Please pray for Rob Campbell, who normally blogs today, as he deals with the death of a 55-year old state trooper, who was a member of CCC and left behind his wife and five kids (12-23). They are expecting over 1000 at the funeral.

Yesterday, in response to my blog on key theological principles of the cell church, Chris Boehnke, a Missouri-Synod Lutheran pastor, wrote,

“In the last few years I have looked into the biblical and theological principles for the cell church and house church movements. My goal has been to examine the underlying biblical and theological foundation for each. Does one have a more solid theological foundation than the other? Or are they both equally valid theologically but different ways practically to be the church?”

My personal conviction is that the cell church and house church movements are theological cousins. Think with me on the points I mentioned yesterday:

Trinity (community and evangelism). The house church movement and the cell church movement would agree on this point. Both movements critique the impersonal nature of many one winged, programmed based churches. Both movements emphasize the “one anothers” of Scripture and the need to reach out in relational evangelism.

Priesthood of all believers (every member a minister and gift use). Both believe that the house environment is the best place to turn members into ministers and to practice the gifts of the Spirit.

Making disciples (multiplication and leadership development). The newer house church movement (Simson, Cole, Kreider) would certainly emphasize the need to multiply new house churches and to raise up leaders. I heard Larry Kreider emphasize this point over and over in our recent seminars together.

And allow me to add the excellent point that Richard Houle made in the comment section of yesterday’s blog (please read Houle’s comment) about the use of ekklesia in the New Testament. Houle mentioned that the NT use of ekklesia referred both to the city-wide church as well as the local house church. Both the house church movement and cell church acknowledge this (read, House Church and Mission, for an in-depth treatment on the topic).

Granted, there are differences between the two movements. Cell church practices the celebration wing more frequently and house church emphasizes the elder role of the leader. Yet, my point here is that the broad theological underpinnings are similar for both movements and because of this, I see great similarities between the two movements (check out my article on house churches). This unity, in fact, has naturally brought the two movements together in recent times:

• Larry Kreider’s apostolic network includes both house church networks and cell churches.
• Ben Wong’s CCMN now includes cell churches and house church networks.
• Church planting movement literature often highlights cell church and house church networks interchageably (e.g., David Garrison).

Even though I believe that both movements stem from the same theological family, I’ll be the first to admit that my expertise, practice, and even bias is with the cell church camp (or highly networked house churches). So help me out here. Have I overstated my case about the similiarities between the cell church and house church movements? I’d appreciate your thoughts. . .

Joel

by Joel Comiskey

Why cell church? Why do we believe in it? Is it because David Cho’s church, the largest church in the history of Christianity, is a cell church? Is it because someone said the number 12 will bring blessings and growth? Is it because cell church is the strategy that many “great” churches are using?

The problem with the above reasons is that they don’t give long-term foundational strength. God has been showing me lately that theology must guide our strategies–and not the other way around. So what are the core theological reasons for doing cell church? Allow me to share three important ones:

1. The Trinity

Our God is a social God! He lives in relationship with the other members of the Trinity. God is not an independent, lone ranger. Individualism might be the cultural norm in the western world, but God loves community and unity (think of all the one-anothers in the Bible). One of the key values of cell church is that people need to live in community rather than hide in anonymity. The intimacy of a cell group encourages people to know and be known.

The Trinity is also an outreaching God. Evangelism flows from His very heart. God’s will is to reach lost people through His Son, Jesus, and the church is His instrument to make it happen. The cell church encourages  each member to reach out through relational evangelism. Cells expect all members to develop relationships with non-Christians because such activity reflects the heart of God.

2. Priesthood of all believers

It’s quite easy for people to sit in church. Some churches grow large through filling pews. Yet, Scripture teaches that all believers are priests. Cells value the participation of every believer.

Part of the priesthood of all believers is the use of spiritual gifts. My books, The Spirit-filled Small Group and Discover, talk about how cells are the best atmosphere for spiritual gift use. In fact, all of the New Testament gift passages were written to house churches. Cell churches are rediscovering this important truth.

3. Making disciples

Christ’s last command to His disciples was to make disciples of all nations. I believe the essence of cell ministry is making disciples who make disciples. Cells are leader breeders and the best place to prepare disciple-makers. Multiplication is at the heart of cell ministry because new cells provide the environment for making new disciples.

On this blog, I often highlight large, growing cell churches or church planting movements. But such examples shouldn’t be the main reasons for doing cell church. The best reason is because cell church promotes key theological concepts and brings glory to the living God.

Why do you do cell church? Or, perhaps you’d like to add a theological concept not listed here. . . .

Joel

by Mario Vega

In the same way that there are certain advantages with mega-churches, we can not be totally honest without talking about the risks. The pastor of a mega church pastor could end up considering himself a powerful and a socially influential person. Such dangerous ideas could lead the pastor to distance himself from other believers and forget the servant position that every Pastor should have.

Another danger is the challenge of political parties. The pastor of a mega church can be pursued by politicians who will want to exploit his influence in order to gain support of the church members. The pastor also might be tempted to wield his church’s influence for political gain in order to gain political power.

The political influence that a mega church can have is almost inevitable. The gospel establishes the pastor to take a stand on slavery, injustice, war, corruption, death penalty, abortion, etc. A mega church that defines its position on these issues will be exerting a political action in society.

The size of the church doesn’t change the gospel message, but from a human point of view, the mega church does have a strong influence on society by its sheer size.

Comments?

Mario

Translation in Spanish

Tentaciones de las mega iglesias.

De la misma manera que existen ciertas ventajas con las megas iglesias no se puede ser totalmente honesto sin hablar de los riesgos. El Pastor de una mega iglesia puede llegar a considerarse poderoso y socialmente influyente. Tales ideas son peligrosas pues pueden conducir a un alejamiento de la posición de siervo que todo Pastor debe tener.

Otro peligro es el de los retos de la política partidaria. Un Pastor de una mega iglesia puede ser buscado por políticos para aprovecharse de la influencia que tiene sobre sus miembros y la sociedad. También puede ocurrir que el Pastor mismo se sienta tentado a aprovechar el caudal político que representa su iglesia y decida cambiar su ministerio por una posición de elección.

La influencia política que una mega iglesia puede ejercer es casi inevitable. El evangelio establece posturas ante temas como la esclavitud, la injusticia, la guerra, la corrupción, la pena de muerte, el aborto, etc. Una mega iglesia que define su posición sobre estos temas estará ejerciendo una acción política en la sociedad.

No hay duda que el tamaño de una iglesia no hace más o menos agudo el mensaje del evangelio en la sociedad; pero, desde el punto de vista humano, causará mayores preocupaciones si se trata de una mega iglesia. Sólo por razones políticas.

by Rob Campbell

In light of Joel’s post yesterday, let me add some thoughts to the topic of water baptism. My focus will be on the actual baptism process for a local church. Frankly, my church family has not done well moving people from salvation to water baptism. Thankfully, we see people receive Christ consistently, but seeing them experience water baptism has been difficult. Therefore, I asked our Intergenerational Network Pastor, Michele Gooch, to run lead on a more defined baptism process. I’m happy to report that we baptized twenty people in early September. This is the process that we used in order to see new believers experience water baptism.

Week 1
 Establish baptism date three weeks out. Give date to Pastors, administration assistants and technical crew coordinator.
 Teach on water baptism Sunday morning.
 Each network pastor contacts their cell leaders with the upcoming date and asks them to plan on discussing water baptism in group this week. Water baptism tracts will be available to HEART groups.
 If a pastor already has a list of folks asking for baptism, parcel those names out to leaders and ask them to contact them this week in order to discuss baptism.
 Pastor Rob designates the person who will “emcee” the baptismal experience.

Week 2
 Baptism is briefly explained on Sunday morning and the date is promoted in the Opportunity Folder.
 Ask each leader to follow up on the baptism discussion privately with individuals they know have not been baptized. Invite them to be baptized on the upcoming date.
 Administration assistant contacts setup crew with baptism date. She also creates a simple invite to the baptism.

Week 3
 Baptism video is used on Sunday morning, followed by an announcement about the upcoming baptism next Sunday. This baptism video was created by the tech team and I can make it available to those who are interested. Opportunity Folder includes an insert for folks who want to ask for water baptism.
 Leaders get names of folks to be baptized to Pastors. Pastors forward them to administration assistant for certificates to be made.
 Darby notifies Michele with names of folks from Sunday morning who request baptism. Those names will be given to whichever leader/member most closely connected to them.
 Those being baptized are given a simple written invitation so that he/she may invite family, friends and neighbors.

BAPTISM DATE
 Pastors with folks being baptized come ready to baptize or delegate that responsibility and come ready to assist.
 Designated “emcee” pulls the crowd around the water and gets started as soon as possible. People will not stay and join the celebration if we wait too long after Celebration.
 The technical crew is present to get photos or video.

Comments?

Rob

by Joel Comiskey

Last week I talked about large cell churches, and many people commented ( check out what they said.). Let’s go from the multitude to the individual.

We moved to our home here in Moreno Valley in June 2001, after living in Latin America for eleven years. We developed a great relationship with our next door neighbors, Ed & Judy Carroll, and their two daughters, Heidi and Jenna. They came over to our house for barbecues and special occasions, and they invited us to their house for special gatherings.  I often asked Ed if he had special prayer requests, and he was very open to share what was going on in his life.

About one year ago, we opened a new Life group in our home on Tuesday night, and I asked the Carroll family to join us. Ed replied, “We can’t make it on Tuesday night, but Heidi would like for you to baptize her.” I said, “I’d love to baptize Heidi, but in our church we have an eight lesson training course called Live for those those want to be baptized. I think it would be a good idea for your entire family to go through it–not just Heidi.” They agreed, and we started meeting at the Carroll house on Thursday night to go through Live.

The first lesson of Live talks about knowing God personally. There’s a prayer at the end to receive Jesus as Savior. I asked them to think about this prayer before our next lesson, and the next time we met together, they all said they had prayed the prayer to receive Jesus. We then continued to the next lesson on God’s Word, then prayer, the Church, lordship of Christ, living in victory, and other themes. For the last lesson we talked about baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Just yesterday, I had the privilege of baptizing Heidi in her own pool. Family and friends were invited. We rejoiced when Heidi came out of the water because she had obeyed God’s Word to express her faith publicly (Matthew 28:19-20). It looks like I’ll continue to take the Caroll family through the next phase of the training series.

It’s great to talk about the large churches, but we must remember that each individual soul is extremely important to God.

Feel free to comment about two things:

1. Testimonies. Share similar testimonies from your own experience.

2. Baptism. What’s the process that you use to prepare individuals for baptism? How long does it take for a person to complete the course? Actually, in the New Testament, people were baptized immediately. Do you practice this or do you ask each baptismal candidate to go through a specific course?

Joel

by Mario Vega

In its first nine years, Elim church focused its effort in planting new churches. In San Salvador’s metropolitan area (1.5 millions of people), the church established twenty-two branch churches.

However, in 1986 when the transition to a cell church was made, the objective changed and all the effort was focused on building a mega church. The closing of all of the city’s branch churches was part of that effort to concentrate all of its members in one church. All of the pastors of the church plants became zone pastors of the one larger mega cell church.

The reasons for this apparent regression was, as noted by Joel Comiskey, to cause a greater impact on society. Furthermore, it was considered that only by concentrating efforts, mega projects like the purchase of large properties, the construction of an auditorium with thousands of seats, and the purchase of a radio station, could be undertaken. Those investments were so large that it was not possible to reach them unless all the branch churches were joined.

This policy has enabled Elim church to become at the present time the owner of three radio stations, one of them with national coverage. The church also owns a television channel with national coverage.  And it has recently acquired  22 acres  of property to build its future facilities.

The most important impact, however, is the social one. The church is very well known and has a very strong social influence. In the latest public opinion poll, the Evangelical Church stood out as the institution that generates the most confidence in Salvadoran society (together with the Catholic Church). By contrast, political parties ranked as those in whom the public has the least confidence.

The effort to build a mega church has not neglected the work of planting new churches. I must recognize that planting new churches has not been one of Elim’s priority objectives. Probably the fact that the size of El Salvador is so small has been one of the reasons why we do not consider church planting a key strategy for evangelization at this time. And this is why I believe most of our branch churches are abroad and not in El Salvador.

Comments?

Mario

Translation in Spanish:

De la mega iglesia a la plantación de iglesias.

En sus primeros nueve años de vida, la iglesia Elim enfocó sus fuerzas en plantar nuevas iglesias. Solamente en el área metropolitana de San Salvador (1.5 millones de personas) se establecieron 22 iglesias filiales.

No obstante, en 1986, cuando se hizo la transición a una iglesia celular, el objetivo cambió y las fuerzas se centraron en edificar una mega iglesia. Como parte de ese esfuerzo se procedió a cerrar todas la iglesias filiales de la ciudad para concentrar sus miembros en una sola iglesia. Todos los pastores de esas iglesias se convirtieron en pastores de zonas de la que comenzaba a ser una mega iglesia celular.

Las razones para esa aparente involución fue, como Joel Comiskey lo ha señalado, causar un mayor impacto en la sociedad. Además, se consideró que solamente concentrando las fuerzas se podrían emprender mega proyectos como la compra de propiedades grandes, la construcción de un auditorio con miles de asientos. La compra de una emisora de radio. Esas inversiones eran tan grandes que no era posible alcanzarlas sino solamente uniendo todas las filiales.

Esa política ha permitido a iglesia Elim llegar a ser en la actualidad la propietaria de tres emisoras de radio, una de ellas de cobertura nacional. Además, la iglesia es propietaria de un canal de televisión también con cobertura nacional. Se ha adquirido una propiedad de 22 acres para construir sus futuras instalaciones.

Pero, lo más importante de todo, es el impacto que socialmente se ha logrado. La iglesia es sumamente conocida y su pensamiento ejerce una influencia social marcada. En la más reciente encuesta de opinión pública, la iglesia evangélica se ubicó como la institución que más confianza genera en la sociedad salvadoreña. Junto a la iglesia católica. Por contraste, los partidos políticos se ubicaron como aquellos en quienes menos confianza tiene la población.

El esfuerzo por edificar una mega iglesia no ha dejado de lado el trabajo de plantación de nuevas iglesias. Debo reconocer que no es una política prioritaria de Elim la plantación de nuevas iglesias. Probablemente el hecho que El Salvador posee un territorio pequeño ha sido una de las razones por las que no consideramos una estrategia fundamental para la evangelización el abrir nuevas iglesias. Y creo que esa es la razón de por qué la mayor parte de nuestras iglesias filiales se encuentran en el extranjero y no en El Salvador.