FRDAY FAX: issue 19

Friday Fax 2005 Issue 19, 13 May

In this week's Friday Fax:USA:
5,000 house churches planted so far
Bill Bright Billion Soul Initiative
20,000 'Neo-Apostolics'Germany:
Berlin's most peaceful 1st May in 20 years


USA: 5,000 house churches planted so far "The number of house churches in the USA has probably doubled in the past 18months, from 2,500 to 5,000," according to participants at a symposiumorganized by Church Multiplication Associates' Neil Cole in Los Angeles from25-28 April 2005. "The main growth comes from missionary groups aiming to reachthe unchurched with the Gospel and involve them in multipliable discipleshipstructures," says Cole. "We're expecting up to 1,000 participants at the nextnational House Church conference in the USA in Denver from 2-5 September 2005,"say Tony and Felicity Dale, part of the team organizing the conference. JohnEldredge was the main speaker at last year's conference; this year, speakers include Rolland and Heidi Baker, who saw some 5,000 new churches planted inMozambique and neighbouring nations over the past 5 years, Wolfgang Simson and Neil Cole.

Bill Bright Billion Soul Initiative
Dr. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ who died in 2004,prompted the Billion Soul Initiative founded at the end of last year. Closecolleagues and participants in consultations with Bright report that heexplained his personal missionary vision for the future shortly before hisdeath. He called on Christians to cooperate to call 1 billion people to followChrist in the next 10 years by planting 5 million house churches. James O.Davis, JohnC. Maxwell and Steve Douglass subsequently formed the GlobalPastors' Network. A 'global church planting congress' is planned for September2005, in which over 350 Christian leaders will gather to plan this "largest

Source: various, including JamesO. Davis

20,000 \'Neo-Apostolics'While researching his soon to be published book \'Apostolic Genius\', AlanHirsch, author of \'The Shaping of Things to Come\' "stumbled upon some extremely notable, even astonishing, discoveries by important observers of the global Christian scene." Already in 2001, Professor DavidB. Barrett and ToddM.Johnson mentioned that there were already 111 million Christians without a traditional local church. Barrett highlights particularly the development ofthe so-called \'Neo-Apostolic\' networks and movements, of which there arealready over 20,000 around the world, numbering around 394 million Christians.According to Barrett, these Christians reject historical denominationalism andall restrictive central authority, and attempt to lead a life of following Jesus, seeking a more effective missionary lifestyle. They are thefastest-growing Christian movements in the world. Barrett estimates that by theyear 2025, these movements will have around 581 million members, 120 millionmore than all Protestant movements together. Hirsh, who has invited all ofAustralia\'s missionary movements to a conference in Victoria (Forge National Summit, 1-3 July 2005), confirms the trend from his own experience, andbelieves that these new Christian movements "are simply under the radar oftraditional Christianity", at least as long as it holds on to the classical Constantine church structure (pastor+ building+ programme= church).

Source: Alan Hirsch, www.forge.org.au

Germany:
Berlin's most peaceful 1st May in 20 yearsBerlin was infamous for the violent demonstrations on 30th April and 1st May,International Workers' Day. "That's going to change," reports Kerstin Hack. The'spiral of violence' was broken last year, with only 'minor incidents' in "The most peaceful 1st May in 20 years!", according to the press. Kerstin Hack:"There were no real street battles, only a few thrown stones and bottles, andone upturned car which lost petrol but did not burn. That\'s certainly partly due to the many people who celebrated a peaceful May Day and the Police\'swisdom, but also to the Christians on the streets praying, both in 2004 and2005. There was an open-air service, and cleaning teams and prayer teams wereon the streets. In 2004, it was relatively peaceful wherever the intercessors were; violence only escalated in places which we had too few people to cover.This year, with only one exception, the violence stopped almost before itbegan."

Source: Kerstin Hack, e-mail info@down-to-earth.de, tel. (+49)308227962- - -

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posted by Jaeson Ma @ 5/20/2005 10:05:00 AM