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Church By A Big Tree

God is giving birth to a simple church composed of folks who originally connected through an “ultimate frisbee” team.  I met Lynnette Malott and her family a week ago when visiting this neat new community of Jesus followers.  Today she posted to her Facebook page the comments below.  I asked her if I could repost here.  — One year in Kentucky today. We moved out here to be part of a church plant, but tonight we did church by a big tree in the park with a group of entirely different people. One of the women that I had just met said… Read More »Church By A Big Tree

Luke 10 Manual – Steve and Marilyn Hill (Free eBook)

The Luke 10 Manual is a great resource that we have linked here before.  It exists on many sites on the web but often time those sites can vanish making our links broken (occasionally you can find a paperback copy from Amazon as well).  To make sure that you can find and access this resource,  I am hosting it now here on our site (If this is a problem with anyone related to this book, then please let me know.) Tony and Felicity Dale did a great time leading us through the principles found in Luke 10 at our conference… Read More »Luke 10 Manual – Steve and Marilyn Hill (Free eBook)

Message of the Month – A Simple Church On Every Street

Starting this month, I will highlight a message that I feel is important for believers to consider, especially those of us seeking to walk with Jesus outside the traditional, organizational structures. It’s always been a challenge for me to break-away from the school year calendar.  August continues to feel like the start of a new year for me.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons I am thinking a lot these days about refocusing on the vision God has for me, my family, and for the Simple Church Alliance.  For my first “message of the month,” I would like to… Read More »Message of the Month – A Simple Church On Every Street

The Spirit Is Moving! An Update On Our Journey! (Guest Blog)

To our brothers and sisters in Lexington (and wherever else these words might travel!), may our Master Jesus’ grace and peace be yours in ever increasing measure! We have found Him to be so good, providing for us everything we need at just the right time. We hope you will find encouragement in this brief update. As many of you know, we took Gavin’s challenge in early 2014 very seriously, and we prayed for the Lord to show us specific things He wanted us to do in that year for His Kingdom. He answered us very clearly! In response to… Read More »The Spirit Is Moving! An Update On Our Journey! (Guest Blog)

House Church Multiplication In Appalachia

I often think about opportunities for simple or house church multiplication in my region.  When I pray, Appalachia frequently comes to mind.  Eastern Kentucky is often characterized by its economic and drug challenges.  However, when I think of of Eastern Kentucky and the Appalachian region, I see opportunity–opportunity for disciples and churches to multiply. A recent article online from the folks at Exponential about Clarence Greenleaf (1915-2004) highlighted the faithfulness he and his church family (Grundy Church) in the region.  While many the churches he helped plant ended up going the way of brick and mortar, he had a passion… Read More »House Church Multiplication In Appalachia

Mega Church planting House Churches?

Northland Church in Florida recently caught my attention.  Northland is a mega church seeking to be a “church distributed.”  Their vision for distributing the church, according to their website, is to plant simple churches.  The even have a directly-linked page dedicated to simple church planting that is similar to this site.  Also, you will see a link to a special training site that includes 11 video teachings and notes to help people start simple churches. Here is a video on their churches main website that features the first lesson in their simple church training:   Without question, the Church in… Read More »Mega Church planting House Churches?

Form Follows Life

“Planning, building, and organizing is so engrained into our way of life, that we are certain that if we put the externals in place then life will flow.” – Simple Church Journal

Simple Church Fan Clubs?

Joshua Gibbs, in his article Can We Make Classicism Into A Fan Club Instead Of A Movement? at the Circe Institute has an interesting critique of whole notion of “starting movements.”  While he directs his message toward an audience hoping to see a classical education movement, I think he raises some interesting questions for those of us who would say that we are apart of (or hoping to be apart of) a simple/organic church movement in North America.  He writes… Movements are necessary, I suppose. When I say movement, I mean a group of people who have an agenda they… Read More »Simple Church Fan Clubs?

8 Ways To Start A Simple Church

There is no formula for how to start a simple church.  The Holy Spirit must be the Initiator and Leader if a real church community is to be birthed.  Even still, I have seen several ways God can use you to give birth to a new simple church family! 1. LTG – As you and a friend or two begin a Life Transformation Group (LTG) and you see that LTG multiply into two LTGs, a simple church can be formed. It’s logical and natural that you say, “why don’t we all share a meal together?” If married, the husband’s and… Read More »8 Ways To Start A Simple Church

Our Year in Simple Church (part 3) – By Jeff Herron

This was really the first year we considered ourselves “doing” simple church, and it has been full of winnowing away, learning what really matters, and growing in love. We have been stretched in every way and are much better for it! As the year started, we were several months in to our decision to stop attending Sunday morning worship services at a local church. We felt called to be more directly involved in our local community, and had started attending this local church as part of that leading, but after only a few months we sensed the Lord had other… Read More »Our Year in Simple Church (part 3) – By Jeff Herron