Simple-church planting in Bath, England
the indian ocean
Flew down to George, 4.5 hrs north of Capetown to stay with my aunt. Yesterday while it was snowing back home I was getting sunburnt on the beach! Oh the call to ministry can be so tough sometimes. The water was beautiful and the surf great. Sorry to rub it in.
We have had some great fellowship together and been praying for our whole family. Last night we saw Scotland beat England in the 6 nations - brilliant.
I return tomorrow back to a busy couple of weeks. Looking forward to it though.
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Off to George
Conference finished last night with a wonderful time of breaking bread together and praying for one another. The DAWN Africa prayer director gave me some words of encouragement to give me courage and strength as I return home.
Am at the airport awaiting internal flight for George which is a couple of hours from Cape Town. Will be staying with my aunt over the weekend; she has been a faithful prayer supporter for us over the years and has been trying to get me out here for ages, so it will be wonderful to 'decompress' from the conference over the weekend before flying home monday.
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Indian CPM
Here is Bindu again. With her husband, a former cancer surgeon, they have seen 69,000 baptised and about 14,000 churches in the last decade. They have also trained 43,000 church planters around their country.
Their planters go into new villages and prayer walk until God leads them to a person of peace, they then offer to pray for any sick. Some then make commitment to Jesus and a new home church is formed.
Bindu has trained thousands of women church planters and prayers. She shared with me a vision of a dark cloud of unbelief hanging over Europe which she has called her thousands of women t pray against.
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Egypt
This guy is called Trevor; he used to live in Egypt but now the government won't let him return. Why?
Well in 2000 he and an indigenous leader began training lay people to plant churches; they had tried unsuccessfully to do the same with existing leaders and ministers. At the end of the training they challenged the people to envision how they might reach their town. The resulting idea was to hold a town-wide festival for which several organisations combined.
The results astonished them as hundreds responded, mostly coming from an Orthodox background. For this reason they encouraged the workers to gather the new believers into simple, home churches.
Seeing how people responded to the gospel produced great faith in the believers and led to a new evangelistic thrust as they began going from village to village sharing the gospel in homes.
Since then 3,300 churches have been planted, with a 10% fallout there are currently 3000 churches. There has been considerable opposition from the orthodox.
As the movement expanded, the issue of control arose as they recognised how quickly things would be quenched by trying to exert any control.
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Another CPM in India
This is a brother (name withheld) from the north of India. In the last 2 year they have seen 8,500 muslims baptised. 1200 new churches have been started and the number of churches increased four fold last year. They have learnt to adopt a non-controlling environment for these movements to thrive; control quenches movements very quickly.
He is also involved in Bangladesh where there are 2 church planting movements underway there. One of 600,000 and a second of around 1,000,000.
Undergirding all these movements is a strong pattern of discipling.
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Divine meeting!
Last summer when we gathered some people in Bath for a weekend with the Dales we took up an offering, part of which we sent to an Indian church planter with whom one of our friends, Geoff Hogg from Bristol is connected. His name was Paul -------- (name witheld for his protection).
This morning during our prayer time I was paired up with a brother from India; when we had finished praying I looked at his name badge, you guessed it - it was Paul!
Even though we both had to travel 1000's of miles to a different continent God can connect us up! Truly remarkable.
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Bindu Choudrie
Early morning prayer led by Bindu, wife of Victor Choudrie who has seen 50,000 churches planted.
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Our welcome!
Had to share this pic; these guys led us into a time of worship this evening! I am posting this from the opening meeting.
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In Africa
First time in Africa. Had a day out yesterday visiting some of SA's history and seeing Pretoria the seat of government.
Have spent a lot of time hearing stories, sharing hearts and listening together to what God is saying and doing. It is breathtaking. The strong resonance we have experienced among the N American and European teams is remarkable. God is clearly taking us down the same path; it is organic, simple, small, reproducible and builds towards movement;
the issue will be how the other national directors respond to this.
Together we had a sense and prayed that God would break in (if necessary to the program) so that at the end of the week we are all clear that God has spoken to us.
The pic is of a senior statesman of the faith (name with held for security reason) some of us from europe & the US have spent the morning talking together and learning from this man. He works mainly in India with church planting movements just one of which has seen around 50,000 churches planted in 10 years.
africa bound
I've never been in Africa, but this weekend I fly out to South Africa as part of the European team attending the DAWN International associates gathering.
What a blessing, not only to smell a little of Africa but also to hear about what God is doing all over the world as the church in different nations works together to see their nations discipled.
After 5 days of hard work in Joburg - no really ;) - I am flying south to spend a weekend with my aunt who lives near George not far from the sea. Well, come on, after all that hard work!
She runs a little B&B on the Garden route so if anyone needs a stopover (£20-25 per night) check it out by clicking this picture of the view from the house: 
I think I can probably cope with this!
my stuff
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A New Way of Being Church
links
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