The Winds of Change
Hong Kong & India
Over the past three weeks I have been speaking at conferences conducted by Cell Church Missions International (CCMI).
CCMI was initiated as a result of Ralph Neighbour’s work and is spearheaded by Ben Wong from China (Hong Kong).
The Hong Kong conference was attended by around 90 missionaries from 16 countries. The New Delhi summit attracted around 200 pastors and leaders.
Some have questioned my reasons for being involved in Cell Church conferences as their philosophy would appear to be at odds with our microchurch concepts. God has His reasons.
For the past few years Ben has been slowly being convinced of the validity of the microchurch values. Not only because of our material but more importantly, he has seen the same principals succeeding in third world countries.
Apart from the concepts being successfully applied in many countries in S.E. Asia, we have just heard a report that 30,000 such home churches have been established through the leadership of Victor Chowdrie in India.
Ben spoke frankly and said that his own church was based on a cell church model and he was disappointed with the result. He encouraged the missionaries to reject the Cell church model and adopt a simple model similar to our microchurch style.
In Australia we are now being approached by former cell church congregations who also want to “simplify” their structures and further release the saints. Some of these are considering attending our Microchurch Summit next year. (Details out soon).
I believe the cell church move was one step along the way of making Jesus Head of His church and there are those who want to take a further step.
We believe there is a wind of change and there is a further move of the Spirit among many cell churches. Pray for those in your locality.
Today we take a church planting team of 28 to the Philippines with the goal of equipping locals and planting many home churches. Please pray, there are government warnings not to travel there at this juncture.
Fortunately, Jesus is Lord.
Keep Winning
Stuart Gramenz