a church planting initiative sponsored by the Church of God
a church planting initiative sponsored by the Church of God
Below are an assortment of resources that Cultural Pioneering believes will help equip pastors and church leaders to lead effective church plants.
Groundbreaking research based on a national database of over 200,000 churches reveals that the overall population growth rate far outpaces the church’s rate of growth. What does this mean for you, your church, and the future of Christianity in North America ? The American Church in Crisis offers unprecedented access to data that helps you understand the state of the church today. This book not only paints a realistic picture that confirms hunches and explodes myths, but provides insight into how the church must be renewed to reach our changing world with the hope of the gospel.
The book “When Strong Men Wept” is the first in a new series from Dr. Michael B. Knight calling for the reengineering of the Pentecostal/Charismatic community of faith. It has had a long and illustrious history since its humble beginnings. There is a call for reform within her ranks. The sensational self-serving counterparts often noted within her organizations have crippled her effectiveness in the North American culture. She stands in danger of becoming what she once stood adamantly against, prideful, excessive, manipulative, self-serving and sensational. Her influence, purity and post-modern cultural alignment stand too valuable of an asset in the wake of a post-Christian culture to let her drift into irrelevance. This is a call for her to return to her roots of humility, self-sacrifice and character. This book outlines the principles of leadership needed for her safe passage towards such a future. Broken leaders make effective Christian leaders. The implications are enormous. The salvation and reengineering of Christendom’s most effective arm of evangelization lie within her future wake.
Planting Missional Churches is an instruction book for planting biblically faithful and culturally relevant churches. It addresses the “how-to” and “why” issues of church planting by providing practical guidance through all the phases of a church plant while taking a missional look at existing and emerging cultures.
Rick Warren says, "Ed Stetzer is on of the best informed, practical minded, and field-tested church planters that I know."
Missional implies taking the methods of a missionary--being indigenous to the culture, seeking to understand and learn, adapting to the mission field--but planting the biblical form of the church.
Across North America, many pastors are excited to see churches growing as they achieve their mission to connect the message of the gospel with the community at large. Still others are equally frustrated, following the exact same model for outreach but with lesser results. Indeed, just because a "missional breakthrough" occurs in one place doesn’t mean it will happen the same way elsewhere.
One size does not fit all, but there are cultural codes that must be broken for all churches to grow and remain effective in their specific mission context. Breaking the Missional Code provides expert insight on church culture and church vision casting, plus case studies of successful missional churches impacting their communities.
"We have to recognize there are cultural barriers (in addition to spiritual ones) that blind people from understanding the gospel," the authors write. "Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers without removing the spiritual and theological ones."
