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Yesterday I was listening (via MP3) to Wolgang Simson speak to a house church conference about two of his friends. One was Rick Warren of Purpose Drive fame. The other was a Vietnamese lady named Sarah. Rick has been graced to release a great church which has grown to 15,000 people over 20 years. Sarah was directed to go to the tribal peoples of Vietnam and her house church movement has baptized 15,000 people in 5 years. How many of you have heard of Sarah from Vietnam?
The contrast reminded me of a parable of the elephant and the rabbit. It takes almost two years from conception to birth to produce one baby elephant. A rabbit births her litter after 31 days and can become pregnant again immediately. Two rabbits after two years? At least a million! An elephant uses a tremendous amount of resources while a rabbit uses considerably less!
Why does everybody buy Purpose Driven Church but very few want to hear Sarah's story? Sarah has been much more successful and used a lot less resources! Yes, God made the elephant and God made the rabbit. But why does everybody want to try and build an elephant?
Well you can ride an elephant and everybody can see you way up there. However, you look pretty silly trying to ride a rabbit (unless you are Alice in Wonder Land!). We would rather ride elephants than feed rabbits!
Raising and riding elephants takes a lot of skill and a lot of resources. Raising rabbits is pretty easy!
Rabbits do multiply quickly, even in the most difficult environments (all numbers from Wolfgang Simson)!
-In north and central India a low estimate is that 60,000 house churches have been planted in the last five years.
- In Egypt, the figure is 2,200 house churches for the past five years.
- In Iran, 3,000 house churches in the last five years.
- In China, One leader multiplied from 40 people to 10 million in the last 13 years!
Armenia? We do not know all that is happening in that nation but we had a very good visit there with our friend Varo. He and a small circle of friends are committed to multiplying simple church. Who knows how many rabbits we will see in 5 years! Thank you to those of you who prayed and helped to send us! God bless you!
Harvest Now!
Steve & Marilyn
PS: Last month's item on the miracle in Egypt cannot be verified! I did check with the person who gave it to me. She said she was in Egypt and would send me a DVD of the TV newscast. On that basis I published the story. Subsequently she does not return my mails. We are very, very sorry for this. The story has been carried in other media but without sources or with sources that do not check out. www.breakthechain.org has an item on this story saying it cannot be verified.
PPSS: Thank you for your responses to "The Tithe and The Covenants"! We have just posted another article in resources, "Portals, Prayer Shields and Other Stories". Things can get a little strange out there if we do not keep Christ at the center! Read it and let us know what you think!
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