What is organic church?
Here is a pdf booklet from www.HouseChurchResource.org.
Explains a little what it is about.
ORGANIC CHURCH Something new in case you might be interested
I believe this is happening all over Scandinavia. We hope to see this spread like a wild fire in Gothenburg!
More coming soon!
20 years through Europe
It was exactly 20 years ago that I bought a one way ticket to Europe to begin my missionary journey. So much has happened in those 20 years. The world has change dramatically but the gospel is the same; the good news that Jesus came to fix a broken world.
I came to Europe with the desire to plant churches that would change lives. I worked in Eastern Europe via Germany and over 14 years in Sweden working with and facilitating church planting initiatives.
4 years back in Sweden
After a short time in the States, we returned to Sweden as CGGC (Churches of God General Conference) missionaries in 2005 with a continued longing to plant churches that can reach an ever changing culture. We came by an invitation to partner with Interact, a Swedish denomination that has a desire to plant more churches in Sweden.
Four years ago we moved back to Gothenburg, Sweden where we initiated and began a process of planting a multi-cultural Church. We asked New Life Church, a multi-cultural Church in Stockholm if they would want to mentor a church plant in Gothenburg. New Life Stockholm became our mother church and committed a partnership with us.
A lot has happened in those four years.
We were permitted to use a building to use to start some ministries. Later the building was donated to New Life Stockholm for our church planting initiative.
Three of those years we had a successful children’s ministry called Faith Factory that reached many children between the ages of 9-14. We have seen these children grow in their faith and love for God. But because of many changes with the ministries, the renovation of our building and ages of the children, Faith Factory came to an end.
Much of the early years were about building relationships and creating a working team that would facilitate a church plant. It took a lot of time and many changes but in the beginning of 2008, a team was in place and growing with people excited about working with this new church.
One year ago renovation began on the building. We saw God do so many amazing things during this time in supplying for our needs and providing workers.
On October 19th 2008, we had our opening service and officially became a Church, New Life Göteborg. CCM Director Don Dennison was our guest speaker.
Since that time the Church has continued to grow. We literally have had new faces in our morning worship every Sunday since our opening. We have people from all over the world attending and getting involved in our Church including a Muslim from Bangladesh, a Buddhist from Japan and atheist from Sweden.
In the spring time we came together as a church with the 40 days of purpose studying the book, Purpose Driven Life. This was led by a couple in our Church who are here in Sweden from the USA as expatriates.
Today we are about 80 people who are in some way involved in this community of faith, and we average about 50-70 in our Sunday morning worship.
October 18th 2009, One year celebration
This month we are celebrating one year as a Church. We have a committed core group and a leadership team that has been established by our mother church in Stockholm.
We are also excited to have Jim and Kasie Brinson and their Children from Tulip Church of God in Indiana preparing to come and work with New Life Göteborg. They are expected to be here in January 2010.
New Church Planting Initiatives
As a missionary and a big heart for seeing more churches planted, we are considering starting another project. I have stepped down from a leadership role in New Life. Up through the end of this year, we will be researching where the needs are. We will be exploring how culture or sub-cultures has changed in the past few years and how we can best start new faith communities or missional churches that can reach these cultures. We will also be networking with others that are working in this area so that we can be most effective in these initiatives.
This is good - from the book Transforming Mission, David Bosch p.390:
“In attempting to flesh out the missio Dei concept, the following could be said: In the new image mission is not primarliy an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfil in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church”. Mission is there by seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vise versa. To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love.”
Much can be said but this is enough to meditate on! Think about it!!
I have been silent on this blog for quit some time now mostly because of the work I am doing in planting a church in Gothenburg Sweden. This fall we have had a lot of work around a building we have received for the church that lies in a strategic part of the city. The building was built in 1940 and was in need of renovation. Our mother church in Stockholm now owns the building and has initiated a renovation project that has transformed the building. We hope to continue to use it as a place of worship, fellowship, cafe’s, children ministries, training, basically a community center for a new suburb that is in the process of growing up all around it. This is a place that will serve our city in the missio Dei. You are welcome to join our facebook group New Life Göteborg to see pictures or information about our Chruch or visit www.newlifegoteborg.se
This coming year I hope to work more to see the Missional focus spread in Sweden. There are some plans in the making to see that happen and I hope to continue to blog more to encourage missional living in Sweden.
I hope this holiday season will remind us that it is all about Jesus!
A friend and co-worker, John van Dinther, the founding pastor of New Life Stockholm just started a new blog called Synergetics. He posted some interesting statistics about the church in Sweden that Öivind Thomson presented at Pioneer 08 in Stockholm last week. Read it here.
Lately I have been deep in thought and spirit. Writing my thoughts on the tablet of my heart instead of my blog. I have a lot of books to read which fuels the fire of my thoughts.
Yesterday evening I went to a seminar with Peter Halldorf who just published a new book called “Doften av helgon” or “The Scent of a Saint”. Ironically he speaks and writes about the topic I have been interested in maybe for a longer time but has now become more actual, learning from the early church and the Church Fathers. Perhaps one could say a ancient-future approach. I think this is a result of my existential hunger for passionate truth on which I have been on a pilgrimage for a long time. My existential hunger for passionate truth is also a reason why I find interest in the emerging missional church which has called me to look back at the roots of the early church.
My blog may be silent for a while as I continue on my inner journey. I hope I can publish some of my thoughts and experiences. I will also try to publish what is happening on my outer journey with our church plant which has now been officially called New Life Church Gothenburg.
Not much to say right now. Just contemplating, meditating, reflecting on everything both here in Sweden and abroad. What is God doing?
I am also focused on our Church plant here in Gothenburg. Things seem to moving ahead nicely. We have a team of people that are coming together and will have people moving here from other parts of the world to work with us. It is quite exciting. We will be talking about what the DNA of this church plant will look like. This will be interesting since we have people from different theological backgrounds coming together. I will focus on the missional aspect of church as well as Christ centered community. We will be a multi-cultural, bilingual (English-Swedish) church which will also add dynamic to the church. I think to say multi-cultural I mean we will be multi-cultural both ethnically and sub-culturally. I think we will have a mix of modern and post-modern sub-groups. With such a mix we will need to be simply the Church the way Christ intended it to be. Diversely unified!
If you live in Gothenburg or will be moving to Gothenburg we welcome you to join us in this journey.
I have not been blogging for quit a while. In part because I got blogged out and because I have been putting “being missional” to practice. In other words instead of writing about it I have been living it. Hanging out in the third place, building relationships or as Jesus did hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. Living incarnational or missional works so much better then being a evangelistical exclusive church person. I have made real contact with real people in real conversations about the real thing, Christ! And of course I will not tell you when, where, how and with who because I do not want to to exploit my new friends as a mission project because they are not they are my true friends. I am very happy to walk down the same road with them sharing my journey with them as the tell me about theirs. And as we commune with each other I pray that our journey will end in the same place.
I hope as you read this that you are not only reading and writing about the missional life but living it. You can only make a difference when it becomes existential, real and passionate.
Just do it!
creating a COME AS YOU ARE culture in the CHURCH
“What do a Buddhist, a biker couple, a gay-rights activist, a transient, a high-tech engineer, a Muslim, a twenty-something single mom, a Jew, a couple living together, and an atheist all have in common? They are the future church.”
This is how John Burke starts his book, No Perfect People Allowed. I got this book a couple of years ago when it was the book of the year for our denomination.
The Back Cover:
The church is facing its greatest challenges – and its greatest opportunities – in our postmodern, post-Christian world. God is drawing thousands of spiritually curious “imperfect people” to become his church – but how we doing at welcoming them?
No Perfect People Allowed shows you how to deconstruct the five main barriers standing between emerging generations and your church by creating the right culture. From inspiring stories of real people once far from God, to practical ideas that can be applied by any local church, this book offers a refreshing vision of potential and power of the Body of Christ to transform lives today.
John Burke will be at the Willowcreek A2 Conference in Örebro Sweden, February 2-3, 2007. I’ll be there too.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Søren Kierkegaard
