The New England
District Association
of
Evangelical Free
NEDA Highlights
Volume 15 February
2, 2007
The New England District of the
EFC (NEDA) exists to glorify God throughout
Church Health in our Churches
Church
planting movements are changing and reaching the World for Christ. The Churches
of New England District of the EFCA are rapidly becoming a church planting
movement. This is because our churches are becoming healthy and missional. A healthy, missional
church makes disciples, multiplies leaders, and equips workers for the
Harvest. A healthy, missional
church is effective in evangelism and will plant churches.
Over
the past twenty years, excellent pastors have come to NEDA churches and stayed.
They have worked with gifted lay leaders and developed teams of leaders, men
and women of character, who love Jesus and want to reach
Our
NEDA Church Health Council has developed curriculum with the help of Jim Fann, our EFCA leader.
This curriculum, which we use at our module meetings, helps pastors work
together to sharpen one another in evangelism, discipleship and leadership
development. God is doing a great work to prepare each healthy church for
church planting.
Greenhouse Training
This
past year Ves introduced to the district a curriculum called Greenhouse
Training. Greenhouse Training
enables pastors and leadership teams of elders and deacons to really wrestle
with “What it means to be a New Testament Church in the Twenty First
Century.” Every leader would agree that
tradition and church history are not a reliable source of information and
authority upon which to build our ministries in our churches. So, Greenhouse Training takes churches
and leaders back to Jesus and the Scriptures to wrestle with Spirit-led
application of the Great Commission, life, and community transformation by
preaching the gospel and what it means to be the Church.
An
initial group of 16 pastors, church planters, and church leaders went through
the intensive two days of training. This Pilot Greenhouse was so
successful that over twenty churches and pastors have signed up for the
training in 2007. Here are the five revolutionary principles of the training
that demand application in each of our churches:
1) When there is convergence of focused
2) Follow Jesus, the Master, who launched a saturation
evangelism and church planting movement that was: (Gospels and Book of Acts)
a.
transformational
of individuals and culture,
b. global in focus from inception,
c.
anchored in the
Word of God,
d. met most often in homes,
e.
valued people
above all else, and
f.
trained leaders in non-formal, ministry related ways.
3) Intentionally decentralize to make disciples in small
groups in order to begin multiplication. Acts 2: 42-47
4) Equip, empower, and send out the church in small
groups of ministry teams and fertile cells in order to learn how to become
fishers of men. Luke 9-10; Acts 13:1-5
5) Train leaders and launch saturation evangelism and
church planting movements. Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-5