Starfish Manifesto

The long awaited new book “Starfish Manifesto” by Wolfgang is now available to download.

Antioch 2009

For a week, from 10th to 17th October, 2009, 72 Christian leaders from around the world gathered in Seleucia, the ancient sea port of the biblical Antioch (Acts 13:4) and the historic stepping stone of Paul’s apostolic missions. The purpose was to seek fresh answers and a new awareness from God about the status and future of the remaining task Jesus has left his followers with, to disciple all the nations of the world. This summary report attempts to condense some of the themes we found ourselves facing, either hearing from God, or as we heard from each other (or both).

Click here for a full report on Antioch2009

Kingdom Shaped Not Market Shaped

By Wolf

Moving from a traditional church base into the Kingdom, the domain of God’s uncontested rule, will change the church from being ‘market shaped‘ to becoming ‘Kingdom shaped‘. The opposite of God is not the devil; its Mammon (No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money Mt 6:24). In the same way, the opposite of the Kingdom of God is not the “domain of Satan” (as you can see, the Bible does not even call it a kingdom…), it is the market.

A market shaped church is essentially trying to package and sell a God-experience that religious customers would buy (by attending and financing the system). Make no mistake, we are not called to ignore what’s happening on the market, what people talk about. But we must be very careful not to be swept away by the powerful market dynamics of buying and selling. Otherwise the church is no longer driven by God into a prophetic and apostolic future, but by the ever changing gusto of religious consumers and ever present religious salespeople who give the market what the market wants. And then we end up with buffet Christianity, where everyone is free to chose a little bit of this, thank you, no, nothing of that, and maybe a harmless taste of this.

If we want to change the world, we have to chase the world out of ourselves and our church’s systems, yield to Jesus who is not only a Saviour, but a King who wishes to rule, and start shaping our lives, families, financial and political behaviors accordingly. Then our churches would stop to be our churches any longer; and yes, become His’ again. Why not?

Webinar

Wolf had a webinar last night on his book, “The House Church Book” that is new in the American market now.

Here is a link to listen to the recorded version of the webinar if anyone is interested.

http://www.evangelismcoach.org/2009/webinar-replay-and-resource-page-wolfgang-simson/

Reformed, Americanized, Simplified, Monarchized

By Wolf

If, in AD 1516, some one would have asked “Christian leaders” in the Roman Catholic Church: ‘Do we need a new reformation?’, they would have laughed them out of their world. Who, we may ask, would laugh hardest today, if we ask the same question? Right, the Reformed world.

However, during the last 500 years, we have experienced not one, but four reformations (whereby the church significantly changes its forms and functions). The Reformation of Luther brought Bible, grace and faith to prominence again. The church became reformed.

Around AD 1900, various Holiness movements and the Pentecostal movement, fueled by the general entrepreneurship and the finances of our American brothers and sisters started to be felt worldwide: the church was americanized.

After 1950, another huge shift appeared: forced underground by Mao and his cultural revolution, the “lay people” of the Chinese church took matters into their own hands. The church became simplified and de-organized, beginning the huge wave of the organic movement that currently sweeps the globe.

However, the greatest shift and reformation is in the making right now, as God calls us all to move away from man-made church systems all together and enter the Kingdom as our framework. The church is de-democratized; monarchized, if you will. And de-democratized means that my and your opinion about this is not really invited. How about that?!