Grassroots - Striking Examples

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Foreword

 The church that changes the world. . . will not look impressive. It will not possess great buildings, nor its leaders hold high social standing. It will shun wealth and political acceptance, and run shy from the world of brands, image and sound bite.

  The world-changing church, will be powerful in the things that matter, a simple dependence on the power of the gospel, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the authority of God’s Word; a people who love their God, love each other, and live salty lives as Christ’s disciples thus provoking both conversion and persecution.

Recent Striking Example

 In 1982 a Soviet backed communist coup took place in Ethiopia. Churches were “closed,” their meetings banned, their buildings confiscated and their senior leaders imprisoned.

  At that time the Mesorite Church in the capital (Addis Ababa) numbered 5,000 members. Overnight it vanished. Unaware of each other, many tiny local groups began to gather inconspicuously in homes for fellowship, worship and discipleship. In time, some leaders who had remained free gave themselves to distributing “equipping” materials, fragments of teaching, to aid the ministry of these secret small groups.
No public evangelism was permitted, but the believers found they could “get away with” unrestrained gospel preaching at funerals and so new people were saved through public as well as private witness. At the time, members felt they were merely preserving a remnant of the church through a time of persecution.
In 1992, exactly ten years later, the communist government fell. Very soon leaders were released, church buildings were returned and the first public meeting was possible. Imagine their joy and amazement to discover that their church had not only survived, but had grown tenfold to number 50,000 people!

Today’s western church is organizationally defined

  The church, in any biblical sense, cannot be described as an organization. It can be only properly be defined in terms of spiritual life, relationships and purpose. Yet say “church” today to the proverbial “person-in-the-street” and they will understand you to mean a building or, possibly, a weekly Sunday service.

But

But to someone in 1st century Palestine or Asia Minor, it meant something far less mundane and more substantial! A distinct community who exhibited true spiritual power, with a radical message (“Repent! Turn around!”). They ate together, worshiped together, were prepared to make enormous sacrifices and yet worked hard in “ordinary” ways and were well thought of in their localities. Their philosophy was simple and fivefold: Be more like Jesus, worship God by the Spirit, pass on the gospel, lovingly share lives together and let all members play their part.
How then might we rediscover the raw, life-changing power of the early church? To begin with we will need to be willing to jettison much that has attached itself to this “living organism” over 2,000 years of institutionalization. How we love our buildings, our full-time staff, our state of the art communication skills and our slickly run services and programs. How proud we are of our Worship Band (or Choirs), worship leaders and Power Point presentations. They speak of “excellence” and give us “credibility” (so we imagine) in a hi-tech world. How we depend on our highly organized church calendar with its comforting predictability, structured teaching program and appealing literature and publicity.

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from Duncan Kellard's book:
"Grassroots Christianity"
Another sample from the book is HERE

Purchasing the Book at Amazon.com