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!
Every Wednesday morning I will be hanging out at Kafe’ Fröken Olssons, Östra Larmgatan 14 in Göteborg from 10:00 am to 11:45 am. Everyone and anyone is welcome to come, drink coffee, talk about life or just hang out.
Hope to be doing a After work soon too.
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.
What if Jesus was the center of everything we do? Not our history, not our doctrine, not our culture, not our church, not our denomination, just Jesus and His mission.
What if we focused on His mission? Reaching out to and building relationships with the marginal, the outcast, the lonely, the sick. What if we would love God and Love people?
What if our Sunday morning worship was a time to adore and stand at awe to our God and our weekdays was a time of loving, giving, forgiving, helping, healing, caring, sharing, building relationships with people?
What if we would read his Word as a story we are a part of and not a doctrine or a creed? How would we live, how would we act?
What would happen if we allowed Jesus to impact our lives so we could impact others?
What if…
The world is not bad it is just broken!
This changes our thinking from the church as good (white), and world as bad (Black) and compromise as gray.
The Jesus way of thinking is Church as colorful, and the world as black and white or broken.
Look at it this way;
God created us in the garden colorful and whole; body, soul and spirit.
Our body was healthy and naked.
Our Soul was innocent and transparent.
Our Spirit was in communion with God.
We became broken when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good (white) and evil (black).
Our body became sick and covered.
Our soul became corrupt and ashamed.
Our spirit became separated from God.
In a black and white world people are looking for meaning and purpose this is why we have many different religions but also war and greed, etc.
Jesus came to fix what was broken. John 3:16-17
Jesus said the Kingdom of heaven is here He was referring to the relationship of God and man being restored as it was in the garden.
The death and resurrection of Jesus brought the final restoration or redemption for man to be complete and made whole; body, soul and spirit.
Our life is made complete in Christ!
Our identity is no longer in a broken black and white world but in Christ and the colorful world found only by his grace.
Grace makes us free not to live broken again but open to live life to the fullest.
The colorful world is not two dimensional but is a matrix and can only be understood by a relationship with Christ.
The black and white still exist in a colorful matrix. We still struggle with the attacks of the adversary just as Adam and Eve did in the garden tempting us to draw away from the Father.
The Holy Spirit was given to us to empower and lead us in this freedom we have in Christ.
When we see the world not as bad but broken we are able to Impact it with hope as Christ did.
This is the Missio Dei.
The European Church Today: Reflections on Her Context
By Gordon Showell-Rogers
Looking Back to Look Forward
Europe is hugely varied. Albania and Switzerland could almost be on different planets. However, the entire continent shares a common heritage, geographical space, and some elements of culture in a globalised world. Europe today also shares some significant similarities with the world in which the early Christians lived. It is pluralistic, multicultural, hedonistic, and perhaps as open to new ideas as that century was.
Christians in first century “Europe” (today’s name for the western end of the Eurasian landmass) did not know what a difference they would make. They simply knew that Jesus had died for their sins and had risen from the dead. They understood that the cross and the resurrection had cosmic consequences. As a result, they went out and, by God’s grace, changed the world.
Yesterday I was in Örebro to listen to Doug Pagitt pastor of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis Minnesota . He is one of the leaders in the Emerging Church movement in the USA. Doug spoke in the morning session to the students about the Emerging Church or about his Church which is quit unique, it looks like a living room with sofas and tables in a round with the speaker in the center. I wasn’t there for the first meeting so I am not sure what they talked about. In the afternoon meeting he talked about “preaching” from his book; Preaching Re-imagined. He spoke about how preaching should be relational in a dialog and not just a monolog speech, he calls this preaching technique; Progressional Implicatory Dialog. This is about not how the story or the Gospel is applied to our lives but how our lives become a part of the story. It takes a more narrative approach to the understanding the Gospels instead of systematically braking the Bible down to a “how to” book. I guess you will need to buy his book to understand this better.
After the session Doug had to rush off to Oslo but some of us stayed around for a short discussion time which was quite interesting. It seemed that this seminar stirred up a lot of questions which is good. What I heard in this conversation was leaders trying to understand all this but with a modern epistemology. One needs to understand post-modernism and the cultural shift to understand this new kind of Church in a postmodern context. If we continue to think of church in its institutional forms and functions we will continue to miss the point and only become critical of this new approach. Before one criticizes the emerging Church movement one should first study the culture it is trying to reach.
Well now I have a lot to say so I think I will break it down into smaller blog post. I met a blog friend Joachim Elsander at the seminar. Always fun to meet a fellow blogger in person. I told him I like to keep blog posts short and simple and to the point. So there will be more to come later.
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 was thinking of a great way to start a missional process.
Just say ”Hey”! Hi in Swedish is hej (Hey)!
In Sweden it is not very common to greet someone when you walk past them if you don’t know them. There are so many people who feel lonely or separated from society and when we just walk past each other minding our own business we just add to that separation. People are longing for community and relationships but our culture has put a gap in making that easy. I think we could change this by just saying ”Hey”!
Who know what a small greeting can lead to. To give somebody a little attention might make their day or put a smile on their face. Just a little word can make someone feel accepted, build self esteem, give a little hope. It could even start a conversation. Who knows maybe you will make a new friend.
Let’s change culture, be missional, show some love and say, ”Hey”
Preach it Bono!
Watch this video from Solomon’s Porch Church Minneapolis MN. Some people feel alarmed, others feel like wow this is a church I could go to. Remember that the emerging church is a broad term. This is just one example of an “emergent” church.
What are your thoughts?
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Søren Kierkegaard
