Hi everyone,
In this edition of CH Thursday, we want to invite you to this year’s Regional Gatherings, where we’ll explore the theme: “Jesus is Lord: A Community of Oneness” with the subtitle: “Reclaiming Our Confessing, Counter-Cultural & Contagious Identity.”
When we think about church revitalization, church health, or even themes like church growth and leadership development, our minds often turn to powerful movements in history—the early church, the underground church in China, or other remarkable revivals and discipleship movements worldwide. What was their “secret sauce”? What made them so dynamic and Spirit-filled?
Roland Allen, in The Compulsion of the Spirit, points us to a simple yet profound truth:
“The spontaneous expansion of the Church reduced to its elements is a very simple thing. It asks for no elaborate organization, no large finances, and no great numbers of paid missionaries. Its beginning may be the work of one man [or woman], and that man [or woman] neither learned in the things of this world, nor rich in the wealth of this world… What is necessary is faith. What is needed is the kind of faith which, uniting a man to Christ, sets him on fire.”
Alan Hirsch, in The Forgotten Ways, echoes this when he writes:
“All genuine Christian movements involve at their spiritual ground zero a living encounter with the one true God… a God who in the very moment of redeeming us claims us as his own through Jesus, our Saviour. If we fail to apprehend this spiritual center… we can never fully understand them or reinvoke the power that infused their lives and communities.”
In recent years, the Free Methodist Church in Canada (FMCiC) has faced difficult realities with existing churches, including the closure of several. But these challenges are not insurmountable. Throughout history, whenever the Church has been renewed, it has not been because of the latest strategy or trend—it has been a return to the heart of the gospel: the absolute Lordship of Jesus.
The apostle Paul captures this in 1 Corinthians 8:6 when dealing with controversies around the eating of food sacrificed to idols:
“Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”
I believe that the profound implications of the Lordship and Preeminence of Christ continue to be the foundation, the undercurrent, and the most important reality driving genuine Christian movements. It also continues to serve as a foundational key to genuine church health—not a new idea or model, but a rediscovery of the centrality of Jesus.
So, along with Bishop Linda and several leaders from the National office, let’s gather at this year’s Regional Gatherings to explore what it truly means to reclaim our Confessing, Counter-Cultural, and Contagious Identity under One Lord, Jesus Christ.
See you there!
For more information to register, etc: https://fmcic.ca/rg2025/
