Great Bible Survey Course - FREE!

Twelve years ago I began to be concerned about the demise of Sunday School. Shabby as most classes were in teaching the Bible, people were exposed to the inspired scripture. Particularly was I concerned about cell churches where the focus of the cells would be on equipping, edification, evangelism.

So I invested about $30,000 and hired eight different people to help me. I wrote a complete text in five minute segments that would cover the Bible from cover to cover. I then created a 488 page paperback book with all the pages that appear on the computer screen. The first presentation was made by creating four CD's, one CD for each quarter of the content.

In five minute segments, the entire Bible is surveyed with graphics and sound on video clips. I eventually exported the entire series so it can be viewed on line anywhere there is a computer in the whole world.

It is the equivalent of a Bible College Survey of the Bible.

I added to the studies a monthly "Ask Your Questions" meeting for all cell members attending the church I served in Singapore. These were stimulating nights where I would answer any and all questions about the Bible for those taking the course.

Please use it, and encourage all new believers and illiterate Christians to go to the site. When they register, the site keeps a record of how far they have progressed and lets them take as many 5 minute segments as desired in one sitting.

The textbook pages appear on the 488 panels of the online course and can be secured in paperback as well. (Click here)

To check out the site, click on the title of this blog. It will take you straight to the login site.

"Jine de chuch neah ya home!"

Back in 1955, I heard a Panhandle Florida pastor preach the Annual Message at the Pensacola Baptist Association. With typical Southern Florida twang, he made an impassioned plea that everyone should join the church nearest to your home.

At that time I was in seminary, commuting weekly to pastor the now defunct Southside Baptist Church. Peter Lord pastored a few blocks away. In that low income area, we had two churches that were equidistant from the population. The membership in both churches was equal but attendance vacillated between them. When either church had something "special," the other would see attendance drain like water in a bathtub when you pulled the plug.

We solved the problem by merging the two congregations and becoming co-pastors. The first Sunday, Peter preached in the morning and that night I preached. At the close of the service, I resigned using the excuse that Peter was graduating from seminary and I was going to take my doctorate.

I then accepted the pulpit of the Hayne Boulevard Baptist Church in New Orleans. This 40 member church had been "pastored" by 13 seminary students in 12 years! I broke all records by staying 3 years and six months and building a new auditorium for them, growing to 250 members. I found the motto "Join the church near your home" suited me perfectly: we were the single church on Hayne Boulevard for miles. I used it on my calling card.

Next came several years in Pennsylvania, planting all the original churches in the Keystone Baptist Association and then planting more in the Delaware Valley Baptist Association. About 18 altogether. The motto served me well; building membership was the name of that game.

Moving to Texas with the Baptist Convention placed me in charge of personal evangelism. After five years, I finally began to realize the slogan "join the church near your home" was a slogan based on an unbiblical definition of ecclesia. At the age of 34, it finally dawned on me that all these "church plants" were based on a consumer view of church life. These years were profitable in bringing some to Christ but added to the Big Lie that a building was "church" and joining one of the building centered organizations was a man-made decision, based on getting personal needs met. My motto was reinforcing a heresy!

There the truth was, staring me in the face all those years; my filters blocked it as though someone had cut it out of my Bible with scissors:

WE DO NOT CHOOSE TO JOIN THE AUTHENTIC CHURCH;

WE ARE CHOSEN AND JOINED TO IT BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD.

The true "church" is not the building nearest to your residence. It is the body of Christ we are joined to by the choice of the Holy Spirit: 1 Corinthians 12:13. It is a supernatural invasion of the reign of God over a group of people formed as arms, legs and inward parts to be inhabited by the Son of God, the Christ. Through that body He will reveal His presence: 1 Corinthians 14:24-25. (See my latest book for more on this!)

Consumer Christianity is killing the authentic work of Christ. I planted wood, hay and stubble for most of my ministry. Most of those building centered churches have never grown larger than they were after 6 years of existence--now a half century later!

Post your thoughts below...

Visit a "Normal" Cell Church: Abidjan trip

At the Cell Symposium, Jim Lassiter talked about the many years he has traveled as an interpreter for Dion Robert, pastor of the 185,000 member cell church in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. (View his presentation here).

He shared that when he first started to travel with Dion, the detective-turned-pastor would frequently comment when they visited an American church, "This is not normal!" Jim could not understand what he meant until he finally realized Dion was seeing what he could not see - the dismal "downstairs" lifestyle American Christians live, contrasted to the "upstairs" Kingdom of God lifestyle experienced by the members of the Abidjan congregation.

A Chinese proverb says, "Never ask a goldfish what water is like." We swim around in the consumerism goldfish bowl of American church life. For us it is "normal." On one occasion, Dion walked through the multimillion dollar sanctuary of a Megachurch in Texas and said, "Child of Satan!" Such opulence for use a couple of hours a week offended his spirit.

We have come to accept our lifestyles as "normal" when we are far from it. We are subnormal. (Watchman Nee focused on this in The Normal Christian Life.)

I am convinced from my own experiences in ministering around the world, that when American Christiana are lifted out of their fishbowl, they must make radical changes in how they will live.

I will never forget the time I was preparing to preach for Dion to 40,000 people in a soccer stadium. He leaned over and said, "Would you like to see the demon possessed who are here?" I said, "How can I do that?" He went to the microphone and asked all the cell members present to come down from the stands and "dance before the Lord." With a shout of joy, thousands poured onto the field and formed a serpentine line 50 people across. As they wound around the field, they would point a hand toward heaven and sing in French, "Jesus is Higher!", followed by pointing to the ground singing, "Satan is under!" The stands, nearly empty, contained scores of demon possessed people. In their culture, a virgin will go to a witch doctor to get a demon assigned to help her get pregnant and then that baby is taught to worship that demon.

To my amazement, people all over the stands began to fall writhing and screaming to the ground. The demons could not stand the power of Christ being exalted. From behind the stands, teams of 5-6 would come to pick up one person and make a human stretcher to carry them in their pain back to the tents prepared for deliverance.

Dion knows what pastors in America for the most part do not know: that the power of Satan is real and he has his captives imprisoned in every culture. In our culture we treat addiction by offering counseling instead of dealing with the demonic forces that inspire this habit. What is spiritual we treat as emotional.

I promise you that if you need spiritual surgery from consumer religion that must be extracted from your lifestyle, this trip is more valuable by twenty times the cost of the plane ticket.

I am not making a red cent on putting this trip together. I abhor having a second source of supply. I will pay my way like everyone else. When we get there, Dion's church will provide transportation, hotels, two meals a day-free. You see, consumerism is not in their or my vocabulary!

I would urge you to consider this once-in-a-lifetime venture into a slum of the world, the Ivory Coast of Africa. They don't have tourism there - no game parks, etc. Just poverty. And the power of Christ, manifested in profound ways that will transform you and make you want to be "normal," no matter what the cost!

Click on this link to sign up.

Cell Symposium Videos Are Now Available

The Cell Symposium in June brought together seven key men who all are participants in global movements. Their panel discussions are historic! Here is one sample for you to view. If you want to browse the whole collection, click on the Title of this article and go to my video download page. In a few weeks we will transpose the site http://www.cellsymposium.com/ to a new version and all these video will stream there. They are not sorted out for the collection you will see: that must be done for their permanent Symposium home.

I spoke into the situation of the third generation of the cell movement with an impassioned plea for us to stop "throwing Christ under the bus" and allowing man-made cells to operate. You can get right to it by selecting "Ralph Neighbour." Another bombshell is to view "Jim Lassiter."

If you want ipod downloads, they are in a separate folder in my collection. Don't try to play the ipod files: they do not stream. Just download them to your iTunes. A trick Apple taught me: when you have them in iTunes and the image of your iPod or iPhone is showing to the left, click and drag the file into "Movies." I think it's the only way to get them into your handheld.

I really need to get feedback from you! Post it here.

How Cell Groups Mature

If a cell grows rapidly, the question it has to answer is, “How long does it take for true intimacy to happen to allow the deeper issues in our lives to surface?”

Typically, if a group is starting from scratch, the pattern will be:

FORMING: (4-6 weeks) We have “impressions” about the others in the group because they “remind” us of similar people we have known before. E.G., “He reminds me of my angry old uncle Fred. I am not sure about him,” or, “He is just like my wonderful uncle Fred who was so kind and gentle! I like him!”

The ice breakers should be structured to reveal true identities. I have recently started in forming a new cell group in my home and for the fourth time we are devoting a whole evening to hearing in depth the life history of one person at a time. I am impressed with how much faster we bond by doing this. We let the structure of the cell meeting be welcome, worship, report of one person’s life, prayer, outreach planning….

STORMING: (4 weeks typically) After about 4-6 weeks in most cases, this FORMING image wears off. The “real” personalities surface and now, I as a cell member, have to decide if I want to be transparent around this person or whether I do not trust him. Conflict inevitably will take place and the cell leader must watch for verbal and nonverbal signals that this is taking place.

The ice breakers should be structured to bring up the way each person is wired and soldered to behave in a conflict situation. I have material to use:

Ask - Answer,
Suggest - Agree
Demand - Give in
Fight - Flight

During storming, there will not be much transparent confession going on. I have dozens of examples of how cells work through this bumpy air with seat belts fastened. It is absolutely necessary to go through it. If a cell leader is fearful of dealing with conflict and tries to pour oil over the growing tension, the cell often will disintegrate as people drop out. It is more painful in some groups than in others. I recently had a man come into my cell in my home and picked a FIGHT with one of the younger men, a son of India who was very unstable as he dealt drugs to others and did not have a lot of polish. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do because it happened too fast and we lost both of them.

EDIFYING: (Several months) Once the cell has truly bonded, I see this really as the time when I think a cell moves from being mostly “man made” to “God Made.” There is a stickyness to the members, they are hanging out between the group meetings, praying together, sharing burdens for lost people in their oikoses—and most of all, totally confessional! Layer by layer, the secret sins and bitternesses, etc., are exposed for the body to deal with. Oikodomeo and Oikonomos empowerment flows within the group and healing takes place.

THIS IS THE TIME FOR THE GROUP TO ENTER . . .

EVANGELIZING: Over the months they have been relating to oikos unbelievers and searching “type A” friends. These can now be invited to attend the cell group (see 1 Cor. 14:24-25). The presence of these observers will temper a little of the intensity of the confessional nature of the cell, but not as much as you might think! The unspoken love and communion that will take place will cause the unbeliever to fall on his knees and cry out, “God is among you, and I want to be a part of this community!”

PREPARATION FOR MULTIPLICATION: It is these new converts who come who grow the size of the cell to the bursting point. It is time to multiply! But how should this be done? It is very natural: each one of these new converts came in through one of the cell members. They were/are bonded in a special way. So, the cell does not SPLIT or DIVIDE: it BIRTHS a Daughter Cell that is naturally made up of the original cell members and the “little children” attached to them, who have by this time been in the cell for several weeks.

One dear pastor nearby my home has a cell church with LIFE groups (cells). Nearly every Sunday now he is large enough that he has a special time in the Sunday service where the entire group comes to the front. He sets apart the Daughter Cell with prayer, they hug those in the “Mother” cell with tears and begin to meet on their own the next week.

When you get into the third and fourth generation of your cells, there is not much of the original FORMING STORMING taking place but it can usually have some modifications of it in every new cell.

COMMENTS?

Dr. Leslie Brickman On Cell Church Values

NOTE: Les Brickman is a companion of mine going back 20 years. He has a Ph.D. in Cell Church from Regent University and currently lives in Kenya, training pastors using his version of my Boot Camp. His comments below state my own convictions, and I welcome a discussion about his presentation.

I do not believe either that the cell church movement is a blip on the screen of church history, or that it was meant only as a transitional structure. I believe it is the only structure that allows the church to fully function as the church.

I believe the early church met both in small groups and gathered together as a larger corporate group. As Bill most ably brought out years ago, theologically we need to experience the manifest Presence of Christ in three ways – personal Christ in you, wherever 2 or 3 have been gathered into His Name (small group), and Christ in the midst of the great congregation (large group). History attests to the fact that the small group aspect was, for the most part, abandoned in favor of the large group for most of the last 1700 years. The pendulum moved off center to the large group side. Today, I think the pendulum is moving off center toward the small group side, i.e. simple church movement. I think this is unbalanced for a number of reasons.

Paul employs the figure of the body of Christ throughout the scriptures. He also remarks that the natural comes first, and then the spiritual. God has given us many things in the natural to help us understand the spiritual. The image of the body is one of these. In the natural, there is a significant difference in God's creation between a simple cell and a body, between a simple organism and a complex organism. While all complex organisms are comprised of simple cells, the whole is greater than the mere sum of the parts. A simple cell can never achieve what a body is capable of achieving. So it is in the spiritual. While it may be argued that the complex organism we call the church may grossly misuse its resources, a simple cell simply does not possess the resources needed for the Great Commission. A simple cell cannot create a reproducible discipleship system to release each member into their God ordained gift based ministries. The corporate body of Christ, on the other hand, can. Whether it chooses to do so or not is another story, but it has the potential.

I believe that we are called to live out our Christian life as part of two communities: a small group community life and a corporate community life. Even most cell churches, in my humble opinion, while stressing the vital necessity of living in small group community, have ignored the vital necessity of living in corporate community. Yes, the cell is the church, and not just a part of it. But the cell is not a body. One of the things I came to greatly appreciate about Dion and EPBOM, is that each member is called to live in community at the cell level, but each member also came to discover their place in the corporate body based upon their spiritual giftedness. Demonologists live in cell community, but also live in community with the rest of the body and demonstrate that as they minister throughout the week in the areas of deliverance and soul therapy. Those with gifts of administration exercise their gifts in various venues throughout the week. Ditto for those with gifts of helps, service, leadership, intercession, teaching, evangelism, etc. His departments only look like departments. They are the incarnational manifestation of the Holy Spirit. EPBOM is an excellent illustration of a people living both in small group community and corporate community.

The cell church in America has at best opted for a cell lifestyle, and substituted a corporate meeting on Sunday for a corporate lifestyle lived throughout the week. The price necessary to live such a corporate lifestyle in time and effort seems a bit too much for most pastors to even ask. It is as unrealistic to assume that a meeting on Sunday can possibly take the place of a weekly corporate lifestyle, than that a small group meeting on Tuesday can take the place of living out a community lifestyle during the week. What we seem to lack in the American church is a desire to live a Christian lifestyle 24/7. Simple church just makes it more simple to relegate our commitment to Christ to one meeting a week. A simple church member does not have to worry about being asked to spend additional time flexing and exercising their spiritual gifts in body ministry, there is no larger body to whom or within which to minister.

The NT uses the body analogy. I believe God gave Bill the two-winged bird analogy. We have used it here in Africa and have seen how God has employed that simple analogy to open the eyes of pastors to the true nature of the church. They experience what we can only call an "Aha" moment.

Regarding the simple church movement, I believe that it can touch people the cell church movement will not touch. But I believe it is fraught with biblical difficulties. While the basic building block of life may be the cell, God's creation is a myriad of complex cellular organisms. While the basic building block of the church may be the cell, the church that will proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light is a complex organism – it is a two winged bird.

ABOUT THE CELL SYMPOSIUM

“It is the depravity of institutions and movements that given in the beginning to express life they often end in throttling that very life. Therefore they need constant review, perpetual criticism, a continuous bringing back to original purposes and spirit. The Christian church is no exception. It is the chief illustration of the above.”
• E. Stanley Jones

Our D.Min. cadre has discussed the impact we desire to see from the Symposium. In order for this to be more than “just another meeting,” we are praying for an impartation through you to the community of 300 delegates who will be present. Participants have already registered from foreign countries including Nigeria, Switzerland, Korea, etc. but most will be from the USA or Canada.

We do not desire to “parade” the seven Presenters.

We are asking them to approach the Symposium as missionaries to us:
“Why is America and other parts of the world being left out of the significant harvests you are seeing in your areas of ministry?”

Jesus spoke of the soils and how it receives the seed. Would you help us by sharing their insights:

Is the dearth of cell group churches in parts of the world a condition of the soil, or are there other factors to be considered?

Each of the Presenters have been invited because they speak to us from different soils:

Eddie Leo: how the cells rooted in the soil of Islam.
Bill Smith: how the cells and “basic Christian communities” (sometimes called ‘house churches’) rooted in the soil of Restricted Access Nations.
Robert Lay: how the cells rooted in the soil of hundreds of traditional churches in Brazil.
Dion Robert: how the cells rooted in the soil of a demon-infested society.
Harold Weitz: how the cells rooted in the soil of South Africa and elsewhere through a powerful emphasis on equipping all believers for the work of ministry with a strong focus on prayer.
Mario Vega: how the cells rooted in the soil of a nation suffering from revolutions and poverty.
Jimmy Seibert: how the cells rooted in the soil of a college community with a passion to send church planters to the nations.

THE FIRST PRESENTATIONS:

Each will share the Principles, Values, and Theology that drives their communities that will speak into the USA, but also to the world. (We do not want you to slip into “How To’s”. The afternoon Breakouts with speakers are designed to focus in that area.)
The D. Min. cadre has suggested that we follow the pattern of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), an invitation-only event (with a fee of thousands of dollars), where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration. Each of the Presenters will be given 12 minutes to summarize the insights they bring to the Symposium.

On the first morning, the Presenters will summarize the passionate centers of what they bring to the Symposium, using no more than 12 minutes each.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE SYMPOSIUM

MORNING SESSIONS: The balance of the mornings will be spent by my chairing a discussion between the Presenters related to these specific topics: PRAYING, EQUIPPING, PLANNING, EDIFYING, PASTORING, EVANGELIZING. The 300 delegates will reflect on their insights to what the presenters bring to these areas.

EVENING SESSIONS: The evening sessions will be a “free-for-all” discussion with Eddie, Robert and Harold interacting with the delegates on Tuesday night; Dion and Mario on Wednesday night; and Bill and Jimmy on Thursday night.

Initial questions will be submitted in advance in writing but we will leave the evening open for discussion.

GO TO THE WEB SITE TO REGISTER

God and Satan Both Want To Kill You!

God and Satan both want the same thing. They both want to kill you, only for different reasons.

Satan wants to kill your effectiveness for the Kingdom of God. He does this by enticing each new believer to remain aloof from body life. He really doesn't care about what happens after we die; he just doesn't want us, while alive, to disturb his kingdoms in this world by being part of a cell group that reveals Christ's Presence, Power and Purpose.

God wants to kill everything in you that He cannot use for His Kingdom purposes. One thing is certain, he must kill you to the idea that you can exist in the Kingdom apart from body life. Entering the kingdom requires us to die to self, for in this new realm we "look not to our own interests, but also to the interest of others."

The Kingdom of God is all about community. Believers who never find themselves bonded (“baptized”) by the Spirit to fellow body members are not living a normal spiritual life. Becoming a part of a community that exists as the body of Christ is the launching of His reign in you.

The folly of evangelistic appeals is the emphasis on the "ladder" that takes us from "downstairs" to "Upstairs," from the life of darkness to the life of the Kingdom. We talk about passing from death to life but never explain that this new life begins after we die to the old one.

We focus on the new birth without expanding what the new eyes must see: the Kingdom! Too many have been "born again" without any explanation about what the new life, joined to fellow body parts, involves. Thus we have thousands of pews every Sunday filled with disconnected body parts! It is ghastly!

I resent the parachurch teaching about every Christian having a “Quiet Time.” The idea that I have a “personal” time with God every day is a horrible obstruction to Kingdom body life. Instead, we need to approach the Throne as a body member, meaning that we bring our community of body parts into each communion with Christ. We are sensitive to His relationship not only with us but with us along with the other members of the body we are joined to by the Holy Spirit.

Any reflections on this? Add them to my blog.

An amazing man!

Dr. Victor Chudhrie studied medicine at Christian Medical College in Vellore. He married Bindu Sukhnandan and went to England for higher studies in surgery. He returned to serve in Padhar Mission Hospital in a tribal village in District Betul in Madhya Pradesh, India.

In 1993 he committed himself to bringing about a Saturation Church Planting Movement throughout India, especially in north India. Since then God has blessed this ministry and thousands of house churches have been planted.

He has graciously permitted me to release three of his writings to those who are seeking to learn how to minister to this generation. I am not going to expose his precious materials at this time to "just anybody." If you would like to receive a treasure chest of spiritual materials free of charge, you must write me and request his first three documents: Teaching Cards, The Prayer Warrior, and Greet the Ekkleseyia.

He writes, "Whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not, a fierce battle is raging for the souls of men. This decisive battle will be won with wet eyes, bended knees and broken hearts. It also means using your God given gifts and taking authority to usher in the Government of God."

My email address to request them is: ralph (at) touchusa (dot)org.

Powerful Words!

L.T. Jeyachandran is executive director of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Singapore. He writes:

In a society that is increasingly fragmented and individualized, it is easy to develop a theology of the Church as a collection of perfect individuals. But a right understanding of the relationships within the Trinity would militate against such an interpretation. We do well to remember the powerfully acted parable of Jesus as he washed the disciples' feet. The feet of all the disciples were dirty, but as they would submit themselves to cleansing by one another, they would emerge as a perfect community (John 13:14). We may fundamentally have no difficulty having ourselves cleansed by Christ, but to submit to ablutions by another is virtually unthinkable. The disciples (and we as well) would have been very happy to wash the feet of Jesus, but his injunction was that they should wash one another's feet. It was a strange but effective way of communicating the importance of relating to one another by forgiving, cleansing, and accepting one another in perfect mutuality. In other words, two imperfect individuals can synergistically portray a perfect relationship--the very antidote so desperately needed to correct our individualistic privatized spirituality!

It is an issue within Scripture that cannot be overemphasized. The hallmark of the Church of Jesus Christ is a relational testimony which serves as a pointer to the reality of the Eternal Triune God. May we, under God, consciously discern every trap that the devil sets for us to rupture relationships, and trust the Holy Spirit of love to breathe his healing and remake our fractured bonds.