Europe: How many people follow Jesus? 
Missions statistics for Europe look quite bleak these days. According to the latest findings, a report by researcher Ruth Robinson of Greater Europe Mission (GEM), only 1.1% of Europeans follows Jesus, which is one out of ninety! But another study, published one and half year ago by the European Missions Research Group (emRG), a research partnership in which GEM also participates, states that 4.2% of Europeans follow Jesus and are mission-minded. Operation World, the extensively informed prayer guide compiled by Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, speaks of about 3.5%. Which raises the obvious question: who is right?
"They are all right in some way," says emRG research consultant Andreas Wolf from Germany. "The variations can be explained by differences in definitions and research methodology. Likely the truth is somewhere in the middle."
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Apostolic
Genius unveiled
What
is the secret of rapid growing movements?
In
100AD, there were approximately 25000 Christians in the world.
In 310 AD, experts estimate a number of 20 millions. How did
they grow from being a small movement to the most significant
religious force in the Roman empire in two centuries? In China,
the fruit of decades of mission work was 1 million Christians
in 1949. After 30 years of persecution and oppression, the
first astonished Westerners found and estimated 50 millions
of Christians in the country. They had grown without missionaries,
bishops and buildings, almost without pastors and with very
few bibles. How did this happen? What is it in the DNA of
the Church that makes developments like this possible? Is
there something hidden in the heritage of the Church that
can come alive again in the 21th century?
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Alan Hirsch
( Australia), co-author of "The Shaping of
Things to Come", has studied the movements of the
early and the Chinese churches and came up with what
he calls the "apostolic genius" - a combination
of 5 main factors around the center "Jesus is Lord".
In the last years, we have discovered every one of these
elements, put them in the center of our attention and
often made it "THE" key element for growth;
for example, the five-fold ministry, organic structures
or making disciples. However, Hirsch has discovered
that it is the combination of these factors that makes
a fast-growing movement. We need to apply a systemic
view.
Alan Hirsch who was the main speaker at the congress
on church innovation in Romanshorn in early May 06,
describes these elements in his new book "The
Forgotten Ways".
It is one of the main goals of the DAWN European Network
to research, identify, network, and catalyze reapidly
growing church planting movements across Europe. Among
others, we do this in close partnership with eurochurch.net.
A common conference will be held on April 17-19, 2007,
on this subject (see above).
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Three encouraging church planting developments
Joel News editor and DEN team member Marc van der
Woude participated in the recent DAWN International Associates
Consultation in Johannesburg, South Africa, and reports
on three encouraging church planting developments.
a. Bold church planting in India
Christians in India face serious persecution from Hindus and Muslims, but have an amazing capacity to envision multiplicative church planting movements. Most networks have thousands of house churches. What is their DNA? According to a leading church planter it is three things you won't easily find in the West: bold evangelism, intentional discipling of new believers, and casting the vision for pioneer church planting. He didn't mention the 300,000 intercessors praying for the church planters. Another leader shared that every new church in his network starts with a miracle.
First an Acts-type power encounter, then immediate church planting. The Indians are very precise in their research, they know exactly how many churches there are and which areas to target on. In the past five years they planted 62,698 new churches, and most of these are multiplying. In
2006 in one province they envision to train 25,000 men, 6,000 women and 30,000 children in order to reach 20,000 villages. In another province they aim to plant 200,000 new churches by the year 2010, and in a major city 100,000. These numbers may sound dazzling, but realize that India has a population of more than one billion people.
b. Mapping Africa by GPS
One of the big questions in saturation church planting processes is: how do you measure progress? The DAWN Africa team uses modern technology for that
- they train researchers all over the continent to map the total number of churches in cities and nations by GPS (global positioning system). In this way they can map a city of one million inhabitants in just three days. It's also cost-effective; they mapped a whole nation for just 2500 dollar. And in Madagascar it's even adventurous: researchers are being dropped in the jungle by helicopter and picked up several weeks later. In this way they mapped hundreds of villages that the government didn't even know existed.
In villages where they didn't find Christians, they preached the gospel and planted a church straight away.
www.dawnafrica.co.za
c. North America: The 'organic' leadership solution
In North American there is a growing movement of simple churches, home-based small groups focused on Jesus and doing what He says. House church coach John White shared about what he calls 'the Luke 10:2b leadership solution' - a daily prayer for laborers in the harvest. Since he started praying this, and teaching this organic principle to other believers, God sent people on his way, one after the other, asking advice on how to plant churches, and he could simply coach them in doing that. In this way, the simple church networks in the United States are growing exponentially. 530 simple churches were planned for 2005, and they saw over 6,000 spring up in the last 5 years. While they intended to train 530 church planters in 2005, they saw 1,000 church planters trained in the first two months of 2006 alone. With this kind of exponential growth (the current growth rate is 70%) they might reach their target of 4 million simple churches in North America (in 400,000 networks, and with 40,000 network coaches, and 4,000 lead coaches) by the year 2018.
www.dawnministries.org/globalministries/northamerica/home.htm
source: Joel News
Joel News International is a leading e-zine on what God is doing worldwide in the area of prayer, church growth and revival. We offer a keen selection of encouraging news reports, challenging developments and quality resources from over 100 reliable sources in six continents. Joel News is a great help and time-saver for thousands of active Christians in over 120 nations.Joel News is published weekly on the basis of an annual donation. For more information visit our donation page: http://www.joelnews.org/donation.htm.
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 1 million new "churches" for Europe?
Europe: more than 50 countries, more than 700 million people.
At least 7 Mega-regions, defined by very different religious and cultural histories. Once defined by Christendom, Europe is in rapid transition - to where? To what?
At the surface, Europe (at least big parts of Western Europe) seems to leave its Christian heritage behind - at a fast pace. But under the surface (and under the radar of many) there is another movement emerging. Church is being radically re-defined, re-invented and re-designed. Tens of thousands of Christians are preparing for what could become a grassroots movement that the continent has not yet seen. A movement of disciples by essence rather than of "Christians" by religion. A movement not religious but worldly and incarnational. A movement that is self-sustaining and self-multiplying - without complicated authority structures.
A movement like the first church. And a movement that could very well result in a virus-like spread of tens and hundreds of thousands of groups of "revolutionaries" (George Barna). Imagine 1 million new of these partisan groups all over Europe, from Portugal to the Ural. Impossible? It is one of the strategic goals of the DAWN European network to identify and get an overview of the grassroots movement of simple, organic, house, emerging churches on our continent during the next year.
Stay with us. You might soon hear more.
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