'Porterbrook' Tagged Posts
How Too Much Discipleship Was Hurting Our New Christians
Our current church membership stands at about 55, with another 15 or so waiting in the wings to be baptised. We have a Sunday attendance of anywhere between 70 and 100 (I suspect that’s roughly the same number of urinals found at any Mars Hill Church). By any description we are a small…
Trained & Called or Training The Called?
At Niddrie we place a great premium on training and developing people for a life of Christian service, whether that is a secretary, a bike engineer or a pastor. Our recruitment process may be considered, by many, to be a bit haphazard. We have people on our Ministry Team who have degrees in theology and others who have no formal training. We have people who have been…
Multiplying Churches in Housing Schemes!
My team and I were recently discussing one of the units of our current Porterbrook Training course which was looking at the whole idea of reproducing churches, ministries and missionaries. I was personally struck by the catchphrase of the Chinese church: “Everyone is a church planter”. According to our reading one of the key factors in reproducing growing…
8 Keys to Housing Scheme Gospel Ministry (4) – Developing Indigenous Leaders
Leadership Development This is a key area of gospel ministry in housing schemes. Many local churches completely devolve their responsibility in this to Bible Colleges which I think is, sometimes, to the detriment of the church and the person being ‘trained’. Certainly, in housing…
Why should we send our best people to Bible College? (3)
As I have previously stated, I believe that there needs to be some form of moratorium between evangelical churches and Bible Colleges in our country. We need to ask some tough questions. Who exactly is serving who? Who are many of our Bible Colleges actually accountable to? What figures do we have…
Why should we send our best people to Bible College? (2)
After a huge response to this article (thanks to those who wrote to me personally) I have decided to just try and elucidate a little more clearly on some of my points. I was inspired to do this from a friend who sent me a 40 year old article on my facebook page. Entitled: ‘Proposal for a New…
Why should we send our best people to Bible college?
Imagine the CEO of a company you have shares in announces to the board that he has spotted someone with star potential working for the company. This person has got a golden future and could seriously help the company move forward into the future. Then, instead of promoting him from within he…