SimpleChurch Journal aka House Church Blog: John Arnott (Toronto Revival) Speaks Out

September 23, 2004

John Arnott (Toronto Revival) Speaks Out

Robert Fitts passed this along to me... a recent quote from John Arnott:

More and more we hear the term, “church without walls” but what does this mean? While it can mean sending teams from a local church outside the church’s walls to minister in homes and in the marketplace, I believe it is much more than that. If we are going to reach this world for Jesus, we need a completely new model of “doing church.” I don’t know why we can’t have “church” in homes, offices, schools, coffee shops, or even outside for that matter. Why can’t we have church meetings that are facilitated by an army of non-professional yet anointed Christians and have them meet whenever and wherever it works for them? Maybe we need to take a hard look at what has happened to the Church in the last 2,000 years and see how we can return to Jesus’ model of “doing church”? Jesus said, “Where two or three meet together, there am I in the midst.” The word “church” in Greek is the word “ecclesia” meaning “called out ones.”...
...Things are changing. I believe that God is decentralizing the Church...

...Seemingly, the Holy Spirit has no problem coordinating hundreds and thousands of different individuals and congregations for His eternal purposes. Things really do work much better when Jesus Himself is the head...

...This is not to say that there are not offices in the local churches of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. However, these are not titles, but functions. These are servant leaders who equip others to also become anointed ones. How often we have interpreted these ministries to be hierarchical positions...

... It is time for those of us who live in the West to take a reality check. Church as we know it is not really working here. Many of the so-called “success stories” of church growth are merely transfer growth, people who are already Christians moving to a new church. We need some new models for having church which allow ordinary “lay people” to easily and quickly get involved in ministry.

Posted by roger thoman on September 23, 2004 at 03:31 PM | Permalink

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Robert Fitts passed this along to me... a recent quote from John Arnott:

More and more we hear the term, “church without walls” but what does this mean? While it can mean sending teams from a local church outside the church’s walls to minister in homes and in the marketplace, I believe it is much more than that. If we are going to reach this world for Jesus, we need a completely new model of “doing church.” I don’t know why we can’t have “church” in homes, offices, schools, coffee shops, or even outside for that matter. Why can’t we have church meetings that are facilitated by an army of non-professional yet anointed Christians and have them meet whenever and wherever it works for them? Maybe we need to take a hard look at what has happened to the Church in the last 2,000 years and see how we can return to Jesus’ model of “doing church”? Jesus said, “Where two or three meet together, there am I in the midst.” The word “church” in Greek is the word “ecclesia” meaning “called out ones.”...
...Things are changing. I believe that God is decentralizing the Church...

...Seemingly, the Holy Spirit has no problem coordinating hundreds and thousands of different individuals and congregations for His eternal purposes. Things really do work much better when Jesus Himself is the head...

...This is not to say that there are not offices in the local churches of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. However, these are not titles, but functions. These are servant leaders who equip others to also become anointed ones. How often we have interpreted these ministries to be hierarchical positions...

... It is time for those of us who live in the West to take a reality check. Church as we know it is not really working here. Many of the so-called “success stories” of church growth are merely transfer growth, people who are already Christians moving to a new church. We need some new models for having church which allow ordinary “lay people” to easily and quickly get involved in ministry.