Dr Paul Allen

English: The "Bible Church" in Banaswadi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Brandon Cox on Church Planting with deeper roots I want the church – your church and my church – to grow. I’m encouraged when I see the church effectively demonstrating the love of God and communicating the good news of Jesus to a culture with an ever-evolving language. I’m concerned when I see the church struggling to connect with people who are far from God. This concern is grounded both in my understanding of Jesus’ challenge to be fruitful and my conviction that millions are spiritually dead and hopeless until they trust in Jesus. But fruit -bearing is only half of the equation. I do not have a green thumb. I’ve purchased a number of plants over the years and have managed to watch most of them die grueling deaths, mostly from dehydration. But I do have enough common sense to know how vital roots are to the life and vitality of any garden variety plant. And typically, the deeper the roots, the fre

English: Inside Hillsong Church, Sydney (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) There are millions of people in smaller congregations across the country who live with a feeling that they are failures because their church isn’t as big as the megaplex congregation down the street. This is sad and should not be the case. A global survey conducted by Christian Schwartz found that smaller churches consistently scored higher than large churches in seven out of eight qualitative characteristics of a healthy church. A more recent study of churches in America , conducted by Ed Stetzer and Life Way Ministries, revealed that churches of two hundred or less are four times more likely to plant a daughter church than churches of one thousand or more. The research seems to even indicate that the pattern continues—the smaller the size of the church the more fertile they are in planting churches . It pains me that so many churches and leaders suffer from an inferiority complex when in fact they could very