Starting a New Church?

We are praying for 100 new churches this year. Will you help us pray to reach that goal?

Starting a new church has benefits:
1. No established traditions that need changing.
2. Fresh vision and enthusiasm in the people.
3. New churches often reach more people than older established churches.

We want to hear from you if you are starting a new church. Give us some input that would help future church planters and existing ones too.

David

Comfortable with the Culture

Ed Stetzer is fast becoming one of my favorite authors on church planting. His book "Planting Missional Churches" ought to be required reading for our seminary students.

May I take the liberty of quoting several passages on pages 22 and 23 of his book:

"New churches have an opportunity that established churches often do not. They have the opportunity to contextualize the unchanging message of the gospel without any preexisting patterns to copy. They don't return to a romanticized past, but they incarnate the gospel in a biblical present."

"Many among conservative evangelical churches retreat to a preferred past in order to maintain a sense of spiritual nostalgia. Yet the church must never become too comfortable with any culture,... What the church must be comfortable with is becoming missional, always looking for the best way to reach the culture it lives in at that point in time. If anything, the church should err on the side of becoming futurists (rather than historians) in regard to culture."

It is entirely possible that many of us have become too comfortable with our American culture. We seem to be having great difficulty in separating from the culture around us. New churches are desperately needed to present a Christ who changes lives when sinners repent.

Are you comfortable with the culture?

David P Smith

Thanksgiving Missions Offering

It is wonderful how the churches of the ABA have responded to the annual Thanksgiving offering over the years. It is a real boost to the missionary salary program of our association. In just two months the offering will be received again and it would be a blessing to see a record amount come in for the salaried missionaries.

Randy Cloud and others have worked very hard to raise funds for salaried missionaries. Pray for their continued success and the Cloud's safety as they travel.


Keep up the good work Bro Randy!

David P Smith

Soulwinning is Suffering

More and more the term soulwinning is disappearing from our vocabulary. I wonder why?

Across the land our churches are declining and many are saying, "what happened?" I believe that over the years our churches, schools, and spiritual leaders have downplayed the term 'soulwinning' to other terms less powerful, such as: effective witnessing, relational evangelism, sharing the gospel, etc. (all of which are alright in themselves). The de-emphasis of the term 'soulwinning' has created a generation of believers that seldom lead a soul to Christ, and discourage door-to-door evangelism. Soulwinning is more than praying a prayer with someone, it is building a personal relationship with a person with the intent of leading them to Christ and then discipling them faithfully.

What is even more disturbing is that even gospel tracts are omitting the 'sinners prayer' and church members are discouraged from leading someone in the 'sinners prayer' in order to help them receive Christ.

All of the above has contributed to 'declining, struggling, joyless churches'. The 'turnaround' or 'comeback' church will re-establish evangelism (or introduce soulwinning) as a major priority in its ministry.

If soulwinning is suffering in your church. Please relieve the suffering!

David P Smith