Chapter 2: Some ideas for starting a work among pre-believers

In this chapter, Tony and Felicity talk about a couple of things they've done with evangelism. The first was inviting a group of business associates to share pizza and a study of business principles from Proverbs. From the context, I'm guessing this was a multi-level marketing group--people who would be interested in such a discussion. Great idea, and the members of the group (who ALL became believers) were already well on their way to being discipled before they even began calling themselves Christians.

Second, they had their (I'm guessing elementary or middle-school) kids invite all their friends over for a "breakfast bible club" on Sunday mornings. They chose Sunday because all the church kids would be in church, and they wanted the unchurched kids. They filled up the house with kids, but they don't say exactly what they did with them after breakfast. I'd like to know--I'm sure Felicity would be glad to expound on that if someone went over to Simplechurch.com and asked her. There aren't any kids in our neighborhood, though, so I'm probably not going to be the one to do it. (In fact, there aren't any people in our neighborhood--just squirrels and turkeys and deer and mountain lions and stuff . . .)

Anyway, by the time many of the kids had given their lives to Jesus, some of the parents wanted to know what had caused the change in their kids and began to come, too. So they put the two groups together and started their first American simple church.

These ideas may or may not work for us in our own situations, but something like them probably will. So that's the first suggestion for prayer and discussion: How might God be leading you to use these ideas in your own life to serve your community and introduce people to one another and to Jesus?

The second thing in this chapter that really spoke to me was the mistake Tony and Felicity made with this simple church. They allowed it to grow too large and then split it into two churches. People complained for a long time that they felt as though they had been through a divorce. People in simple church really become fond of one another. In fact, we love one another. I don't like to think of having to do without any of the people in our ekklesia. Their advice is to build new churches around new-comers as needed. I'm sure this requires a particular kind of new-comer; someone with a sphere of influence of some sort, to start out with, and someone capable of and eager to learn quickly and move ahead with their relationship with Jesus (or even better, already a trained disciple).

There's other stuff here worth reading and informative, but this is probably enough for now. Let me know what you think.