Church Growth

As editor and online facilitator of a website that includes a global community of 80,000 pastors and church leaders registered with the site, Pastor Brandon Cox has read his share of criticisms of today’s Christian Church.

And he’s tired of it.

Two years ago, Cox was recruited by Pastor Rick Warren’s team at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., to help with its already well-developed global online community of pastors. His mission: take the church’s website which is dedicated to equip pastors, Pastors.com, to the next level. more >>

The Church of England may be one step closer to appointing female bishops after a recent vote taken among the church's 44 local dioceses has found that the majority are in favor of a motion to do so, according to the Telegraph.

As a result, the measure will be taken before the Church of England's national assembly, the General Synod, next year in July for a final decision to be made.

While 28 out of the 30 dioceses of England have so far supported the measure, those that have not, such as the diocese of London, are asking for alternative plans that guarantee that their parishes will be overseen by male bishops. more >>

A Vancouver, Wash., church that quickly needed $1 million in order to stay in a former K-Mart building received the money through donations one week ahead of closing its 40-day fundraising campaign, said its pastor.

Living Hope Church Pastor John Bishop, who wrote the book Dangerous Church, which is primarily about the risk-taking culture of his congregation, began the campaign a month ago. He not only asked the church’s 6,000 members to give to the fund, but other churches as well.

The church had to move from a former Mervyns mall store late last year after the property was bought by a movie theater company, Bishop told The Christian Post. He said the church was teetering on the possibility of being the "first homeless megachurch in the nation." more >>

Pastors in the United States need to be intentional in making their congregations less homogeneous and more multi-ethnic, says the pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in the country.

Derwin L. Gray, the founding and lead pastor of Transformation Church located in Fort Mill, S.C., said that his conviction to see churches become more ethnically diverse comes straight from the Bible.

Transformation Church grew from a congregation of 178 to 1,500 attenders in one year. Outreach Magazine recently ranked it as the second fastest growing church by percentage. more >>

The makers of YouVersion, the Bible app that enables mobile phone and tablet users to study Scripture in many ways, are celebrating a milestone this week – 30 million installations.

The free Bible app has been installed on one out of every 17 iPhones, iPads and Android devices sold globally. The Bible app is available on the iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone, WebOS and Java phones, as well as many Web-enabled mobile devices.

YouVersion, which began exclusively as an online Bible, was created by a team at LifeChurch.tv in September of 2007. In April of the next year, YouVersion launched the Bible App, an application that further increased access and interaction with the Bible. more >>

LAKE FOREST, Calif. – Seven months after Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, about 50 members of a church that was located just a few miles from the destroyed Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant are still looking for a place to call home.

Still leading his dwindled congregation housed in a campsite outside Tokyo, Pastor Akira Sato has authored a book about the story of Fukushima First Bible Baptist Church. Prior to the disasters, Sato’s followers were part of a rural four-campus, multisite church having about 200 members.

Rurou no Kyokai (Exodus Church) is currently the best-selling Christian book in Japan. Written in Japanese, Sato and his publishers are in the process of having it translated into several languages, including English. more >>