Cool Quotes - Felicity Dale

Here is another cool quote:


No longer is starting churches reserved for those who have gone through years of seminary training. No longer is it only the task of those with the title of pastor. No longer is it only the privilege of those with a special anointing. The Holy Spirit is not limited by our lack of natural ability or experience. All God is looking for is a willing, servant heart and someone who will listen to Him and follow as He leads.

                                                                                                -Felicity Dale

Cool Quotes - Nate Krupp & Roland Allen (Defining Church - 4)

As part of my study of Felicity Dale's book, Getting Started (A Practical Guide to House Church Planting), the "Cool Quotes" that I am sharing this week all have to do with how we identify or define the church.

Here are the quotes for today:



God has given us a plan for His church. It is found in the New Testament. It is a plan that is very simple, very natural, and very reproducible.
God’s plan is so simple, that we often don’t see it. I wonder if the devil has not blinded us from seeing it. It is a plan that will work under any circumstance: it will work inany culture; it will work in any geographical area; it will work in any political climate; it will work both in urban and rural areas; it will work under any economic condition; it will work anywhere!

                       ~ Nate Krupp, God’s Simple Plan for His Church


Thus, St. Paul seems to have left his newly-founded churches with a simple system of Gospel teaching, two sacraments, a tradition of the main facts of the death and resurrection, and the Old Testament. There was apparently no form of service, except, of course, the form of the sacraments. Nor was there any form of prayer, unless indeed he taught the Lord’s Prayer. To us, this seems remarkably little. We can hardly believe that a church could be founded on so slight a basis. And yet, it is possible that it was precisely the simplicity and brevity of the teaching which constituted its strength . . . By teaching the simplest elements in the simplest form to the many, and by giving them the means by which they could for themselves gain further knowledge, by leaving them to meditate upon these few fundamental truths, and to teach one another what they could discover, St. Paul ensured that his converts should really master the most important things.

                       ~ Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?

Cool Quotes - Jonathan Stuart Campbell (Defining Church - 3)

As part of my study of Felicity Dale's book, Getting Started (A Practical Guide to House Church Planting), the "Cool Quotes" that I am sharing this week all have to do with how we identify or define the church.

Here is the quote for today:

However, a church was not a congregation of 5000, 2000 or even 200. Rather, the New Testament church was a fellowship of smaller churches. This didn’t mean that if there were twenty or thirty churches in a city that the church was fractured. The Apostle Paul often referred to the church in a city or region as one church—such as the church in Corinth. It was one church even though it met in many different places. Although Paul knew of various local churches in a city, he wrote one letter with the assumption that it would suffice for all the churches in the area. This dual pattern of church, or inter-church dependence, would continue for three more centuries until Constantine centralized Christianity through the institutionalization of the church.

These two expressions of church—local and city—facilitated the extensive growth and reproduction of the early church throughout the Roman world (cf. Acts 2:42ff; 5:42; 20:20). In the most basic sense, the church is an assembly of believers who are united together around the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

         ~ Jonathan Campbell, The Translatability of ChristianCommunity