| Jonathan Edwards video on Baptist Church Planting in Southend and beyond |
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In this video a real and impassioned Jonathan Edwards, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of G.B. meets with Church from Scratch and talks about church planting, pioneering mission and the need for a renewed Baptist response. The days are long gone where creativity is seen as unnecessary in church planting. Less and less people are assuming it's a simple matter of taking a few of your church's house groups and setting them up as a new church or just a matter of the deacons booking a hall on the estate and setting up the sound system for your first Sunday. There is a growing desire to see people becoming Christians as we create new forms of church through the Spirit rather than hoovering up those attending other churches by photocopying what already is. Mother-Daughter church planting, as it's sometimes known, still has it's place, but to reach those Baptist churches are not typically reaching and for Baptists to start being strategic, then a breadth of new church planting models are needed. This will result in a new diversity of Baptist churches and help us understand more clearly what it really means to be a Baptist church. For all this to be possible we must ask 'What is God doing in this particular place, and how do we reconfigure to join in with his mission?' Listen to Jonathan as we visit two church planting situations and two places in need of church planting in Essex in the southern part of the Eastern Baptist Association. Hear and watch as he takes us on a day out: - Southend-on-Sea High Street is 'youth central' with a very large concentration of younger people with little church engagement. What might a Baptist response to church planting be here? - Shared Space is a pioneering new social enterprise expression of church planting started by Church from Scratch. Could this model be used elsewhere to help community engagement in a large scale and sustainable way? - Tilbury is a town of 15,000 people on the bank of the Thames in Essex with very little Christian presence. But who is there willing to plant here? - Harold Hill is an estate inside the M25 in Essex of about 15,000 people with a pioneering Baptist church planting team with a similar heart to Church from Scratch. To find out more about church planting opportunities, join the mailing list or get in touch. Click HERE to watch "It's time to stop starting with church!" Click HERE for www.cruciblecourse.org.uk, an excellent resource to gain a missional grounding Click HERE for www.incarnate-network.eu, the Baptist Union of GB's church planting network Tags:
Comments (4)
  written by revhcj, 10 July, 2011
David, from my reading of the Bible there's no fixed model in there of what a church looks like. Rather there are principles of relating to each other in love, honesty etc. There are examples of people gathering together wherever was suitable and in whatever way is appropriate for their context, supporting the poor and needy, baptising, sharing food and hospitality. That's real church. Some of our established Baptist churches do that and some don't. We need to 'be Jesus' wherever he calls us to be and to share in his mission of love in whatever way serves our communities.
written by Jo Wright, 20 July, 2011
Hugely encouraging clip. Whatever church background we are, it's time to be on mission for Jesus and that is the essence of this. Dare to go where others have not, plant a seed and watch it grow. Thank you. Praying for our city Bristol and what we can do to reach the lost, weary and hopeless. Thank you.
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And frankly I'm disappointed that this Church from Scratch Project used the opportunity to put a web link to that "It's time to stop starting with church video" on the end of this article - simply unhelpful