Yesterday I heard The (Very?) Rev'd Philip Jensen, the Dean of Sydney, speak at Oak Hill on a stratergy to reach a city with the gospel and today at a South East Gospel Partneership Day at St Helen's, Bishopsgate, on Growing Churches.
Even if one has some quibbles with Jensen, or even if you fear you might have some different paradigms, it seems to me we have to give several cheers for the Dean and much thanks and praise to God for his on-going minisrty.
Under God, Jensen has seen many people led to saving faith in Christ, discipled and trained for ministry. Churches have been planted and a small army of people have given their lives to full-time paid gospel work.
Jensen was highly stimulating, as ever, and spoke with a great deal of practical wisdom as one who knew what he was talking about. DV, more blog-posts arising soon.
Soon transcripts of his most worthwile talks and diagrams on the life-cycle of a church and minister will be available at the SEGP website.
He asked for any thanks for him to be turned into prayer for the Cambridge Inter-Collegeate Christian Union (CICCU) Mission, which he is soon to lead.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
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2 comments:
Marc,
A few things I'd be interested to see discussed if you have blg time...
1. The issue of creating churches that are homogenous in nature -right/wrong or applicable to big cities?
2. How will legal and cultural changes affect Christians hiring out public buildings such as schools/lecture theatres?
3. Is there a clash between "raising the bar" to church and "Seeker friendly services" as per Willow Creek?
4. Is there a right sized church to start planting from and a right sized plant to start with?
Dave, Thanks for your interesting questions.
I think have some thoughts on Jensen's take on 1 and 3 which I might blog at some point.
On 2, Jensen would see buying as an important option. He was sensibly flexible on that sort of thing, I thought. Maybe I would see more value in owning the land and putting it explicitly at the disposal of King Jesus.
On 4, again, I'm sure it depends on lots of factors like how many people the pastors can know personally and what size group could do stuff like music viably.
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