Google). Many Americans seem to forget how the labour-force from outside is also important and how those immigrants and manufactures are as necessary to their independence as to their comfort.

Followers of Jesus Christ, who regularly read the Bible can see many signs which should worry but also could us make us more pleased that a certain time is coming closer.

Withstanding we should do our utmost best to preach peach. We should do everything to show others the Way to God and the way for being able to live in peace. They do know that the world is now in the hands of man but in the end it shall always be God which has everything under control.

— to see — to hear — to here — to know —

It is no dream,we have to get out of our own cocoon and egoistic dreams, stepping into the world and showing that there are better ways than the political escapades.

We are clearly  coming into days that the prophecies of ancient times are again of such importance like at the time when Jesus was born.

In a way we should not worry for tomorrow, because we do know God has a Plan and His Plan shall come to into existence whatever man may do to break it down or to kill the followers of His sent one.
Bible readers do know there will be signs and are able to come to see sings, enabling them to prepare for a big time of unrest and turmoil. We should all know that we are going to head to that World War III. How we shall be able to cope with it and perhaps to survive or even shall not have to be afraid to die in it, followers of Jesus do know he is the way and that his heavenly Father is the Most High we can trust. In Him we do trust and have placed our hope for a better future.

“9 Jehovah also will be a high tower for the oppressed, A high tower in times of trouble; 10 And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee; For thou, Jehovah, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.” (Psalms 9:9-10 ASV)

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Additional reading

1. If there is bitterness in the heart
2. Do not be so busy adding up your troubles
3. God is my refuge and my fortress in Him I will trust
4. Do the appropriate for a friend
5. A small trouble is like a pebble
6. She who sows thistles will reap prickles
7. A Breath for tomorrow
8. Trouble is coming
9. High time to show the way to peace
10. Blinded crying blue murder having being made afraid by a bugaboo
11. The clean sweeper of the whole caboodle
12. Stronger than anything that wants to destroy
13. ISIL will find no safe haven
14. Caliphs and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government
15. Funding of ISIS
16. Is ISIS a product of American in-action or a product of direct action
17. From the Ramadan into the eid
18. Honest-hearted people are losing faith in humanity and humanity losing faith in God
19. Darkest just before dawn
20. When will it stop
21. How to Find the Meaning of Life and Reach a State of Peace
22. You Matter
23. Daily Spiritual Food To prepare ourselves for the Kingdom of God
24. God’s wrath and sanctification
25. People Seeking for God 3 Laws and directions
26. Helping websites to prepare for the last days
27. How can we prepare for the Kingdom of God

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Further reading

1. The People, The Press, The President: Breaking Down Walls
2. Trump storm lands Theresa May in trouble over state visit inviteToday’s Thought: Drifting Towards the ColdIn Times of Trouble 28 january 2017
3. When it all becomes too much to bear…
4. Drowning in chaos
5. The Internet Is Having a Field Day With This Photo of President Trump
6. A Few Thoughts on Trump’s Executive Order on ImmigrationResearch Libraries, University Presses Oppose Trump’s Immigration Order American Film Institute Backs Iranian Director Asghar Farhadi, Denounces Trump’s Travel Ban
7. Trump Will Nominate Self To Supreme Court
8. Democrats’ Legal Wars with Trump Administration Have Begun
9. Anti-Trump protesters aim to be ‘the left-wing tea party’
10. ISIS try to capitalise off Trump
11. Stand Up Against Trump Demonstration
12. Dutch government opposes Trump’s xenophobic border controls
13. Bringing up a child in the time of Trump
14. Not Me Worry
15. Monday Mayhem: Beat the Blues by Doing Good
16. Don’t Worry
17. Words of Life–Psalm 9:9,10
18. Psalm 81: Remember, then praise
19. Ungrateful Me
20. The Little Things

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Related articles

• Track of the Day: ‘Democracy’ by Leonard Cohen
• Trump’s nominee for Commerce secretary calls himself ‘pro-trade’ so long as it’s ‘sensible-trade’
• Actors’ acceptance speeches at SAG awards turn into protest against Trump Muslim ban
• What’s Your Message To President-Elect Donald Trump?
• Celebrities React to Donald Trump’s Inauguration
• President Trump has officially taken over @POTUS
• Top 10 Reasons President Trump Will Be A Great Success
• Different perspectives on Donald Trump from our international team
• There is still no date when May or Johnson will meet Trump
• What Does it Really Mean to Be a Radical Follower of Jesus?

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#2017 #BibleBeltUnitedStates_ #BibleReaderS_ #ChristianAttitude #Division #DonaldTrump #Europe #FollowersOfChrist #GodsPlan #HelpingOthers #HorrorOfWar #Immigrants #LandOfTheFree #Peace #Politicians #Preaching #Protectionism #Refugees #ReligiousPeople #SaudiArabia #theOnesInNeed #theWayToGod #theWayToPeace #toPreach #toPrepare #TrustGod #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Violence #War #WorldWarIII

The Big Conversation – Christadelphians in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom people may find several villages and towns where there reside Christadelphians,  a body of Christians who try to base their beliefs and practices wholly on the Bible, which they regard as God’s word. They try therefore to rid themselves of the various ideas and rituals which have attached themselves to Christendom over the last 2,000 years and to return to the beliefs and practices of the first century apostles.

Being a group of people who want to follow the Nazarene Jew Jeshua, who did not want to do his own will, but always did the Will of his heavenly Father, they as the man born in Bethlehem, are living in this world but not wanting to be of this world following human traditions and human dogmas. That does not make them so popular, because people may look strange at those people who do not want to celebrate Halloween and other pagan festivities.

Because the Christadelphians are a community without the trappings of elaborate buildings, priests or icons, their institutions and fellowship-rooms not be seen straight away. The outer sights are not important for the Christadelphians who prefer to give honour to God and show a deep respect for God’s word and love to have a strong sense of family and fellowship.

On the above map you can see some of the more than 300 ecclesiae in Great Britain and Ireland. They were taken under the loop by brother Jon Downes who on the 10th of October asked

What is happening?

For him the present size & growth or non-growth of UK ecclesiae show there isn’t a, ‘No Change’ option

It’s not that we aren’t trying!

he said to about 350 Christadelphians present at Dudley college.

In this world of figures, comparisons and evaluations it is all about numbers in graphics which have to show an up-going trend and reach high peaks. this for sure can not be said about our very small community. Lots of people may think when it is not big it has no value and can not be good. But people should look at the intrinsic value and to see what a group or church is believing, following up, and how they keep to what they preach. It is true that minorities do not exert influence, and that they should have to contend on the culture or the systems around it.

Christadelphians do not fall in the temptation to pretend to be a majority, even if one is not. They do know they are just a little grain of sand in our religious world. But that does not mean that many more little grains can be put together with water and with clay form a nice vase. Though sometimes it can look like we are coming to sit more in an urn. Especially in Belgium we are in distress and can do with some support form abroad. Though looking at other countries can show us also how important it is to make more work of the announcing or making known of our society.

All over the world people may not forget that the church of Jesus Christ is never a majority, in any fallen culture, even if we happen to outnumber every[one] else around us. They should come to see that the real church of God is the church of Christ were people are willing to follow Jesus his words, his teachings, but also his manners and his aspirations. It is a place where people are willing to share the agapè love of Christ, who was even willing to give his life for others, even for those who turned against him. Would we do that?

Where Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered very seriously out of the right way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result, and got many sorts of denominations which have lots of rituals people may like very much but which are not according to God’s Law. And that part is the most important in our building community. We should all try to live according God’s Law and love His Words more than the words of man.

Unfortunately, lots of Christians do not closely follow the Bible today and prefer to join churches in which they can keep up their human traditions. They have changed things to how they want them to be.
Since the times of Jesus, there have been small groups of people who believed what the Bible said. Many of these people were cruelly treated in times past as a result of their beliefs. Such believers united in the North of America when in 1864 broke out the Civil War. Dr. Thomas thought up the word “Christadelphian“, a name combining the name “Christ” with the Greek word “adelphi” meaning “brother”. So the name “Christadelphian” means “brothers and sisters in Christ“.

Christadelphians are grateful to John Thomas for his efforts in searching out the message of the Bible. John Thomas was not a prophet or someone special. He read the Bible, just as we try to do. Christadelphians follow Jesus Christ, not John Thomas. Not following just one man or just one human organisation gives that we may have different ideas about certain things, but that doe snot mean we would not have union with each other, though we must agree that there are certain Christadelphian groups who shamefully do not want to have contact with other Christadelphians.  According to the Belgian Free Christadelphians this is also part of the reasons why it is so difficult to show the world a bigger group of religious people under one name: Christadelphians.

Being joined together by our common faith in the Bible, and the way we live, we all should try to meet each other and have contact with each other as loving siblings. All being brothers and sisters in Christ. Though each “ecclesia” has to look after its own affairs, and choose members who determine arrangements and organise activities on behalf of their members they should feel that unity with Christ with other Christadelphians world wide and show the outside world that Jesus Christ is their head of each ecclesia.

Living in this world we do agree that “It’s not about the numbers” … …but the “numbers tell a story”. And those numbers in west Europe may be alarming. Therefore there was the call to come thereto in the UK to discuss that matter of dwindling ciphers.

Like any other western capitalist country in the UK Bible ownership and Bible knowledge has slumped, some english people also do find it a form of indoctrination when parents in their home pray and talk about God in front of their children of that child.

Jon Downes presented the anxious members a snapshot of our society in the UK.

and showed those present how a typical ecclesia looks like.

When we look at the adult baptisms in our community from related people (3,5) and from non related
(1.0) plus counting the (0.5) refellowshipping members, comparing them with the average of 10 people falling asleep and 2 people leaving the fellowship, we might say that such numbers bring the graphic line downwards.

What might happen to the Christadelphian community in the United Kingdom when they do not something to change the coarse.

happened.

Therefore lets look at the United Kingdom as an example.

what might this give to that community, where we find, like everywhere in the world members becoming older and dying, whilst the world is getting less interested in God and commandment.

In case we can bring the Gospel of the Good News to many more ears, we should be able by a co-effort of preaching to increase the interest in God again and get again some people interested in joining a community of lovers of Christ and lovers of God.

We must see that

The lost are our hope

and that there is good reason to try to reach the lost. We as brothers and sisters in Christ should love the people in the world so much that we will be offering some of our spare time for preaching work.

We are the hope of the lost

Luckily it is not all ad  or sad news.

Good News!

tells brother Downes is that we can look at

• 120 baptisms a year (4 average sized ecclesias)
• In the last 40 years, 39 new ecclesias. (Although 96 have closed & some were renamed).
• In the last 15 years,1/4 of all baptisms from non Christadelphian backgrounds were by just 16 ecclesias. (Although 1/3 didn’t baptise any)
• While many ecclesias are shrinking many are growing.
• Numbers in Africa are growing!
• Bible Learning Centres & Learning English are having a big impact

Instead of going for Plan A is it not better that we go for Plan B?

• Current UK Christadelphian population of 8-8500 is based on 223 2015 ALS Diary returns on households & 178 2015 CCH survey returns. 10 Ecclesias had neither return and were estimated on previous diary returns.
• 1985 to 2015 data based on records kept from the back of the Christadelphian, clearly subject to some error, gaps and misreporting. The last 12 months of Magazine entries were analysed separately and yielded results consistent with the records obtained.
• Net loss of 120 per annum and the 10, 5, 1 ratio derived from average of last 10 years data. Approx 240 out and 120 in. These do not include brothers and sisters movement in and out of the UK.
• Forecast from 2015 based on a linear continuation which could easily be a) more dramatic because of rapid closure of small ecclesias, ageing population, reduced home pool to draw from, fewer people to witness, higher rates of leaving the community b) less dramatic as in a smaller community there are fewer people falling asleep each year.

One of the deceases of this time is that too many people want to enjoy their own little cocoon and not getting out of their comfort zone to share life with the spiritually needy. Those who call themselves Christian may not forget that this means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and demands also doing what he required from his followers. Jesus asked us to go out in the world to proclaim the Kingdom of God. We are to make every effort to bring hope and healing in Jesus name to those in need.

We are to see that the tangible goodness of God flows into every nook and cranny of our communities – especially in those places where darkness seems to prevail. {Walking With Intentionality}

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Preceding articles:

Religious Practices around the world

Manifests for believers #3 Catholic versus Protestant

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

The Ecclesia in the churchsystem

Reasons to come together

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church

Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

Feeling-good, search for happiness and the church

Members of the ecclesia uniting and seeking God’s help in tribulation

Why we do not have our worship-services in a church building

Belgian Christadelphians 2013 & 2014 in review

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

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Additional reading:

1. People are turning their back on Christianity
2. Looking on what is going on and not being of it
3. London an exaggerated microcosm of the UK at large
4. Parents forbidden to pray in front of their children or to take them to church
5. State and attitude of certain people to blame for radicalisation
6. More Muslim children than Christian children growing up in our cities
7. Will Islam conquer Europe
8. Christianity to be enshrined
9. Halloween custom of the nations
10. Wrong ideas about religious terrorism
11. A call easy to understand
12. Discipleship way of life on the narrow way to everlasting life
13. Many forgot how Christ should be our anchor and our focus
14. The meek one riding on an ass
15. Do not be afraid to learn or to speak
16. Reasons to come together
17. Congregate, to gather, to meet
18. Fellowship
19. Disciple of Christ counting lives and friends dear to them
20. The first on the list of the concerns of the saint
21. Holiness and expression of worship coming from inside
22. To find ways of Godly understanding
23. Perishable non theologians daring to go out to preach
24. Who are the honest ones?
25. Certain people trying to stem freedom of speech
26. Priority to form a loving brotherhood
27. Newsweek asks: How ignorant are you?
28. Religious Freedom in a Multicultural World
29. Some christians do have problems with the Christian connection with Jews
30. American atheists most religiously literate Americans
31. Determine the drive
32. Try driving forward instead of backwards
33. Campbell, Thomas and Bijbelvorsers
34. Looking at older articles series over Russell on the previous Bible-scholar Association
35. Wanting to know more about basic teachings of Christadelphianism
36. Christadelphians or Messianic Christians or Messianic Jews
37. Christadelphian people
38. Who are Christadelphians
39. What are Brothers in Christ
40. Two new encyclopaedic articles
41. Christadelphians today
42. Keeping an ecclesia in modern times
43. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
44. Christianity to be enshrined
45. Christianity is a love affair
46. Intentions of an Ecclesia
47. Character transformed by the influence of our fellowships
48. Love for each other attracting others
49. What makes a consecrated Christian
50. A call easy to understand
51. If you have integrity
52. Work with joy and pray with love
53. To know Christ is filling life with meaning
54. The truth is very plain to see and God can be clearly seen

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Other articles of interest:

1. Walking in Total Dependence Upon God
2. What is God’s Will For Your Life?
3. On the Affirmation of Scripture
4. A Snapshot of the Church in America
5. a little church
6. Four Pressing Needs in Rural Communities, and How the Church Should Respond
7. If It’s All About Relationship…
8. Leading a church is not a hands free exercise
9. Walking With Intentionality
10. Living Our Faith in a New Way
11. What’s in It for Me?
12. Deacon Selection In the Small Church
13. Lord’s Day 10: God is in Control
14. Just Try a Few Things
15. “When Faith Goes, All Good Things Go”
16. Growing Deep
17. All the Wrong Reasons
18. Little Church
19. Leading Change
20. Small Groups & Grow A Small Church by Multiplying Its Small Groups
21. Living well
22. Blessed by His Hand
23. Encouragement for the Small
24. How Did You Get Here?
25. How to Impersonate a Big Church
26. What Do You Do Well?
27. Recognize the Facts
28. What are your top two struggles?
29. The Best Thing You Can Do
30. On the road to sainthood and not silent about it
31. Incognito Zone: Where the Church Is Booming
32. House Church Reaches Out to Atheists, Agnostics in California
33. The one religion that’s not part of my spiritual quest
34. Six Ways Not to Forsake the Assembly
35. Tent Making
36. Journey On The Narrow Path

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Related articles

• One in three people born in the UK this year will suffer from some form of dementia in their lifetime, the Alzheimer’s Research UK charity has warned. (grumpyelder.com)
• Israel Goldstein Youth Village looking for dates in Europe (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Looking for writers for two Lifestyle Magazines (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Change of name (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)

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#AdultBaptism #Agape #BeingInUnion #Belgium #BiblicalTruth #BrothersAndSistersInChrist #BrothersInChrist #CapitalistWorld #Christadelphian #ChristadelphianCommunity #Christadelphians #Christendom #ChristianChurches #ChristianTruth #Christians #ChurchOfJesusChrist #ComfortZone #DwindlingChurch #Ecclesia #Fellowship #FollowerOfChrist #FollowingJesusChrist #FollowingMan #GreatBritain #HopeOfEcclesia #Influence #InterestInGod #Ireland #JohnThomas #JonDownes #LeavingTheFellowship #LivingInThisWorld #LoversOfChrist #LoversOfGod #Minority #NorthOfAmerica #NumbersAmount_ #PaganFestivities #Preaching #PreachingWork #Proclaim #Proclaiming #ReachingTheLost #Refellowshipping #RuleOfPractice #SistersInChrist #SmallCommunity #TeachingsOfChrist #Temptation #Union #UnitedKingdom #Unity #UnityInChrist #UnityInDiversity #WayOfLiving #WordOfMan

The Big Conversation – Christadelphians in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom people may find several villages and towns where there reside Christadelphians,  a body of Christians who try to base their beliefs and practices wholly on the Bible, which they regard as God’s word. They try therefore to rid themselves of the various ideas and rituals which have attached themselves to Christendom over the last 2,000 years and to return to the beliefs and practices of the first century apostles.

Being a group of people who want to follow the Nazarene Jew Jeshua, who did not want to do his own will, but always did the Will of his heavenly Father, they as the man born in Bethlehem, are living in this world but not wanting to be of this world following human traditions and human dogmas. That does not make them so popular, because people may look strange at those people who do not want to celebrate Halloween and other pagan festivities.

Because the Christadelphians are a community without the trappings of elaborate buildings, priests or icons, their institutions and fellowship-rooms not be seen straight away. The outer sights are not important for the Christadelphians who prefer to give honour to God and show a deep respect for God’s word and love to have a strong sense of family and fellowship.

On the above map you can see some of the more than 300 ecclesiae in Great Britain and Ireland. They were taken under the loop by brother Jon Downes who on the 10th of October asked

What is happening?

For him the present size & growth or non-growth of UK ecclesiae show there isn’t a, ‘No Change’ option

It’s not that we aren’t trying!

he said to about 350 Christadelphians present at Dudley college.

In this world of figures, comparisons and evaluations it is all about numbers in graphics which have to show an up-going trend and reach high peaks. this for sure can not be said about our very small community. Lots of people may think when it is not big it has no value and can not be good. But people should look at the intrinsic value and to see what a group or church is believing, following up, and how they keep to what they preach. It is true that minorities do not exert influence, and that they should have to contend on the culture or the systems around it.

Christadelphians do not fall in the temptation to pretend to be a majority, even if one is not. They do know they are just a little grain of sand in our religious world. But that does not mean that many more little grains can be put together with water and with clay form a nice vase. Though sometimes it can look like we are coming to sit more in an urn. Especially in Belgium we are in distress and can do with some support form abroad. Though looking at other countries can show us also how important it is to make more work of the announcing or making known of our society.

All over the world people may not forget that the church of Jesus Christ is never a majority, in any fallen culture, even if we happen to outnumber every[one] else around us. They should come to see that the real church of God is the church of Christ were people are willing to follow Jesus his words, his teachings, but also his manners and his aspirations. It is a place where people are willing to share the agapè love of Christ, who was even willing to give his life for others, even for those who turned against him. Would we do that?

Where Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered very seriously out of the right way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result, and got many sorts of denominations which have lots of rituals people may like very much but which are not according to God’s Law. And that part is the most important in our building community. We should all try to live according God’s Law and love His Words more than the words of man.

Unfortunately, lots of Christians do not closely follow the Bible today and prefer to join churches in which they can keep up their human traditions. They have changed things to how they want them to be.
Since the times of Jesus, there have been small groups of people who believed what the Bible said. Many of these people were cruelly treated in times past as a result of their beliefs. Such believers united in the North of America when in 1864 broke out the Civil War. Dr. Thomas thought up the word “Christadelphian“, a name combining the name “Christ” with the Greek word “adelphi” meaning “brother”. So the name “Christadelphian” means “brothers and sisters in Christ“.

Christadelphians are grateful to John Thomas for his efforts in searching out the message of the Bible. John Thomas was not a prophet or someone special. He read the Bible, just as we try to do. Christadelphians follow Jesus Christ, not John Thomas. Not following just one man or just one human organisation gives that we may have different ideas about certain things, but that doe snot mean we would not have union with each other, though we must agree that there are certain Christadelphian groups who shamefully do not want to have contact with other Christadelphians.  According to the Belgian Free Christadelphians this is also part of the reasons why it is so difficult to show the world a bigger group of religious people under one name: Christadelphians.

Being joined together by our common faith in the Bible, and the way we live, we all should try to meet each other and have contact with each other as loving siblings. All being brothers and sisters in Christ. Though each “ecclesia” has to look after its own affairs, and choose members who determine arrangements and organise activities on behalf of their members they should feel that unity with Christ with other Christadelphians world wide and show the outside world that Jesus Christ is their head of each ecclesia.

Living in this world we do agree that “It’s not about the numbers” … …but the “numbers tell a story”. And those numbers in west Europe may be alarming. Therefore there was the call to come thereto in the UK to discuss that matter of dwindling ciphers.

Like any other western capitalist country in the UK Bible ownership and Bible knowledge has slumped, some english people also do find it a form of indoctrination when parents in their home pray and talk about God in front of their children of that child.

Jon Downes presented the anxious members a snapshot of our society in the UK.

and showed those present how a typical ecclesia looks like.

When we look at the adult baptisms in our community from related people (3,5) and from non related
(1.0) plus counting the (0.5) refellowshipping members, comparing them with the average of 10 people falling asleep and 2 people leaving the fellowship, we might say that such numbers bring the graphic line downwards.

What might happen to the Christadelphian community in the United Kingdom when they do not something to change the coarse.

happened.

Therefore lets look at the United Kingdom as an example.

what might this give to that community, where we find, like everywhere in the world members becoming older and dying, whilst the world is getting less interested in God and commandment.

In case we can bring the Gospel of the Good News to many more ears, we should be able by a co-effort of preaching to increase the interest in God again and get again some people interested in joining a community of lovers of Christ and lovers of God.

We must see that

The lost are our hope

and that there is good reason to try to reach the lost. We as brothers and sisters in Christ should love the people in the world so much that we will be offering some of our spare time for preaching work.

We are the hope of the lost

Luckily it is not all ad  or sad news.

Good News!

tells brother Downes is that we can look at

• 120 baptisms a year (4 average sized ecclesias)
• In the last 40 years, 39 new ecclesias. (Although 96 have closed & some were renamed).
• In the last 15 years,1/4 of all baptisms from non Christadelphian backgrounds were by just 16 ecclesias. (Although 1/3 didn’t baptise any)
• While many ecclesias are shrinking many are growing.
• Numbers in Africa are growing!
• Bible Learning Centres & Learning English are having a big impact

Instead of going for Plan A is it not better that we go for Plan B?

• Current UK Christadelphian population of 8-8500 is based on 223 2015 ALS Diary returns on households & 178 2015 CCH survey returns. 10 Ecclesias had neither return and were estimated on previous diary returns.
• 1985 to 2015 data based on records kept from the back of the Christadelphian, clearly subject to some error, gaps and misreporting. The last 12 months of Magazine entries were analysed separately and yielded results consistent with the records obtained.
• Net loss of 120 per annum and the 10, 5, 1 ratio derived from average of last 10 years data. Approx 240 out and 120 in. These do not include brothers and sisters movement in and out of the UK.
• Forecast from 2015 based on a linear continuation which could easily be a) more dramatic because of rapid closure of small ecclesias, ageing population, reduced home pool to draw from, fewer people to witness, higher rates of leaving the community b) less dramatic as in a smaller community there are fewer people falling asleep each year.

One of the deceases of this time is that too many people want to enjoy their own little cocoon and not getting out of their comfort zone to share life with the spiritually needy. Those who call themselves Christian may not forget that this means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and demands also doing what he required from his followers. Jesus asked us to go out in the world to proclaim the Kingdom of God. We are to make every effort to bring hope and healing in Jesus name to those in need.

We are to see that the tangible goodness of God flows into every nook and cranny of our communities – especially in those places where darkness seems to prevail. {Walking With Intentionality}

+

Preceding articles:

Religious Practices around the world

Manifests for believers #3 Catholic versus Protestant

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

The Ecclesia in the churchsystem

Reasons to come together

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church

Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

Feeling-good, search for happiness and the church

Members of the ecclesia uniting and seeking God’s help in tribulation

Why we do not have our worship-services in a church building

Belgian Christadelphians 2013 & 2014 in review

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

++

Additional reading:

1. People are turning their back on Christianity
2. Looking on what is going on and not being of it
3. London an exaggerated microcosm of the UK at large
4. Parents forbidden to pray in front of their children or to take them to church
5. State and attitude of certain people to blame for radicalisation
6. More Muslim children than Christian children growing up in our cities
7. Will Islam conquer Europe
8. Christianity to be enshrined
9. Halloween custom of the nations
10. Wrong ideas about religious terrorism
11. A call easy to understand
12. Discipleship way of life on the narrow way to everlasting life
13. Many forgot how Christ should be our anchor and our focus
14. The meek one riding on an ass
15. Do not be afraid to learn or to speak
16. Reasons to come together
17. Congregate, to gather, to meet
18. Fellowship
19. Disciple of Christ counting lives and friends dear to them
20. The first on the list of the concerns of the saint
21. Holiness and expression of worship coming from inside
22. To find ways of Godly understanding
23. Perishable non theologians daring to go out to preach
24. Who are the honest ones?
25. Certain people trying to stem freedom of speech
26. Priority to form a loving brotherhood
27. Newsweek asks: How ignorant are you?
28. Religious Freedom in a Multicultural World
29. Some christians do have problems with the Christian connection with Jews
30. American atheists most religiously literate Americans
31. Determine the drive
32. Try driving forward instead of backwards
33. Campbell, Thomas and Bijbelvorsers
34. Looking at older articles series over Russell on the previous Bible-scholar Association
35. Wanting to know more about basic teachings of Christadelphianism
36. Christadelphians or Messianic Christians or Messianic Jews
37. Christadelphian people
38. Who are Christadelphians
39. What are Brothers in Christ
40. Two new encyclopaedic articles
41. Christadelphians today
42. Keeping an ecclesia in modern times
43. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
44. Christianity to be enshrined
45. Christianity is a love affair
46. Intentions of an Ecclesia
47. Character transformed by the influence of our fellowships
48. Love for each other attracting others
49. What makes a consecrated Christian
50. A call easy to understand
51. If you have integrity
52. Work with joy and pray with love
53. To know Christ is filling life with meaning
54. The truth is very plain to see and God can be clearly seen

+++

Other articles of interest:

1. Walking in Total Dependence Upon God
2. What is God’s Will For Your Life?
3. On the Affirmation of Scripture
4. A Snapshot of the Church in America
5. a little church
6. Four Pressing Needs in Rural Communities, and How the Church Should Respond
7. If It’s All About Relationship…
8. Leading a church is not a hands free exercise
9. Walking With Intentionality
10. Living Our Faith in a New Way
11. What’s in It for Me?
12. Deacon Selection In the Small Church
13. Lord’s Day 10: God is in Control
14. Just Try a Few Things
15. “When Faith Goes, All Good Things Go”
16. Growing Deep
17. All the Wrong Reasons
18. Little Church
19. Leading Change
20. Small Groups & Grow A Small Church by Multiplying Its Small Groups
21. Living well
22. Blessed by His Hand
23. Encouragement for the Small
24. How Did You Get Here?
25. How to Impersonate a Big Church
26. What Do You Do Well?
27. Recognize the Facts
28. What are your top two struggles?
29. The Best Thing You Can Do
30. On the road to sainthood and not silent about it
31. Incognito Zone: Where the Church Is Booming
32. House Church Reaches Out to Atheists, Agnostics in California
33. The one religion that’s not part of my spiritual quest
34. Six Ways Not to Forsake the Assembly
35. Tent Making
36. Journey On The Narrow Path

+++

Related articles

• One in three people born in the UK this year will suffer from some form of dementia in their lifetime, the Alzheimer’s Research UK charity has warned. (grumpyelder.com)
• Israel Goldstein Youth Village looking for dates in Europe (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Looking for writers for two Lifestyle Magazines (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Change of name (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)

Rate this:

#AdultBaptism #Agape #BeingInUnion #Belgium #BiblicalTruth #BrothersAndSistersInChrist #BrothersInChrist #CapitalistWorld #Christadelphian #ChristadelphianCommunity #Christadelphians #Christendom #ChristianChurches #ChristianTruth #Christians #ChurchOfJesusChrist #ComfortZone #DwindlingChurch #Ecclesia #Fellowship #FollowerOfChrist #FollowingJesusChrist #FollowingMan #GreatBritain #HopeOfEcclesia #Influence #InterestInGod #Ireland #JohnThomas #JonDownes #LeavingTheFellowship #LivingInThisWorld #LoversOfChrist #LoversOfGod #Minority #NorthOfAmerica #NumbersAmount_ #PaganFestivities #Preaching #PreachingWork #Proclaim #Proclaiming #ReachingTheLost #Refellowshipping #RuleOfPractice #SistersInChrist #SmallCommunity #TeachingsOfChrist #Temptation #Union #UnitedKingdom #Unity #UnityInChrist #UnityInDiversity #WayOfLiving #WordOfMan

The Big Conversation – Christadelphians in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom people may find several villages and towns where there reside Christadelphians,  a body of Christians who try to base their beliefs and practices wholly on the Bible, which they regard as God’s word. They try therefore to rid themselves of the various ideas and rituals which have attached themselves to Christendom over the last 2,000 years and to return to the beliefs and practices of the first century apostles.

Being a group of people who want to follow the Nazarene Jew Jeshua, who did not want to do his own will, but always did the Will of his heavenly Father, they as the man born in Bethlehem, are living in this world but not wanting to be of this world following human traditions and human dogmas. That does not make them so popular, because people may look strange at those people who do not want to celebrate Halloween and other pagan festivities.

Because the Christadelphians are a community without the trappings of elaborate buildings, priests or icons, their institutions and fellowship-rooms not be seen straight away. The outer sights are not important for the Christadelphians who prefer to give honour to God and show a deep respect for God’s word and love to have a strong sense of family and fellowship.

On the above map you can see some of the more than 300 ecclesiae in Great Britain and Ireland. They were taken under the loop by brother Jon Downes who on the 10th of October asked

What is happening?

For him the present size & growth or non-growth of UK ecclesiae show there isn’t a, ‘No Change’ option

It’s not that we aren’t trying!

he said to about 350 Christadelphians present at Dudley college.

In this world of figures, comparisons and evaluations it is all about numbers in graphics which have to show an up-going trend and reach high peaks. this for sure can not be said about our very small community. Lots of people may think when it is not big it has no value and can not be good. But people should look at the intrinsic value and to see what a group or church is believing, following up, and how they keep to what they preach. It is true that minorities do not exert influence, and that they should have to contend on the culture or the systems around it.

Christadelphians do not fall in the temptation to pretend to be a majority, even if one is not. They do know they are just a little grain of sand in our religious world. But that does not mean that many more little grains can be put together with water and with clay form a nice vase. Though sometimes it can look like we are coming to sit more in an urn. Especially in Belgium we are in distress and can do with some support form abroad. Though looking at other countries can show us also how important it is to make more work of the announcing or making known of our society.

All over the world people may not forget that the church of Jesus Christ is never a majority, in any fallen culture, even if we happen to outnumber every[one] else around us. They should come to see that the real church of God is the church of Christ were people are willing to follow Jesus his words, his teachings, but also his manners and his aspirations. It is a place where people are willing to share the agapè love of Christ, who was even willing to give his life for others, even for those who turned against him. Would we do that?

Where Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered very seriously out of the right way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result, and got many sorts of denominations which have lots of rituals people may like very much but which are not according to God’s Law. And that part is the most important in our building community. We should all try to live according God’s Law and love His Words more than the words of man.

Unfortunately, lots of Christians do not closely follow the Bible today and prefer to join churches in which they can keep up their human traditions. They have changed things to how they want them to be.
Since the times of Jesus, there have been small groups of people who believed what the Bible said. Many of these people were cruelly treated in times past as a result of their beliefs. Such believers united in the North of America when in 1864 broke out the Civil War. Dr. Thomas thought up the word “Christadelphian“, a name combining the name “Christ” with the Greek word “adelphi” meaning “brother”. So the name “Christadelphian” means “brothers and sisters in Christ“.

Christadelphians are grateful to John Thomas for his efforts in searching out the message of the Bible. John Thomas was not a prophet or someone special. He read the Bible, just as we try to do. Christadelphians follow Jesus Christ, not John Thomas. Not following just one man or just one human organisation gives that we may have different ideas about certain things, but that doe snot mean we would not have union with each other, though we must agree that there are certain Christadelphian groups who shamefully do not want to have contact with other Christadelphians.  According to the Belgian Free Christadelphians this is also part of the reasons why it is so difficult to show the world a bigger group of religious people under one name: Christadelphians.

Being joined together by our common faith in the Bible, and the way we live, we all should try to meet each other and have contact with each other as loving siblings. All being brothers and sisters in Christ. Though each “ecclesia” has to look after its own affairs, and choose members who determine arrangements and organise activities on behalf of their members they should feel that unity with Christ with other Christadelphians world wide and show the outside world that Jesus Christ is their head of each ecclesia.

Living in this world we do agree that “It’s not about the numbers” … …but the “numbers tell a story”. And those numbers in west Europe may be alarming. Therefore there was the call to come thereto in the UK to discuss that matter of dwindling ciphers.

Like any other western capitalist country in the UK Bible ownership and Bible knowledge has slumped, some english people also do find it a form of indoctrination when parents in their home pray and talk about God in front of their children of that child.

Jon Downes presented the anxious members a snapshot of our society in the UK.

and showed those present how a typical ecclesia looks like.

When we look at the adult baptisms in our community from related people (3,5) and from non related
(1.0) plus counting the (0.5) refellowshipping members, comparing them with the average of 10 people falling asleep and 2 people leaving the fellowship, we might say that such numbers bring the graphic line downwards.

What might happen to the Christadelphian community in the United Kingdom when they do not something to change the coarse.

happened.

Therefore lets look at the United Kingdom as an example.

what might this give to that community, where we find, like everywhere in the world members becoming older and dying, whilst the world is getting less interested in God and commandment.

In case we can bring the Gospel of the Good News to many more ears, we should be able by a co-effort of preaching to increase the interest in God again and get again some people interested in joining a community of lovers of Christ and lovers of God.

We must see that

The lost are our hope

and that there is good reason to try to reach the lost. We as brothers and sisters in Christ should love the people in the world so much that we will be offering some of our spare time for preaching work.

We are the hope of the lost

Luckily it is not all ad  or sad news.

Good News!

tells brother Downes is that we can look at

• 120 baptisms a year (4 average sized ecclesias)
• In the last 40 years, 39 new ecclesias. (Although 96 have closed & some were renamed).
• In the last 15 years,1/4 of all baptisms from non Christadelphian backgrounds were by just 16 ecclesias. (Although 1/3 didn’t baptise any)
• While many ecclesias are shrinking many are growing.
• Numbers in Africa are growing!
• Bible Learning Centres & Learning English are having a big impact

Instead of going for Plan A is it not better that we go for Plan B?

• Current UK Christadelphian population of 8-8500 is based on 223 2015 ALS Diary returns on households & 178 2015 CCH survey returns. 10 Ecclesias had neither return and were estimated on previous diary returns.
• 1985 to 2015 data based on records kept from the back of the Christadelphian, clearly subject to some error, gaps and misreporting. The last 12 months of Magazine entries were analysed separately and yielded results consistent with the records obtained.
• Net loss of 120 per annum and the 10, 5, 1 ratio derived from average of last 10 years data. Approx 240 out and 120 in. These do not include brothers and sisters movement in and out of the UK.
• Forecast from 2015 based on a linear continuation which could easily be a) more dramatic because of rapid closure of small ecclesias, ageing population, reduced home pool to draw from, fewer people to witness, higher rates of leaving the community b) less dramatic as in a smaller community there are fewer people falling asleep each year.

One of the deceases of this time is that too many people want to enjoy their own little cocoon and not getting out of their comfort zone to share life with the spiritually needy. Those who call themselves Christian may not forget that this means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and demands also doing what he required from his followers. Jesus asked us to go out in the world to proclaim the Kingdom of God. We are to make every effort to bring hope and healing in Jesus name to those in need.

We are to see that the tangible goodness of God flows into every nook and cranny of our communities – especially in those places where darkness seems to prevail. {Walking With Intentionality}

+

Preceding articles:

Religious Practices around the world

Manifests for believers #3 Catholic versus Protestant

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

The Ecclesia in the churchsystem

Reasons to come together

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church

Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

Feeling-good, search for happiness and the church

Members of the ecclesia uniting and seeking God’s help in tribulation

Why we do not have our worship-services in a church building

Belgian Christadelphians 2013 & 2014 in review

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

++

Additional reading:

1. People are turning their back on Christianity
2. Looking on what is going on and not being of it
3. London an exaggerated microcosm of the UK at large
4. Parents forbidden to pray in front of their children or to take them to church
5. State and attitude of certain people to blame for radicalisation
6. More Muslim children than Christian children growing up in our cities
7. Will Islam conquer Europe
8. Christianity to be enshrined
9. Halloween custom of the nations
10. Wrong ideas about religious terrorism
11. A call easy to understand
12. Discipleship way of life on the narrow way to everlasting life
13. Many forgot how Christ should be our anchor and our focus
14. The meek one riding on an ass
15. Do not be afraid to learn or to speak
16. Reasons to come together
17. Congregate, to gather, to meet
18. Fellowship
19. Disciple of Christ counting lives and friends dear to them
20. The first on the list of the concerns of the saint
21. Holiness and expression of worship coming from inside
22. To find ways of Godly understanding
23. Perishable non theologians daring to go out to preach
24. Who are the honest ones?
25. Certain people trying to stem freedom of speech
26. Priority to form a loving brotherhood
27. Newsweek asks: How ignorant are you?
28. Religious Freedom in a Multicultural World
29. Some christians do have problems with the Christian connection with Jews
30. American atheists most religiously literate Americans
31. Determine the drive
32. Try driving forward instead of backwards
33. Campbell, Thomas and Bijbelvorsers
34. Looking at older articles series over Russell on the previous Bible-scholar Association
35. Wanting to know more about basic teachings of Christadelphianism
36. Christadelphians or Messianic Christians or Messianic Jews
37. Christadelphian people
38. Who are Christadelphians
39. What are Brothers in Christ
40. Two new encyclopaedic articles
41. Christadelphians today
42. Keeping an ecclesia in modern times
43. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
44. Christianity to be enshrined
45. Christianity is a love affair
46. Intentions of an Ecclesia
47. Character transformed by the influence of our fellowships
48. Love for each other attracting others
49. What makes a consecrated Christian
50. A call easy to understand
51. If you have integrity
52. Work with joy and pray with love
53. To know Christ is filling life with meaning
54. The truth is very plain to see and God can be clearly seen

+++

Other articles of interest:

1. Walking in Total Dependence Upon God
2. What is God’s Will For Your Life?
3. On the Affirmation of Scripture
4. A Snapshot of the Church in America
5. a little church
6. Four Pressing Needs in Rural Communities, and How the Church Should Respond
7. If It’s All About Relationship…
8. Leading a church is not a hands free exercise
9. Walking With Intentionality
10. Living Our Faith in a New Way
11. What’s in It for Me?
12. Deacon Selection In the Small Church
13. Lord’s Day 10: God is in Control
14. Just Try a Few Things
15. “When Faith Goes, All Good Things Go”
16. Growing Deep
17. All the Wrong Reasons
18. Little Church
19. Leading Change
20. Small Groups & Grow A Small Church by Multiplying Its Small Groups
21. Living well
22. Blessed by His Hand
23. Encouragement for the Small
24. How Did You Get Here?
25. How to Impersonate a Big Church
26. What Do You Do Well?
27. Recognize the Facts
28. What are your top two struggles?
29. The Best Thing You Can Do
30. On the road to sainthood and not silent about it
31. Incognito Zone: Where the Church Is Booming
32. House Church Reaches Out to Atheists, Agnostics in California
33. The one religion that’s not part of my spiritual quest
34. Six Ways Not to Forsake the Assembly
35. Tent Making
36. Journey On The Narrow Path

+++

Related articles

• One in three people born in the UK this year will suffer from some form of dementia in their lifetime, the Alzheimer’s Research UK charity has warned. (grumpyelder.com)
• Israel Goldstein Youth Village looking for dates in Europe (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Looking for writers for two Lifestyle Magazines (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Change of name (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)

Rate this:

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The Big Conversation – Christadelphians in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom people may find several villages and towns where there reside Christadelphians,  a body of Christians who try to base their beliefs and practices wholly on the Bible, which they regard as God’s word. They try therefore to rid themselves of the various ideas and rituals which have attached themselves to Christendom over the last 2,000 years and to return to the beliefs and practices of the first century apostles.

Being a group of people who want to follow the Nazarene Jew Jeshua, who did not want to do his own will, but always did the Will of his heavenly Father, they as the man born in Bethlehem, are living in this world but not wanting to be of this world following human traditions and human dogmas. That does not make them so popular, because people may look strange at those people who do not want to celebrate Halloween and other pagan festivities.

Because the Christadelphians are a community without the trappings of elaborate buildings, priests or icons, their institutions and fellowship-rooms not be seen straight away. The outer sights are not important for the Christadelphians who prefer to give honour to God and show a deep respect for God’s word and love to have a strong sense of family and fellowship.

On the above map you can see some of the more than 300 ecclesiae in Great Britain and Ireland. They were taken under the loop by brother Jon Downes who on the 10th of October asked

What is happening?

For him the present size & growth or non-growth of UK ecclesiae show there isn’t a, ‘No Change’ option

It’s not that we aren’t trying!

he said to about 350 Christadelphians present at Dudley college.

In this world of figures, comparisons and evaluations it is all about numbers in graphics which have to show an up-going trend and reach high peaks. this for sure can not be said about our very small community. Lots of people may think when it is not big it has no value and can not be good. But people should look at the intrinsic value and to see what a group or church is believing, following up, and how they keep to what they preach. It is true that minorities do not exert influence, and that they should have to contend on the culture or the systems around it.

Christadelphians do not fall in the temptation to pretend to be a majority, even if one is not. They do know they are just a little grain of sand in our religious world. But that does not mean that many more little grains can be put together with water and with clay form a nice vase. Though sometimes it can look like we are coming to sit more in an urn. Especially in Belgium we are in distress and can do with some support form abroad. Though looking at other countries can show us also how important it is to make more work of the announcing or making known of our society.

All over the world people may not forget that the church of Jesus Christ is never a majority, in any fallen culture, even if we happen to outnumber every[one] else around us. They should come to see that the real church of God is the church of Christ were people are willing to follow Jesus his words, his teachings, but also his manners and his aspirations. It is a place where people are willing to share the agapè love of Christ, who was even willing to give his life for others, even for those who turned against him. Would we do that?

Where Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered very seriously out of the right way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result, and got many sorts of denominations which have lots of rituals people may like very much but which are not according to God’s Law. And that part is the most important in our building community. We should all try to live according God’s Law and love His Words more than the words of man.

Unfortunately, lots of Christians do not closely follow the Bible today and prefer to join churches in which they can keep up their human traditions. They have changed things to how they want them to be.
Since the times of Jesus, there have been small groups of people who believed what the Bible said. Many of these people were cruelly treated in times past as a result of their beliefs. Such believers united in the North of America when in 1864 broke out the Civil War. Dr. Thomas thought up the word “Christadelphian“, a name combining the name “Christ” with the Greek word “adelphi” meaning “brother”. So the name “Christadelphian” means “brothers and sisters in Christ“.

Christadelphians are grateful to John Thomas for his efforts in searching out the message of the Bible. John Thomas was not a prophet or someone special. He read the Bible, just as we try to do. Christadelphians follow Jesus Christ, not John Thomas. Not following just one man or just one human organisation gives that we may have different ideas about certain things, but that doe snot mean we would not have union with each other, though we must agree that there are certain Christadelphian groups who shamefully do not want to have contact with other Christadelphians.  According to the Belgian Free Christadelphians this is also part of the reasons why it is so difficult to show the world a bigger group of religious people under one name: Christadelphians.

Being joined together by our common faith in the Bible, and the way we live, we all should try to meet each other and have contact with each other as loving siblings. All being brothers and sisters in Christ. Though each “ecclesia” has to look after its own affairs, and choose members who determine arrangements and organise activities on behalf of their members they should feel that unity with Christ with other Christadelphians world wide and show the outside world that Jesus Christ is their head of each ecclesia.

Living in this world we do agree that “It’s not about the numbers” … …but the “numbers tell a story”. And those numbers in west Europe may be alarming. Therefore there was the call to come thereto in the UK to discuss that matter of dwindling ciphers.

Like any other western capitalist country in the UK Bible ownership and Bible knowledge has slumped, some english people also do find it a form of indoctrination when parents in their home pray and talk about God in front of their children of that child.

Jon Downes presented the anxious members a snapshot of our society in the UK.

and showed those present how a typical ecclesia looks like.

When we look at the adult baptisms in our community from related people (3,5) and from non related
(1.0) plus counting the (0.5) refellowshipping members, comparing them with the average of 10 people falling asleep and 2 people leaving the fellowship, we might say that such numbers bring the graphic line downwards.

What might happen to the Christadelphian community in the United Kingdom when they do not something to change the coarse.

happened.

Therefore lets look at the United Kingdom as an example.

what might this give to that community, where we find, like everywhere in the world members becoming older and dying, whilst the world is getting less interested in God and commandment.

In case we can bring the Gospel of the Good News to many more ears, we should be able by a co-effort of preaching to increase the interest in God again and get again some people interested in joining a community of lovers of Christ and lovers of God.

We must see that

The lost are our hope

and that there is good reason to try to reach the lost. We as brothers and sisters in Christ should love the people in the world so much that we will be offering some of our spare time for preaching work.

We are the hope of the lost

Luckily it is not all ad  or sad news.

Good News!

tells brother Downes is that we can look at

• 120 baptisms a year (4 average sized ecclesias)
• In the last 40 years, 39 new ecclesias. (Although 96 have closed & some were renamed).
• In the last 15 years,1/4 of all baptisms from non Christadelphian backgrounds were by just 16 ecclesias. (Although 1/3 didn’t baptise any)
• While many ecclesias are shrinking many are growing.
• Numbers in Africa are growing!
• Bible Learning Centres & Learning English are having a big impact

Instead of going for Plan A is it not better that we go for Plan B?

• Current UK Christadelphian population of 8-8500 is based on 223 2015 ALS Diary returns on households & 178 2015 CCH survey returns. 10 Ecclesias had neither return and were estimated on previous diary returns.
• 1985 to 2015 data based on records kept from the back of the Christadelphian, clearly subject to some error, gaps and misreporting. The last 12 months of Magazine entries were analysed separately and yielded results consistent with the records obtained.
• Net loss of 120 per annum and the 10, 5, 1 ratio derived from average of last 10 years data. Approx 240 out and 120 in. These do not include brothers and sisters movement in and out of the UK.
• Forecast from 2015 based on a linear continuation which could easily be a) more dramatic because of rapid closure of small ecclesias, ageing population, reduced home pool to draw from, fewer people to witness, higher rates of leaving the community b) less dramatic as in a smaller community there are fewer people falling asleep each year.

One of the deceases of this time is that too many people want to enjoy their own little cocoon and not getting out of their comfort zone to share life with the spiritually needy. Those who call themselves Christian may not forget that this means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and demands also doing what he required from his followers. Jesus asked us to go out in the world to proclaim the Kingdom of God. We are to make every effort to bring hope and healing in Jesus name to those in need.

We are to see that the tangible goodness of God flows into every nook and cranny of our communities – especially in those places where darkness seems to prevail. {Walking With Intentionality}

+

Preceding articles:

Religious Practices around the world

Manifests for believers #3 Catholic versus Protestant

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

The Ecclesia in the churchsystem

Reasons to come together

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church

Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

Feeling-good, search for happiness and the church

Members of the ecclesia uniting and seeking God’s help in tribulation

Why we do not have our worship-services in a church building

Belgian Christadelphians 2013 & 2014 in review

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

++

Additional reading:

1. People are turning their back on Christianity
2. Looking on what is going on and not being of it
3. London an exaggerated microcosm of the UK at large
4. Parents forbidden to pray in front of their children or to take them to church
5. State and attitude of certain people to blame for radicalisation
6. More Muslim children than Christian children growing up in our cities
7. Will Islam conquer Europe
8. Christianity to be enshrined
9. Halloween custom of the nations
10. Wrong ideas about religious terrorism
11. A call easy to understand
12. Discipleship way of life on the narrow way to everlasting life
13. Many forgot how Christ should be our anchor and our focus
14. The meek one riding on an ass
15. Do not be afraid to learn or to speak
16. Reasons to come together
17. Congregate, to gather, to meet
18. Fellowship
19. Disciple of Christ counting lives and friends dear to them
20. The first on the list of the concerns of the saint
21. Holiness and expression of worship coming from inside
22. To find ways of Godly understanding
23. Perishable non theologians daring to go out to preach
24. Who are the honest ones?
25. Certain people trying to stem freedom of speech
26. Priority to form a loving brotherhood
27. Newsweek asks: How ignorant are you?
28. Religious Freedom in a Multicultural World
29. Some christians do have problems with the Christian connection with Jews
30. American atheists most religiously literate Americans
31. Determine the drive
32. Try driving forward instead of backwards
33. Campbell, Thomas and Bijbelvorsers
34. Looking at older articles series over Russell on the previous Bible-scholar Association
35. Wanting to know more about basic teachings of Christadelphianism
36. Christadelphians or Messianic Christians or Messianic Jews
37. Christadelphian people
38. Who are Christadelphians
39. What are Brothers in Christ
40. Two new encyclopaedic articles
41. Christadelphians today
42. Keeping an ecclesia in modern times
43. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
44. Christianity to be enshrined
45. Christianity is a love affair
46. Intentions of an Ecclesia
47. Character transformed by the influence of our fellowships
48. Love for each other attracting others
49. What makes a consecrated Christian
50. A call easy to understand
51. If you have integrity
52. Work with joy and pray with love
53. To know Christ is filling life with meaning
54. The truth is very plain to see and God can be clearly seen

+++

Other articles of interest:

1. Walking in Total Dependence Upon God
2. What is God’s Will For Your Life?
3. On the Affirmation of Scripture
4. A Snapshot of the Church in America
5. a little church
6. Four Pressing Needs in Rural Communities, and How the Church Should Respond
7. If It’s All About Relationship…
8. Leading a church is not a hands free exercise
9. Walking With Intentionality
10. Living Our Faith in a New Way
11. What’s in It for Me?
12. Deacon Selection In the Small Church
13. Lord’s Day 10: God is in Control
14. Just Try a Few Things
15. “When Faith Goes, All Good Things Go”
16. Growing Deep
17. All the Wrong Reasons
18. Little Church
19. Leading Change
20. Small Groups & Grow A Small Church by Multiplying Its Small Groups
21. Living well
22. Blessed by His Hand
23. Encouragement for the Small
24. How Did You Get Here?
25. How to Impersonate a Big Church
26. What Do You Do Well?
27. Recognize the Facts
28. What are your top two struggles?
29. The Best Thing You Can Do
30. On the road to sainthood and not silent about it
31. Incognito Zone: Where the Church Is Booming
32. House Church Reaches Out to Atheists, Agnostics in California
33. The one religion that’s not part of my spiritual quest
34. Six Ways Not to Forsake the Assembly
35. Tent Making
36. Journey On The Narrow Path

+++

Related articles

• One in three people born in the UK this year will suffer from some form of dementia in their lifetime, the Alzheimer’s Research UK charity has warned. (grumpyelder.com)
• Israel Goldstein Youth Village looking for dates in Europe (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Looking for writers for two Lifestyle Magazines (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)
• Change of name (christadelphianworld.blogspot.com)

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Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that Christians are a Moral Majority. For the Christadelphian community it was already very clear that Christendom had gone astray and that not many people knew the essence of the Divine Creator and His Plan.

In certain parts of the world we may find mega churches, like in the United states of America. But what we also see in those countries is that there is a very strange discrepancy between the way of life and the way presented in the Holy Scriptures. In the talks about pro-life issues and arguments at our website From Guestwriters this is made clear in the different reactions where some readers point out at the huge amount of abortions been done every day. Such points of discussion as the abortion debate show how values and attitudes have changed over the years.

Those people who call themselves Christian either are not so much interested in having an active faith or going to worship services or when they want to go to worship services they expect them to be relaxing and entertaining. For many the entertaining factor receives priority. This makes it understandable why certain churches in the States get full house whilst the churches really interested in and giving eye and ear for the Word of God do not have so many people coming to their service.

In general people are very much influenced by the media and television and show business are not the instruments who, today,  bring the people to God. the television church services are full of show elements and short quoting form a few words taken from Scripture but also taken out of context. No time is given to sincerely listen and to sincerely study a full paragraph of a Bible chapter.

Our very fast changing world can do with a sort of new reformation. What’s needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place.

We should seek the kingdom of God, before everything else and we should love to bring others to the entrance gate of that Kingdom. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonise opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let’s do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down.

Today more than ever those who feel the connection with the Nazarene master teacher Jeshua should connect with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and show their love for each other. Not staying in their small local cocoon, but also connecting to other brethren and sisters from all over. They should be welcoming any visiting brother or sister and when they receive mail from some brother or sister form somewhere in the world they should take time to answer that mail and to show their love to that correspondent by not ignoring him or her but letting those writers be feeling recognised as brothers and sisters of the body of Christ.

Though that Body of Christ may be composed of different nationalities, different cultured races, they should all show that they have union in that body of Christ by the unity of spirit in Christ. Unity should be shown by their willingness to communicate with each other and to be respectful for the different characters and different opinions. Unity does not have to mean that all have to say exactly the same or have to use the same bible translation, read the same books, may not have different ways of civilian life, may not have different tastes. Those differences make the world coloured and not boring. We should be happy with such diversity and the differences between ecclesiae may provide different pastures for bible believers to find themselves at ease in one or the other ecclesia.

In Jesus time the apostles were also of different character and different opinion or used not always the same words. We should neither. In our way of reaching people we should recognise that they should not know Christadelphianisms and may have a religious vocabulary closer to the denomination to which they belonged originally or still belong. By preaching to them we do have to be able to use different words and different Bible translations so that they can come to understand what the Word of God is saying. We are just some intermediaries who want to show them that Jesus is our mediator and the Way to God.

Those we want to attract to the Word of God we have to convince that it are not the megachurches or the churches with the most members that are really following the Word of God and would not have false teachings or wrong doctrines. Lots of people may also put their hope in such megachurches because they expect megachurch pastors to have all the answers and that those churches could grow so much because those pastors are personally successful as well as leaders of successful churches because they can offer the best for man.

At conferences such preachers also may attract a lot of attention because many think they have the solution for today’s problem, a diminishing church.

and so we come to see what crumbs of wisdom they might cast our way that will help us and our small churches be”successful” like they are.

writes pastor Jim in his article “Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?“. Like many of us in the Christadelphian community is has seen Abraham and should have gathered enough experience to have some sound opinion. He believes that such leaders of mega churches may deliver good sermons. For sure they probably are good administrators, very good players with words or good speakers having a good deal of charisma. He correctly points out

Their churches offer tons of programs for children and adults—from support groups for people with various problems to children’s ministry and everything in between. But are a variety of programs offered to attract large numbers of people to their church a measure of success as  Jesus defined success?  I’m not so sure of this… {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

He is leading a Home Fellowship Group in a Bible Study of the Gospel of Mark.  At their last session they discussed this question of “supersize” as Jesus seemed to see it.

He accepted the large crowds he attracted—some so large along the Sea of Galilee that he acquired a boat to get in so he would not be crushed by the crowds seeking to touch him and be healed. But Jesus tends to see those crowds as no reason for gratification. He feels that many of them are there for the wrong reason, to be healed of their infirmities and to see the miraculous. Jesus heals them and has compassion for them, but proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God is his main mission. That proclamation is his main mission because it  has the power to transform people’s lives, and sometimes people who are only seeking physical healing and entertainment can get in the way of that proclamation. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

In those days Jesus also had to get listening ears. In that age people were much more willing to listen and to go into discussion about religious and spiritual matters. There was much more interest in God than today. But Jesus knew that from the many that came around to hear him speak, there were also many who came out of curiosity or wanted to see miracles or hear controversial talks.

Jesus saw the crowds to whom he sought to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God in the same way as a sower.

Only a small portion of the crowd would actually be transformed by the good news of the Kingdom of God.  The rest would let other things choke it out of their lives and die unchanged. Thus I feel Jesus was not impressed with numbers but with changes in the lives of people who heard him. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?} {Please do read also Mark 4: 1-9}

Too often people think it our the numbers that make it to be good. Perhaps the numbers show the popularity, but for sure they do not always show the integrity or the good value of a product or group.

The pastor thinks the answer to his and our question “Is Bigger Better?” as it pertains to churches is this:

it is not size alone that leads to success of any church, large or small, but it is  its ability to follow Jesus and in doing so  transform the lives of those who are a part of that church and those who that church reaches out to.   The measure of a church’s success is the number of lives that have been changed and transformed due to its proclamation both in word and in deed of the Kingdom of God.   The successful church  is the “good soil” in the Parable of the Sower” that brings forth transformation  of people’s lives and nurtures their growth in relationship to God and God’s Kingdom.

A successful church, regardless of the names on the roster, changes people into devoted followers of Jesus and his teachings as they live their lives each day.   Small churches can be just as successful as large churches in changing people’s lives as they live the great commandment to love God and neighbor as yourself.”   Sometimes because small churches are more personal, they are able to live this better than those with thousands on their membership roster. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

The Christadelphians are a very tiny community. We only can hope that all people in this small community bear their hearts on the right place. God knows the heart and it is for him that we should work and go out in the world getting people to know the Master works of God.

We may not forget that by being such a small community we have the advantage that we can get together in small cosy groups and feel much more the unity of the small group than in such mega churches were everybody can sit next to each other without knowing the other. When sitting in a stadium, arena or in such a huge church were there are hundreds or thousands of people it can well be that the individual may be drowning in the numbers.

We should be ready to throw out the lifeline and to pull those people who are looking for the Truth, to get to our meetings and let them feel that we are real followers of Jesus, keeping to his teachings and not adoring human doctrines, but keeping to Biblical doctrines, studying the infallible Word of God daily.

+

Preceding:

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

The Right One to follow and to worship

Wanting to live in Christ’s city

A participation in the body of Christ

Positive Preaching Day 2015

Doubting and going astray

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

++

Additional reading:

1. Who are the Christadelphians
2. What are Brothers in Christ
3. Christadelphian people
4. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
5. Strange Fire conference 2013
6. Bloggers for Christ and Bloggers for Peace
7. Being Missional
8. Atonement And Fellowship 4/8
9. Atonement And Fellowship 5/8
10. Good or bad preacher
11. Quibbling siblings united or allied children of an organisation or a church
12. Reflection for today: hating your brother

+++

Further reading:

1. Lessons Learned at Strange Fire
2. A Vision of Holiness
3. Praying in Circles
4. In this Moment
5. Wanting to be Heard
6. truth nugget #66
7. Unite against their corruption, not our church’s
8. Prosperity Gospel – The Bane of The True Gospel
9. The Conference Every Mega-Church Pastor Should Attend
10. Millennials And Christianity!
11. In Delight of the Deca-Church
12. [TL;DR] In Defense of the Mega-Church
13. Agree to Disagree
14. Kingdom Building: The Large Church and the Small Church Working Together
15. Mega Churches: What’s the big deal?
16. 3 Reasons Why You Should Go To A Small Church
17. Missed Opportunities
18. Pastoral Environment and the Fight for Holiness
19. Welcome to the Club
20. 365 Day Photo Challenge 167/365 “Church on the Hill”
21. Extravaganza City
22. Instructed In God’s Ways
23. Why Black Mega Church Pastors Catch Such Heat
24. Book Review: The Blessed Church
25. My Two Cents… conderning a famous mega-church preacher
26. I don’t believe in mega churches
27. American Christian Idol

+++

Related articles

• LISTEN: The Body of Believers, Part 2 (Onward Christian Soldiers #98 with Daniel Whyte III) (blackchristiannews.com)
• The Truth About The Roman Catholic Church (nowtheendbegins.com)
• 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 Taking a Spiritual Self-Exam (jimerwin.com)
• Lessons From The Road (beyondthemiryclay.wordpress.com)
• The Daily Gospel and Readings 21 September 2015 (prayersandmeditations.com)
• Such A Time As This (mylordmyfriend.com)
• A Perfect Inheritance (birdchirp.wordpress.com)
• How Long Will You Waver? (juicyecumenism.com)
• Pastors & Patriots Dinner – for such a time as this! (christian-reporter-news.ticketleap.com)
• No More Youth Pastors? (Part I) (joshuaziefle.net)

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Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that Christians are a Moral Majority. For the Christadelphian community it was already very clear that Christendom had gone astray and that not many people knew the essence of the Divine Creator and His Plan.

In certain parts of the world we may find mega churches, like in the United states of America. But what we also see in those countries is that there is a very strange discrepancy between the way of life and the way presented in the Holy Scriptures. In the talks about pro-life issues and arguments at our website From Guestwriters this is made clear in the different reactions where some readers point out at the huge amount of abortions been done every day. Such points of discussion as the abortion debate show how values and attitudes have changed over the years.

Those people who call themselves Christian either are not so much interested in having an active faith or going to worship services or when they want to go to worship services they expect them to be relaxing and entertaining. For many the entertaining factor receives priority. This makes it understandable why certain churches in the States get full house whilst the churches really interested in and giving eye and ear for the Word of God do not have so many people coming to their service.

In general people are very much influenced by the media and television and show business are not the instruments who, today,  bring the people to God. the television church services are full of show elements and short quoting form a few words taken from Scripture but also taken out of context. No time is given to sincerely listen and to sincerely study a full paragraph of a Bible chapter.

Our very fast changing world can do with a sort of new reformation. What’s needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place.

We should seek the kingdom of God, before everything else and we should love to bring others to the entrance gate of that Kingdom. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonise opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let’s do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down.

Today more than ever those who feel the connection with the Nazarene master teacher Jeshua should connect with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and show their love for each other. Not staying in their small local cocoon, but also connecting to other brethren and sisters from all over. They should be welcoming any visiting brother or sister and when they receive mail from some brother or sister form somewhere in the world they should take time to answer that mail and to show their love to that correspondent by not ignoring him or her but letting those writers be feeling recognised as brothers and sisters of the body of Christ.

Though that Body of Christ may be composed of different nationalities, different cultured races, they should all show that they have union in that body of Christ by the unity of spirit in Christ. Unity should be shown by their willingness to communicate with each other and to be respectful for the different characters and different opinions. Unity does not have to mean that all have to say exactly the same or have to use the same bible translation, read the same books, may not have different ways of civilian life, may not have different tastes. Those differences make the world coloured and not boring. We should be happy with such diversity and the differences between ecclesiae may provide different pastures for bible believers to find themselves at ease in one or the other ecclesia.

In Jesus time the apostles were also of different character and different opinion or used not always the same words. We should neither. In our way of reaching people we should recognise that they should not know Christadelphianisms and may have a religious vocabulary closer to the denomination to which they belonged originally or still belong. By preaching to them we do have to be able to use different words and different Bible translations so that they can come to understand what the Word of God is saying. We are just some intermediaries who want to show them that Jesus is our mediator and the Way to God.

Those we want to attract to the Word of God we have to convince that it are not the megachurches or the churches with the most members that are really following the Word of God and would not have false teachings or wrong doctrines. Lots of people may also put their hope in such megachurches because they expect megachurch pastors to have all the answers and that those churches could grow so much because those pastors are personally successful as well as leaders of successful churches because they can offer the best for man.

At conferences such preachers also may attract a lot of attention because many think they have the solution for today’s problem, a diminishing church.

and so we come to see what crumbs of wisdom they might cast our way that will help us and our small churches be”successful” like they are.

writes pastor Jim in his article “Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?“. Like many of us in the Christadelphian community is has seen Abraham and should have gathered enough experience to have some sound opinion. He believes that such leaders of mega churches may deliver good sermons. For sure they probably are good administrators, very good players with words or good speakers having a good deal of charisma. He correctly points out

Their churches offer tons of programs for children and adults—from support groups for people with various problems to children’s ministry and everything in between. But are a variety of programs offered to attract large numbers of people to their church a measure of success as  Jesus defined success?  I’m not so sure of this… {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

He is leading a Home Fellowship Group in a Bible Study of the Gospel of Mark.  At their last session they discussed this question of “supersize” as Jesus seemed to see it.

He accepted the large crowds he attracted—some so large along the Sea of Galilee that he acquired a boat to get in so he would not be crushed by the crowds seeking to touch him and be healed. But Jesus tends to see those crowds as no reason for gratification. He feels that many of them are there for the wrong reason, to be healed of their infirmities and to see the miraculous. Jesus heals them and has compassion for them, but proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God is his main mission. That proclamation is his main mission because it  has the power to transform people’s lives, and sometimes people who are only seeking physical healing and entertainment can get in the way of that proclamation. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

In those days Jesus also had to get listening ears. In that age people were much more willing to listen and to go into discussion about religious and spiritual matters. There was much more interest in God than today. But Jesus knew that from the many that came around to hear him speak, there were also many who came out of curiosity or wanted to see miracles or hear controversial talks.

Jesus saw the crowds to whom he sought to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God in the same way as a sower.

Only a small portion of the crowd would actually be transformed by the good news of the Kingdom of God.  The rest would let other things choke it out of their lives and die unchanged. Thus I feel Jesus was not impressed with numbers but with changes in the lives of people who heard him. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?} {Please do read also Mark 4: 1-9}

Too often people think it our the numbers that make it to be good. Perhaps the numbers show the popularity, but for sure they do not always show the integrity or the good value of a product or group.

The pastor thinks the answer to his and our question “Is Bigger Better?” as it pertains to churches is this:

it is not size alone that leads to success of any church, large or small, but it is  its ability to follow Jesus and in doing so  transform the lives of those who are a part of that church and those who that church reaches out to.   The measure of a church’s success is the number of lives that have been changed and transformed due to its proclamation both in word and in deed of the Kingdom of God.   The successful church  is the “good soil” in the Parable of the Sower” that brings forth transformation  of people’s lives and nurtures their growth in relationship to God and God’s Kingdom.

A successful church, regardless of the names on the roster, changes people into devoted followers of Jesus and his teachings as they live their lives each day.   Small churches can be just as successful as large churches in changing people’s lives as they live the great commandment to love God and neighbor as yourself.”   Sometimes because small churches are more personal, they are able to live this better than those with thousands on their membership roster. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

The Christadelphians are a very tiny community. We only can hope that all people in this small community bear their hearts on the right place. God knows the heart and it is for him that we should work and go out in the world getting people to know the Master works of God.

We may not forget that by being such a small community we have the advantage that we can get together in small cosy groups and feel much more the unity of the small group than in such mega churches were everybody can sit next to each other without knowing the other. When sitting in a stadium, arena or in such a huge church were there are hundreds or thousands of people it can well be that the individual may be drowning in the numbers.

We should be ready to throw out the lifeline and to pull those people who are looking for the Truth, to get to our meetings and let them feel that we are real followers of Jesus, keeping to his teachings and not adoring human doctrines, but keeping to Biblical doctrines, studying the infallible Word of God daily.

+

Preceding:

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

The Right One to follow and to worship

Wanting to live in Christ’s city

A participation in the body of Christ

Positive Preaching Day 2015

Doubting and going astray

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

++

Additional reading:

1. Who are the Christadelphians
2. What are Brothers in Christ
3. Christadelphian people
4. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
5. Strange Fire conference 2013
6. Bloggers for Christ and Bloggers for Peace
7. Being Missional
8. Atonement And Fellowship 4/8
9. Atonement And Fellowship 5/8
10. Good or bad preacher
11. Quibbling siblings united or allied children of an organisation or a church
12. Reflection for today: hating your brother

+++

Further reading:

1. Lessons Learned at Strange Fire
2. A Vision of Holiness
3. Praying in Circles
4. In this Moment
5. Wanting to be Heard
6. truth nugget #66
7. Unite against their corruption, not our church’s
8. Prosperity Gospel – The Bane of The True Gospel
9. The Conference Every Mega-Church Pastor Should Attend
10. Millennials And Christianity!
11. In Delight of the Deca-Church
12. [TL;DR] In Defense of the Mega-Church
13. Agree to Disagree
14. Kingdom Building: The Large Church and the Small Church Working Together
15. Mega Churches: What’s the big deal?
16. 3 Reasons Why You Should Go To A Small Church
17. Missed Opportunities
18. Pastoral Environment and the Fight for Holiness
19. Welcome to the Club
20. 365 Day Photo Challenge 167/365 “Church on the Hill”
21. Extravaganza City
22. Instructed In God’s Ways
23. Why Black Mega Church Pastors Catch Such Heat
24. Book Review: The Blessed Church
25. My Two Cents… conderning a famous mega-church preacher
26. I don’t believe in mega churches
27. American Christian Idol

+++

Related articles

• LISTEN: The Body of Believers, Part 2 (Onward Christian Soldiers #98 with Daniel Whyte III) (blackchristiannews.com)
• The Truth About The Roman Catholic Church (nowtheendbegins.com)
• 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 Taking a Spiritual Self-Exam (jimerwin.com)
• Lessons From The Road (beyondthemiryclay.wordpress.com)
• The Daily Gospel and Readings 21 September 2015 (prayersandmeditations.com)
• Such A Time As This (mylordmyfriend.com)
• A Perfect Inheritance (birdchirp.wordpress.com)
• How Long Will You Waver? (juicyecumenism.com)
• Pastors & Patriots Dinner – for such a time as this! (christian-reporter-news.ticketleap.com)
• No More Youth Pastors? (Part I) (joshuaziefle.net)

Rate this:

#BeingInUnion #BodyOfChrist #BrotherInChrist #Brotherhood #BrothersAndSistersInChrist #BrothersInChrist #Charisma #ChristadelphianCommunity #Christadelphianisms #Christian #ChristianChurch #ChurchService #Communication #Denomination #Disunion #Diversity #EntertainmentInChurch #GoodSoil #HomeFellowship #HumanDoctrines #Ignoring #IgnoringOthers #Lifeline #Media #MegaChurch #Mission #MoralMajority #NeglectingOthers #NewReformation #NoticingOthers #NumbersAmount_ #Opinion #Orator #ParticipationInBodyOfChrist #Pastor #Preaching #PreachingWork #Proclaiming #Proclamation #Quantity #ReligiousCommunity #ReligiousDiversity #ReligiousFreedom #ReligiousVocabulary #SisterInChrist #SistersInChrist #SmallGroup #SpiritInChrist #Successfulness #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Unity #UnityInChrist #UnityInDiversity #WorshipService

Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that Christians are a Moral Majority. For the Christadelphian community it was already very clear that Christendom had gone astray and that not many people knew the essence of the Divine Creator and His Plan.

In certain parts of the world we may find mega churches, like in the United states of America. But what we also see in those countries is that there is a very strange discrepancy between the way of life and the way presented in the Holy Scriptures. In the talks about pro-life issues and arguments at our website From Guestwriters this is made clear in the different reactions where some readers point out at the huge amount of abortions been done every day. Such points of discussion as the abortion debate show how values and attitudes have changed over the years.

Those people who call themselves Christian either are not so much interested in having an active faith or going to worship services or when they want to go to worship services they expect them to be relaxing and entertaining. For many the entertaining factor receives priority. This makes it understandable why certain churches in the States get full house whilst the churches really interested in and giving eye and ear for the Word of God do not have so many people coming to their service.

In general people are very much influenced by the media and television and show business are not the instruments who, today,  bring the people to God. the television church services are full of show elements and short quoting form a few words taken from Scripture but also taken out of context. No time is given to sincerely listen and to sincerely study a full paragraph of a Bible chapter.

Our very fast changing world can do with a sort of new reformation. What’s needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place.

We should seek the kingdom of God, before everything else and we should love to bring others to the entrance gate of that Kingdom. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonise opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let’s do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down.

Today more than ever those who feel the connection with the Nazarene master teacher Jeshua should connect with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and show their love for each other. Not staying in their small local cocoon, but also connecting to other brethren and sisters from all over. They should be welcoming any visiting brother or sister and when they receive mail from some brother or sister form somewhere in the world they should take time to answer that mail and to show their love to that correspondent by not ignoring him or her but letting those writers be feeling recognised as brothers and sisters of the body of Christ.

Though that Body of Christ may be composed of different nationalities, different cultured races, they should all show that they have union in that body of Christ by the unity of spirit in Christ. Unity should be shown by their willingness to communicate with each other and to be respectful for the different characters and different opinions. Unity does not have to mean that all have to say exactly the same or have to use the same bible translation, read the same books, may not have different ways of civilian life, may not have different tastes. Those differences make the world coloured and not boring. We should be happy with such diversity and the differences between ecclesiae may provide different pastures for bible believers to find themselves at ease in one or the other ecclesia.

In Jesus time the apostles were also of different character and different opinion or used not always the same words. We should neither. In our way of reaching people we should recognise that they should not know Christadelphianisms and may have a religious vocabulary closer to the denomination to which they belonged originally or still belong. By preaching to them we do have to be able to use different words and different Bible translations so that they can come to understand what the Word of God is saying. We are just some intermediaries who want to show them that Jesus is our mediator and the Way to God.

Those we want to attract to the Word of God we have to convince that it are not the megachurches or the churches with the most members that are really following the Word of God and would not have false teachings or wrong doctrines. Lots of people may also put their hope in such megachurches because they expect megachurch pastors to have all the answers and that those churches could grow so much because those pastors are personally successful as well as leaders of successful churches because they can offer the best for man.

At conferences such preachers also may attract a lot of attention because many think they have the solution for today’s problem, a diminishing church.

and so we come to see what crumbs of wisdom they might cast our way that will help us and our small churches be”successful” like they are.

writes pastor Jim in his article “Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?“. Like many of us in the Christadelphian community is has seen Abraham and should have gathered enough experience to have some sound opinion. He believes that such leaders of mega churches may deliver good sermons. For sure they probably are good administrators, very good players with words or good speakers having a good deal of charisma. He correctly points out

Their churches offer tons of programs for children and adults—from support groups for people with various problems to children’s ministry and everything in between. But are a variety of programs offered to attract large numbers of people to their church a measure of success as  Jesus defined success?  I’m not so sure of this… {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

He is leading a Home Fellowship Group in a Bible Study of the Gospel of Mark.  At their last session they discussed this question of “supersize” as Jesus seemed to see it.

He accepted the large crowds he attracted—some so large along the Sea of Galilee that he acquired a boat to get in so he would not be crushed by the crowds seeking to touch him and be healed. But Jesus tends to see those crowds as no reason for gratification. He feels that many of them are there for the wrong reason, to be healed of their infirmities and to see the miraculous. Jesus heals them and has compassion for them, but proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God is his main mission. That proclamation is his main mission because it  has the power to transform people’s lives, and sometimes people who are only seeking physical healing and entertainment can get in the way of that proclamation. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

In those days Jesus also had to get listening ears. In that age people were much more willing to listen and to go into discussion about religious and spiritual matters. There was much more interest in God than today. But Jesus knew that from the many that came around to hear him speak, there were also many who came out of curiosity or wanted to see miracles or hear controversial talks.

Jesus saw the crowds to whom he sought to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God in the same way as a sower.

Only a small portion of the crowd would actually be transformed by the good news of the Kingdom of God.  The rest would let other things choke it out of their lives and die unchanged. Thus I feel Jesus was not impressed with numbers but with changes in the lives of people who heard him. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?} {Please do read also Mark 4: 1-9}

Too often people think it our the numbers that make it to be good. Perhaps the numbers show the popularity, but for sure they do not always show the integrity or the good value of a product or group.

The pastor thinks the answer to his and our question “Is Bigger Better?” as it pertains to churches is this:

it is not size alone that leads to success of any church, large or small, but it is  its ability to follow Jesus and in doing so  transform the lives of those who are a part of that church and those who that church reaches out to.   The measure of a church’s success is the number of lives that have been changed and transformed due to its proclamation both in word and in deed of the Kingdom of God.   The successful church  is the “good soil” in the Parable of the Sower” that brings forth transformation  of people’s lives and nurtures their growth in relationship to God and God’s Kingdom.

A successful church, regardless of the names on the roster, changes people into devoted followers of Jesus and his teachings as they live their lives each day.   Small churches can be just as successful as large churches in changing people’s lives as they live the great commandment to love God and neighbor as yourself.”   Sometimes because small churches are more personal, they are able to live this better than those with thousands on their membership roster. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

The Christadelphians are a very tiny community. We only can hope that all people in this small community bear their hearts on the right place. God knows the heart and it is for him that we should work and go out in the world getting people to know the Master works of God.

We may not forget that by being such a small community we have the advantage that we can get together in small cosy groups and feel much more the unity of the small group than in such mega churches were everybody can sit next to each other without knowing the other. When sitting in a stadium, arena or in such a huge church were there are hundreds or thousands of people it can well be that the individual may be drowning in the numbers.

We should be ready to throw out the lifeline and to pull those people who are looking for the Truth, to get to our meetings and let them feel that we are real followers of Jesus, keeping to his teachings and not adoring human doctrines, but keeping to Biblical doctrines, studying the infallible Word of God daily.

+

Preceding:

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

The Right One to follow and to worship

Wanting to live in Christ’s city

A participation in the body of Christ

Positive Preaching Day 2015

Doubting and going astray

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

++

Additional reading:

1. Who are the Christadelphians
2. What are Brothers in Christ
3. Christadelphian people
4. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
5. Strange Fire conference 2013
6. Bloggers for Christ and Bloggers for Peace
7. Being Missional
8. Atonement And Fellowship 4/8
9. Atonement And Fellowship 5/8
10. Good or bad preacher
11. Quibbling siblings united or allied children of an organisation or a church
12. Reflection for today: hating your brother

+++

Further reading:

1. Lessons Learned at Strange Fire
2. A Vision of Holiness
3. Praying in Circles
4. In this Moment
5. Wanting to be Heard
6. truth nugget #66
7. Unite against their corruption, not our church’s
8. Prosperity Gospel – The Bane of The True Gospel
9. The Conference Every Mega-Church Pastor Should Attend
10. Millennials And Christianity!
11. In Delight of the Deca-Church
12. [TL;DR] In Defense of the Mega-Church
13. Agree to Disagree
14. Kingdom Building: The Large Church and the Small Church Working Together
15. Mega Churches: What’s the big deal?
16. 3 Reasons Why You Should Go To A Small Church
17. Missed Opportunities
18. Pastoral Environment and the Fight for Holiness
19. Welcome to the Club
20. 365 Day Photo Challenge 167/365 “Church on the Hill”
21. Extravaganza City
22. Instructed In God’s Ways
23. Why Black Mega Church Pastors Catch Such Heat
24. Book Review: The Blessed Church
25. My Two Cents… conderning a famous mega-church preacher
26. I don’t believe in mega churches
27. American Christian Idol

+++

Related articles

• LISTEN: The Body of Believers, Part 2 (Onward Christian Soldiers #98 with Daniel Whyte III) (blackchristiannews.com)
• The Truth About The Roman Catholic Church (nowtheendbegins.com)
• 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 Taking a Spiritual Self-Exam (jimerwin.com)
• Lessons From The Road (beyondthemiryclay.wordpress.com)
• The Daily Gospel and Readings 21 September 2015 (prayersandmeditations.com)
• Such A Time As This (mylordmyfriend.com)
• A Perfect Inheritance (birdchirp.wordpress.com)
• How Long Will You Waver? (juicyecumenism.com)
• Pastors & Patriots Dinner – for such a time as this! (christian-reporter-news.ticketleap.com)
• No More Youth Pastors? (Part I) (joshuaziefle.net)

Rate this:

#BeingInUnion #BodyOfChrist #BrotherInChrist #Brotherhood #BrothersAndSistersInChrist #BrothersInChrist #Charisma #ChristadelphianCommunity #Christadelphianisms #Christian #ChristianChurch #ChurchService #Communication #Denomination #Disunion #Diversity #EntertainmentInChurch #GoodSoil #HomeFellowship #HumanDoctrines #Ignoring #IgnoringOthers #Lifeline #Media #MegaChurch #Mission #MoralMajority #NeglectingOthers #NewReformation #NoticingOthers #NumbersAmount_ #Opinion #Orator #ParticipationInBodyOfChrist #Pastor #Preaching #PreachingWork #Proclaiming #Proclamation #Quantity #ReligiousCommunity #ReligiousDiversity #ReligiousFreedom #ReligiousVocabulary #SisterInChrist #SistersInChrist #SmallGroup #SpiritInChrist #Successfulness #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Unity #UnityInChrist #UnityInDiversity #WorshipService

Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that Christians are a Moral Majority. For the Christadelphian community it was already very clear that Christendom had gone astray and that not many people knew the essence of the Divine Creator and His Plan.

In certain parts of the world we may find mega churches, like in the United states of America. But what we also see in those countries is that there is a very strange discrepancy between the way of life and the way presented in the Holy Scriptures. In the talks about pro-life issues and arguments at our website From Guestwriters this is made clear in the different reactions where some readers point out at the huge amount of abortions been done every day. Such points of discussion as the abortion debate show how values and attitudes have changed over the years.

Those people who call themselves Christian either are not so much interested in having an active faith or going to worship services or when they want to go to worship services they expect them to be relaxing and entertaining. For many the entertaining factor receives priority. This makes it understandable why certain churches in the States get full house whilst the churches really interested in and giving eye and ear for the Word of God do not have so many people coming to their service.

In general people are very much influenced by the media and television and show business are not the instruments who, today,  bring the people to God. the television church services are full of show elements and short quoting form a few words taken from Scripture but also taken out of context. No time is given to sincerely listen and to sincerely study a full paragraph of a Bible chapter.

Our very fast changing world can do with a sort of new reformation. What’s needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place.

We should seek the kingdom of God, before everything else and we should love to bring others to the entrance gate of that Kingdom. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonise opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let’s do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down.

Today more than ever those who feel the connection with the Nazarene master teacher Jeshua should connect with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and show their love for each other. Not staying in their small local cocoon, but also connecting to other brethren and sisters from all over. They should be welcoming any visiting brother or sister and when they receive mail from some brother or sister form somewhere in the world they should take time to answer that mail and to show their love to that correspondent by not ignoring him or her but letting those writers be feeling recognised as brothers and sisters of the body of Christ.

Though that Body of Christ may be composed of different nationalities, different cultured races, they should all show that they have union in that body of Christ by the unity of spirit in Christ. Unity should be shown by their willingness to communicate with each other and to be respectful for the different characters and different opinions. Unity does not have to mean that all have to say exactly the same or have to use the same bible translation, read the same books, may not have different ways of civilian life, may not have different tastes. Those differences make the world coloured and not boring. We should be happy with such diversity and the differences between ecclesiae may provide different pastures for bible believers to find themselves at ease in one or the other ecclesia.

In Jesus time the apostles were also of different character and different opinion or used not always the same words. We should neither. In our way of reaching people we should recognise that they should not know Christadelphianisms and may have a religious vocabulary closer to the denomination to which they belonged originally or still belong. By preaching to them we do have to be able to use different words and different Bible translations so that they can come to understand what the Word of God is saying. We are just some intermediaries who want to show them that Jesus is our mediator and the Way to God.

Those we want to attract to the Word of God we have to convince that it are not the megachurches or the churches with the most members that are really following the Word of God and would not have false teachings or wrong doctrines. Lots of people may also put their hope in such megachurches because they expect megachurch pastors to have all the answers and that those churches could grow so much because those pastors are personally successful as well as leaders of successful churches because they can offer the best for man.

At conferences such preachers also may attract a lot of attention because many think they have the solution for today’s problem, a diminishing church.

and so we come to see what crumbs of wisdom they might cast our way that will help us and our small churches be”successful” like they are.

writes pastor Jim in his article “Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?“. Like many of us in the Christadelphian community is has seen Abraham and should have gathered enough experience to have some sound opinion. He believes that such leaders of mega churches may deliver good sermons. For sure they probably are good administrators, very good players with words or good speakers having a good deal of charisma. He correctly points out

Their churches offer tons of programs for children and adults—from support groups for people with various problems to children’s ministry and everything in between. But are a variety of programs offered to attract large numbers of people to their church a measure of success as  Jesus defined success?  I’m not so sure of this… {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

He is leading a Home Fellowship Group in a Bible Study of the Gospel of Mark.  At their last session they discussed this question of “supersize” as Jesus seemed to see it.

He accepted the large crowds he attracted—some so large along the Sea of Galilee that he acquired a boat to get in so he would not be crushed by the crowds seeking to touch him and be healed. But Jesus tends to see those crowds as no reason for gratification. He feels that many of them are there for the wrong reason, to be healed of their infirmities and to see the miraculous. Jesus heals them and has compassion for them, but proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God is his main mission. That proclamation is his main mission because it  has the power to transform people’s lives, and sometimes people who are only seeking physical healing and entertainment can get in the way of that proclamation. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

In those days Jesus also had to get listening ears. In that age people were much more willing to listen and to go into discussion about religious and spiritual matters. There was much more interest in God than today. But Jesus knew that from the many that came around to hear him speak, there were also many who came out of curiosity or wanted to see miracles or hear controversial talks.

Jesus saw the crowds to whom he sought to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God in the same way as a sower.

Only a small portion of the crowd would actually be transformed by the good news of the Kingdom of God.  The rest would let other things choke it out of their lives and die unchanged. Thus I feel Jesus was not impressed with numbers but with changes in the lives of people who heard him. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?} {Please do read also Mark 4: 1-9}

Too often people think it our the numbers that make it to be good. Perhaps the numbers show the popularity, but for sure they do not always show the integrity or the good value of a product or group.

The pastor thinks the answer to his and our question “Is Bigger Better?” as it pertains to churches is this:

it is not size alone that leads to success of any church, large or small, but it is  its ability to follow Jesus and in doing so  transform the lives of those who are a part of that church and those who that church reaches out to.   The measure of a church’s success is the number of lives that have been changed and transformed due to its proclamation both in word and in deed of the Kingdom of God.   The successful church  is the “good soil” in the Parable of the Sower” that brings forth transformation  of people’s lives and nurtures their growth in relationship to God and God’s Kingdom.

A successful church, regardless of the names on the roster, changes people into devoted followers of Jesus and his teachings as they live their lives each day.   Small churches can be just as successful as large churches in changing people’s lives as they live the great commandment to love God and neighbor as yourself.”   Sometimes because small churches are more personal, they are able to live this better than those with thousands on their membership roster. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

The Christadelphians are a very tiny community. We only can hope that all people in this small community bear their hearts on the right place. God knows the heart and it is for him that we should work and go out in the world getting people to know the Master works of God.

We may not forget that by being such a small community we have the advantage that we can get together in small cosy groups and feel much more the unity of the small group than in such mega churches were everybody can sit next to each other without knowing the other. When sitting in a stadium, arena or in such a huge church were there are hundreds or thousands of people it can well be that the individual may be drowning in the numbers.

We should be ready to throw out the lifeline and to pull those people who are looking for the Truth, to get to our meetings and let them feel that we are real followers of Jesus, keeping to his teachings and not adoring human doctrines, but keeping to Biblical doctrines, studying the infallible Word of God daily.

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Preceding:

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

The Right One to follow and to worship

Wanting to live in Christ’s city

A participation in the body of Christ

Positive Preaching Day 2015

Doubting and going astray

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

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Additional reading:

1. Who are the Christadelphians
2. What are Brothers in Christ
3. Christadelphian people
4. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
5. Strange Fire conference 2013
6. Bloggers for Christ and Bloggers for Peace
7. Being Missional
8. Atonement And Fellowship 4/8
9. Atonement And Fellowship 5/8
10. Good or bad preacher
11. Quibbling siblings united or allied children of an organisation or a church
12. Reflection for today: hating your brother

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Further reading:

1. Lessons Learned at Strange Fire
2. A Vision of Holiness
3. Praying in Circles
4. In this Moment
5. Wanting to be Heard
6. truth nugget #66
7. Unite against their corruption, not our church’s
8. Prosperity Gospel – The Bane of The True Gospel
9. The Conference Every Mega-Church Pastor Should Attend
10. Millennials And Christianity!
11. In Delight of the Deca-Church
12. [TL;DR] In Defense of the Mega-Church
13. Agree to Disagree
14. Kingdom Building: The Large Church and the Small Church Working Together
15. Mega Churches: What’s the big deal?
16. 3 Reasons Why You Should Go To A Small Church
17. Missed Opportunities
18. Pastoral Environment and the Fight for Holiness
19. Welcome to the Club
20. 365 Day Photo Challenge 167/365 “Church on the Hill”
21. Extravaganza City
22. Instructed In God’s Ways
23. Why Black Mega Church Pastors Catch Such Heat
24. Book Review: The Blessed Church
25. My Two Cents… conderning a famous mega-church preacher
26. I don’t believe in mega churches
27. American Christian Idol

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• Lessons From The Road (beyondthemiryclay.wordpress.com)
• The Daily Gospel and Readings 21 September 2015 (prayersandmeditations.com)
• Such A Time As This (mylordmyfriend.com)
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