Fresh back from an very enervating couple of weeks, I have my blogging face on again (do I hear a cry of "spare us!" - well if I do I'm ignoring it.)
My few days at Grapevine festival were really exciting - despite going to no meetings (I did hear a few on the radio) - I was working in the "Expo" (every Christian event has a different name for the exhibition - and it is often revealing - guess who calls it "marketplace"?). The buzz came from working alongside some very unexpected Christians (best sort) from "Betel of Britain".
One sentence description of Betel: "Church planting amongst the addicted and marginalised" (totally fails to do it justice). One word description: "Gospel". A good write up can be found on the NCVO website.
Normal conversation:
"WEC - what's that"
"We plant churches where there arent any"
"Oh"
"Yeah - in the Sahara, the Amazon Jungle, and in Nottingham - Heard of Betel?"
"(variable response often positive)"
"Well that's part of WEC, this guy here's from Betel - let him tell you a bit about it",
"(later followed by sound effect of innocent enquirers socks being blown off)"
Then from Lincolnshire to Suffolk & Norfolk for my holiday - including some excellent boating in less than excellent weather. And some reading. One book I couldn't put down was "Apostolic Networks in Britain: New Ways of Being Church" by William H Kay. Brilliant stuff - and fascinating - though Ch 19 (Mission) was a bit thin. The description of mission agencies and apostolic networks in overseas CP was sparse - and not representative of my own experience.
Then home and a quiet Sunday - time to make another stab at "Evangelism After Christendom" by Bryan Stone.
The eureka moment came as I started to reflect on working with Betel, and the two books. Betel neatly (for me anyway) sums up the key things I got from the two books (so far).
Betel is a CP project of WEC - and the UK planted churches relate apostolically into the Ground Level Network (under Stuart Bell) - the missing link in chapter 19 of Apostolic Networks in my opinion - and not the only example of WEC relating church plants into apostolic networks.
Betel is a brilliant story of the reign of God here and now - and it grows for that reason. I suspect as I read further on in Evangelism after Christendom there will be other points of contact.
