QUOTE
Unit 5: The Third Wave of Cell Innovation
Lecture: Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church
SE: Michael Slaughter, Spiritual Entrepreneurs: Six Principles for Risking Renewal (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994). Quotes from the book are in italics.
“First Love: A Christ Centered Environment for Church Renewal” by Michael Slaughter. Dayton, OH: Whaleprints at United Theological Seminary, 1990. (video; currently unavailable.)
I first met Michael Slaughter at the Illinois Area School for Evangelism at MacMurray College shortly after Spiritual Entrepreneurs was published. I had never heard of him; I was there to hear the other speaker, a seminary professor well known for his expertise in evangelism through publication of more than a dozen books. I was standing among some other fans in a circle around this great man when an intense, edgy thin man joined the circle. Within a minute he asked the professor: AWouldn=t you agree that an expert in evangelism loses his understanding of what=s truly important within a year of leaving the local church?@ Who was this guy?
Michael Slaughter told stories about his appointment to Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, a little brick church in a hamlet of twenty houses on a county road north of Dayton. The nearest post office is Tipp City, Ohio, with a population of 7000 in 1994. Ginghamsburg Church still there, operating out of two locations on that same rural road, having grown from an attendance of 90 in 1979 to over 2100 in 1994 and now over 4000 in 2008. From 1974-1979, Slaughter=s predecessor Jim Worley had built the little two room church from 20 to 90 by encouraging the understanding that everything the church did needed to be centered around a commitment to the person of Jesus Christ, within the context of a loving supportive fellowship (SE: 14). The people began to meet weekly on Thursday nights for a potluck and once a month in someone=s home. Renewal flows out of a commitment to being faithful to the will of God (SE: 15). Slaughter=s theology of renewal presented in this book is centered around six principles, each explained in a chapter. He claims that these six principles are present in every revival in history.
NOTE (my response)
DISCERNMENT QUESTIONS
RESOURCES
SE: Michael Slaughter, Spiritual Entrepreneurs: Six Principles for Risking Renewal (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994). Quotes from the book are in italics.
“First Love: A Christ Centered Environment for Church Renewal” by Michael Slaughter. Dayton, OH: Whaleprints at United Theological Seminary, 1990. (video; currently unavailable.)
Footnotes:
The quote is from Major League Disciple Making: An Overview of the Best Research on the Cell Church, an online course developed for the Institute for Discipleship at www.BeADisciple.com in 2009. Course materials, including these lectures, can be downloaded here: http://www.disciplewalk.com/IFD_MLD_Class_Links.html
All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Please review the page How and Why We Use Quotes.