I've just been reviewing the page hits on this blog and noticed that the article 13 Birth Pangs from two years ago has had the highest number of page views.
13 Birth Pangs
I believe that something significant is happening within the body of Christ in N.Z and around the world. Because it is so underground, organic and uncontrolled, it is very hard to understand the size and depth of what is happening, but something is happening. I do believe that there are clear birth pangs announcing the imminent arrival of new wine skins, new forms, renewed mindsets and a renewed church. I have believed for a long time (long before I even grasped the concepts of what we are doing now), that the church that I have grown up in, led, and expressed my faith in could not go on indefinitely, pretending that huge incongruities did not exist between what we declared and what we practiced.
A PERSONAL CONVICTION (could be wrong!)
Is that we are beginning to see believers in Christ truly becoming new wine, and because of this the old wine skins are being broken. After a time of chaos new wine skins that we cannot even comprehend will emerge. I believe we have already entered a time of massive upheaval in the church as we know it, and that God will use it to build his church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
13 SIGNS OF CHANGE
1. A significant number of New Zealand Christians have stopped attending institutional churches but are continuing to follow Jesus Christ.
2. A significant number of New Zealand Christians are regularly moving their commitment from institutional church to institutional church (suggestions of over 70% of an average evangelical church a decade according to some surveys) on a regular basis without moving geographically.
3. A growing number of New Zealand Christians are attending and using the programs of more than one institutionalised church and yet do not identify with any one of the church’s they attend.
4. Significant numbers of Churched Christians that have been in church longer than five years have to some degree a level of frustration and concern in their relationship with their local church.
read the rest here http://everyhomeachurch.blog.co.uk/2005/05/04/13_birth_pangs
