Robert Fitts passed this along to me… a recent quote from John Arnott:
More and more we hear the term, “church without walls” but what does this mean? While it can mean sending teams from a local church outside the church’s walls to minister in homes and in the marketplace, I believe it is much more than that. If we are going to reach this world for Jesus, we need a completely new model of “doing church.” I don’t know why we can’t have “church” in homes, offices, schools, coffee shops, or even outside for that matter. Why can’t we have church meetings that are facilitated by an army of non-professional yet anointed Christians and have them meet whenever and wherever it works for them?
Maybe we need to take a hard look at what has happened to the Church in the last 2,000 years and see how we can return to Jesus’ model of “doing church”? Jesus said, “Where two or three meet together, there am I in the midst.” The word “church” in Greek is the word “ecclesia” meaning “called out ones.”……Things are changing. I believe that God is decentralizing the Church…
…Seemingly, the Holy Spirit has no problem coordinating hundreds and thousands of different individuals and congregations for His eternal purposes. Things really do work much better when Jesus Himself is the head…
…This is not to say that there are not offices in the local churches of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. However, these are not titles, but functions. These are servant leaders who equip others to also become anointed ones. How often we have interpreted these ministries to be hierarchical positions…
… It is time for those of us who live in the West to take a reality check. Church as we know it is not really working here. Many of the so-called “success stories” of church growth are merely transfer growth, people who are already Christians moving to a new church. We need some new models for having church which allow ordinary “lay people” to easily and quickly get involved in ministry.
Comments
5 responses to “John Arnott (Toronto Revival) Speaks Out”
“I don’t know why we can’t have “church” in homes, offices, schools, coffee shops, or even outside for that matter…”
Several years ago I went through a church planter’s assessment. One of the men there was from Argentina. He looked at all we would have to do over the weekend and was baffled. He said that in Argentina, “We just start a church wherever we can, coffee shop booths, homes, streetcorners,…”
It is time for us in the west to take a hard look at what we are doing and what we are producing. If we keep doing what we’ve been doing we’ll keep getting what we’ve been getting!
I came over after reading your comment on my blog, and I’m glad I saw this. There is so much talk about Christians who meet in buildings as the “the problem” — or worse, the enemy. Personally, I’m glad and encouraged that John Arnott had the insight and willingness to make this statement. Of course, letting go of the strings is much harder than talking about it, but God is stirring in all sorts of people (in and out of “traditional churches” along the same lines. Praise God, not us/me/them etc!
the world of blogdom is amazing! check out my blog post – http://alexandercampbell.blogspot.com/2004/09/toronto-turn-around.html I wrote it yesterday! I suspect Robert got it from someone (The Dales maybe?) who reads my stuff and then passed it on to him. The power of the web! I’m glad it’s travelled so far so quickly though. John & Toronto are significant influencers, so this stuff can only help the important dialogue between existing and emerging.
I just wanted to say how much I really enjoy reading your postings every day. A real encouragement. Keep it up!
Now that’s what I am talking about!
Just think about the average size church of 100-200 folks, each one going outside the four walls to start a small fellowship somewhere in their daily lives. The present wineskins could not contain the influx of converts. We will not see it happen until every believer accepts the truth that we are the Royal Priesthood of Believers, each and every one of us!
Peace & Love through Jesus!
Kevin
(north county)