Lesson video

Hello and welcome to this lesson on Growth Of the Church.

I am miss Kendrick and in this lesson, we're going to be looking at why Church growth is considered to be important to many Christians, Evangelism in the local community and Mission in the international community and we're also going to be looking at something called the Worldwide Anglican Communion as well, which has some connections to the idea of mission as well.

You are going to need a pen or pencil, a different coloured pen or pencil and some paper to write down your answers for this lessons.

If you don't have those things now, then pause the video quickly and run and get them.

Now we're ready.

We're going to start by looking at some definitions.

So I've got three important definitions for this lesson.

The first one is Mission.

So Mission is the vocation or calling of a religious organisation or individual to go out into the world and to spread their faith.

Now the word vocation might be one you've heard before or it might not.

The word vocation often links to someone's job so sometimes people say teaching is a vocation.

People might say they feel called to be a teacher.

They feel like that's the right thing for them to do and in this case, some people, some Christians believe that God has got a special plan for them in their lives and that God wants them to become a missionary or join a missionary organisation.

And missionaries will usually go to a different country to be missionaries there and to tell people about Christianity.

So they might go to a country where there's very few Christians and very few churches and where people don't really know much about Christianity.

They might even go somewhere where Christians are persecuted to help people there as well.

So Evangelism, now Evangelism is something that will happen in Mission and that is the spreading of the Christian gospel by public preaching or by personal witness.

So public preaching just means that there might be an event and somebody might speak about Christianity and try and persuade people that it is the truth and sometimes people will be persuaded, sometimes they won't.

Personal witness is a little bit different.

So that one is going to have quite a lot of variety there and that might just be a simple as someone who's a Christian being open to their friends about their faith and saying, well telling them about their experiences and if they think they've had experiences with God or the Holy spirit, they might be open to with their friends about those things.

That's what personal witness means, is that if you witness something, it's like you've seen something happen and so they're talking about what they've seen God do in their lives, like seeing something happened in that way.

Finally the word Convert, so a Convert is someone who has decided to become committed to a religion and change his or her religious faith or they might go from no faith to having a faith.

Now the word convert that she relates to all religions, really that definition isn't specific to Christianity, so someone might convert to Islam or to Buddhism or to Christianity and you can use that as as a doing word, like someone converts to a religion or you might say someone is a convert because they've converted.

So I'm going to give you a moment to pause your video and write down these definitions on the next slide.

So why evangelise? There are several reasons that Christians may have to evangelise but I think these are going to be the three main ones.

So firstly many Christians believe it was commanded by Jesus in the Bible before Jesus ascends into heaven on Ascension, He says to his disciples, "Go into all nations, but preaching the gospel "and baptising in the name of the Father, the Son "and the Holy spirit." And during His ministry, Jesus is preaching to people and he sends out his disciples to preach God's word as well.

So for many Christians, there is an expectation because it's something that Jesus has commanded them to do, so they believe it's the right thing to do, to tell others about their faith.

Secondly, Christians want to share the good news of salvation.

I wonder how often you recommend something to a friend, perhaps a film you've seen that you thought was great or a book you've read or something you've eaten and you've gone, oh my goodness, that chocolate bar was delicious you should have some because we want to share good things with our loved ones and with our friends and family.

Now christians believe that the gospel message is good news.

The word gospel literally means good news.

The word evangelise comes from the term, good news as well and in this case, the good news is, seem to be the message that God has made it possible for all people to have salvation, to have forgiveness of sins, to have eternal life in heaven.

So many Christians will be so excited about that and they will want to share it with their loved ones, just like we want to share good things with people in our lives.

And finally some Christians believe that only Christians will go to heaven.

If you took part in the lesson on Judgement in the Christian Beliefs unit, you'll know that some Christians believe that that is the case, that the only way to go to heaven is to have faith in Jesus and so these Christians, they are going to want as many people in heaven as possible and they're going to want their loved ones to be in heaven and so they're going to be really, really concerned that their loved ones become Christians and have a relationship with God as well.

So those are three main reasons why Christians evangelise, some may focus on one more than others and if you took part in that Judgement lesson, you'll know that some Christians believe that all people go to heaven anyway.

So there's going to be a bit of variety on that but what we're going to do is we're going to pause for a moment so you can get down that piece of evidence for why Christians evangelise.

So the quotation is here, "Go then to all peoples everywhere "and make them my disciples, "baptise them in the name of the Father, the Son "and the Holy Spirit," and this is really useful verse to know anyway 'cause it's got all three members of the Trinity, so, and it's got baptism in as well, so you can already use it for three topics that I would recommend you just learn it but get it written down the best.

So that silence was so you can pause, so if you didn't pause, you need to do it quickly because I'm going to give you a second quotation now.

So this one, "For God so loved the world "that he gave his only Son "so that everyone who believes in him may not die "but have eternal life," so this links to the belief that only Christians go to heaven because it says, "Whoever believes in him may not die, "but have eternal life," of course that links to God's love for all people and that links to good news as well.

Isn't it nice to be told that you're loved? So lots of Christians would say that's good news to tell people that God loves them and they want to share it just for the joy that being good means.

So again pause the video, write this down.

Okay now you've got it written down, I've got a question for you to answer so let's see if you can do that.

I'm just going to give you a few examples of what advantages it might look like and maybe these will fit into some of the ideas you've already got in your head or maybe there'll be a bit different.

So firstly being open as faith, evangelism might be as simple as someone being open about that life experience and being open about their faith.

Maybe they believe that they've had a prayer answered so they might just be open with their non Christian friends about that or it might be a bit more purposeful, maybe they'll invite people to church or even an evangelistic event.

So an evangelistic event might look very different, there might be lots of different types.

It could be a preacher coming and doing a service and talking about the gospel so a very famous evangelist who did evangelistic event was Billy Graham and he used to do these huge events where lots of people would go and listen to him and become Christians or it might be something much more low key.

It might be something small at the local church or it might be a group or something like that for discussion about the key beliefs in Christianity.

Church planting is another thing that Christians might do, so they might go to an area where there's not really any churches or not many Christians and they might start a church there.

So a few people might move to that area, start the church and just start inviting the local community there.

And finally Mission trips, so people might go to a different country to serve people.

They might raise money for people in poverty.

They might do some charity work there and tell people about Christianity as well.

So we're going to have a little look at some specific examples and we're going to start with the Alpha course or it's now known as Alpha.

So Alpha was originally known as the Alpha course and it was started in 1997, a church called Holy Trinity Brompton in London, which is now known as HTB and the original aim was to help church members to just learn more about the basics of the Christian faith but it soon began to be used as an introduction for people who were interested in Christianity and wanted to know more.

And it started to have this catchphrase about exploring the meaning of life because Christians would say that the Christian story helps give life meaning and helps people to understand life.

It takes place in many different places.

It might run from a church or from somebody's home and the format is usually that people will have a meal together, have a discussion, get to know each other.

They might watch a video or listen to a talk and they'll have discussion groups.

They will explore some of those questions and some of those claims of Christianity.

And if someone was to go on an Alpha course, there's no expectation that they have to become a Christian or anything like that.

It's simply so they can learn more about Christianity and many other courses have come out of Alpha such as Marriage and Relationship courses and study programmes for young people as well.

So what you're going to do is you're going to pause the video and answer a couple of questions about Alpha.

So we're going have a little bit of background on the Church Worldwide before we look at international mission and it's really difficult to know how many Christians that are in the world, especially because of how people self report about their own beliefs and things like that.

So estimates vary from about 1.

5 to 2.

5 billion Christians.

It is the largest religion in the world and up to a third of the world's population claims some sorts of Christian faith.

Now this figure might include people who actually know very little about the Christian faith and rarely attend church, but in a census, they might say they're Christian because they might say, oh well we tend to go at Christmas and so they say Christian rather than anything else, but that could also include people who've made a really dedicated choice to become Christians.

Now the church is growing rapidly from the time of Christ and it's still growing in countries like South America and Africa and Asia.

This has not been the case so much in America, in USA and Europe, despite there being lots of efforts for the church to grow and it's not really been growing in the Middle East either where Christians have often suffered persecution.

In 2010 there were maybe 1.

1 billion Catholics so Roman Catholicism is a particular denomination in Christianity and a very big one and it is estimated that in China, that despite opposition from the communist government, there will soon be more Christians there than in any other country in the world and in the next lesson where we're going to look at persecution of Christians, we will look at this idea that actually the church tend to grow when it's being persecuted rather than shrink.

And in Africa, it's estimated that churches are increasing by an average of 34,000 people per day.

So the church is really growing and thriving in some places.

Now there's a huge history of missionaries going abroad to places where Christianity isn't well known, to tell people about Christianity and if you look at history, you can see lots and lots of examples of this and sometimes they're what you might call successful and other times they might be what you might call a disaster but we're not going to look at specific examples right now but just generally for you to know that there is a huge history of people going into different countries to tell people about Jesus.

Spreading the gospel message often includes charity work as well and this links to the idea of going into all nations and showing love to all people.

So for example, lots of missionaries have done things like set up schools and hospitals.

There's things called Mercy ships, which are these boats that go around from coast to coast to really poor areas and offer free medical care for people there.

There are examples of missionaries going and serving communities so Jackie Pullinger is a famous missionary who went to Hong Kong and stayed in a really dangerous area that was full of gangs and drugs and she worked with gang members to help them to break their addictions to drugs.

So her story is amazing actually, I think she has, she was very, very brave in going to this place where she didn't know anybody and went into this dangerous place to show love to these people who'd been forgotten by society.

Worldwide mission might also include translating and providing Bibles.

The Bible is one of the most translated books of all time.

It's been translated into 698 languages and the New Testament has been translated into a further 1,548 languages and Bible is a huge part of mission.

There are examples of Bibles being smuggled into countries where Christianity has been banned, so for example brother Andrew was famous for smuggling Bibles into the Soviet union and many missionaries risk their very lives to spread Christianity and to tell people about Jesus.

And starting churches is also going to be part of mission, I feel like I've gotten away from that a little bit after talking about the specific examples of missionaries but I think what I'm trying to get across to you is that for many Christians, this is an incredibly important thing and they're willing to give up the comfort of their lives in their country where they were born in and where they're living and where their friends and families are to actually sometimes go to really dangerous situations and to sacrifice a lot because they believe they've got this calling on their lives to tell people about Christianity.

So now I've given you probably too much information, I'm going to give you a little bit of time to pause and answer some questions.

So the last thing we're going to be looking at is, the Worldwide Anglican Communion and this is focused a little bit more on church links around the world and worldwide community.

So you if you've taken part in some of the previous lessons I've done, you might have noticed that I've used the word Anglican and Church of England a bit interchangeably.

Now there's a slight difference, not a huge one but it links to this.

So the Church of England obviously is the Church of England church that was born in England out of the reformation and that fits under the umbrella of Anglican churches and Anglican churches are those churches that came out of the Church of England at the time of the reformation but that went all over the world.

So in some cases they're known by slightly different names like Epicostal churches, I'm saying that correctly and what we have is links between all of these different churches in different countries that have come out of the Church of England and this is called the Worldwide Anglican Communion, where Communion here is linked to the idea of community rather than taking the bread and wine, although there is a strong link there because Christians believe taking the bread of wine, bread and wine makes church members one body, brings them close to one another.

So many Christians think it's really, really important to maintain these relationships and friendships with Christians in other countries because they would see themselves as brothers and sisters in Christ and they'll build relationships in several different ways.

For example many churches in the UK will have a partnership with another Anglican church in another country.

So for example a church in the UK might have a link to a church in Tanzania and they will support each other through prayer, through visits and building relationships and getting to know each other and also maybe financially, if that was necessary or if one of those churches went through a crisis that like a natural disaster or something like that, then they would help and support and pray for one another and this is one way in which there can be a worldwide community and one way in which Christians from very different countries who have very different experiences can learn from one another and grow to understand one another better and just have a sense of community, through these relationships one thing that the Worldwide Anglican Communion does is works to combat issues such as gender inequality, justice issues and to help bring reconciliation where there has been conflict and this is one of those reasons why these worldwide relationships are so helpful because people can give each other support when there is conflict, when there is inequality and when there's justice, injustice, we're not worried about justice, we want there to be justice, they worry when there's injustice.

Anyway before I ramble on for too long, you're going to pause for a minute, answer some questions on Worldwide Anglican Communion.

Before we finish this lesson, let's do some quick-fire questions to see what you have learned.

So I think we've gone through quite a lot of information actually.

So what is the worldwide community of believers that came out of the Church of England? One, two, three, the Worldwide Anglican Communion.

What is spreading the Christian gospel by public preaching or personal witness? Evangelism, what is the word for someone who has decided to become committed to a religion and change his or her religious faith? A convert.

What is the word for the vocation or calling of a religious organisation or individual to go out into the world and spread their faith? Missionary, what is not a way Christians might evangelise? Worship privately, so Christians might worship privately in that they might pray for people they want to evangelise to and things like that but it's not an act of evangelism to pray by yourself.

So thank you for all of your hard work in this lesson, I hope you've learned lots about Church Growth around the world and just got a bigger picture of why Christians might want to tell other people about their faith and what the church looks like internationally.

Now you can go and complete the exit quiz and if you're joining in the next lesson, I will see you next time.