Why start a church? Pt III

It took a fair amount of convincing for me to even consider the prospect of planting a church.

But convincing people to do things seems to be a task God enjoys. There was only the smallest thought in my head about church planting (which I hadn't shared with anyone), but the idea started to come up in conversation more and more often. Everywhere I turned, the idea of church planting kept buzzing at me, like an annoying mosquito when you're trying to go to sleep at night.

Someone (who again didn't know any of this) recommended listening to a series of talks by Michael Frost, given at a mission conference in the US. And suddenly he starts talking about church planting, and how church planting is the most effective way to grow the Kingdom of Jesus....

I picked up a book called Total Church, by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis (not unusual for me - I'm interested in anything about church), and as I'm reading away, they suddenly start talking about church planting. Turns out they organise a church planting network in the UK....


I share with friends about how there doesn't seem to be a church for us and they say, "Well maybe you should start one...."

So the annoying mozzie kept buzzing away. More and more often church planting came up, and each time it was attached to the idea of "simple" church: that we don't need more churches with amazing programs, brilliant worship music, unbelievable pastors and big ministry teams. We need more simple churches - house churches, cafe churches, basic churches that meet in parks, pubs and living rooms - the kinds of churches that non-church people might feel comfortable in. Different expressions of church, for the people who don't feel like they fit in to the normal way of doing it.

And more and more I found myself thinking, "Maybe we could do that?"