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The Big Conversation – Christadelphians in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom people may find several villages and towns where there reside Christadelphians, a body of Christians who try to base their beliefs and practices wholly on the Bible, which they regard as God’s word. They try therefore to rid themselves of the various ideas and rituals which have attached themselves to Christendom over the last 2,000 years and to return to the beliefs and practices of the first century apostles.

Being a group of people who want to follow the Nazarene Jew Jeshua, who did not want to do his own will, but always did the Will of his heavenly Father, they as the man born in Bethlehem, are living in this world but not wanting to be of this world following human traditions and human dogmas. That does not make them so popular, because people may look strange at those people who do not want to celebrate Halloween and other pagan festivities.

Because the Christadelphians are a community without the trappings of elaborate buildings, priests or icons, their institutions and fellowship-rooms not be seen straight away. The outer sights are not important for the Christadelphians who prefer to give honour to God and show a deep respect for God’s word and love to have a strong sense of family and fellowship.

On the above map you can see some of the more than 300 ecclesiae in Great Britain and Ireland. They were taken under the loop by brother Jon Downes who on the 10th of October asked

What is happening?

For him the present size & growth or non-growth of UK ecclesiae show there isn’t a, ‘No Change’ option

It’s not that we aren’t trying!

he said to about 350 Christadelphians present at Dudley college.

In this world of figures, comparisons and evaluations it is all about numbers in graphics which have to show an up-going trend and reach high peaks. this for sure can not be said about our very small community. Lots of people may think when it is not big it has no value and can not be good. But people should look at the intrinsic value and to see what a group or church is believing, following up, and how they keep to what they preach. It is true that minorities do not exert influence, and that they should have to contend on the culture or the systems around it.

Christadelphians do not fall in the temptation to pretend to be a majority, even if one is not. They do know they are just a little grain of sand in our religious world. But that does not mean that many more little grains can be put together with water and with clay form a nice vase. Though sometimes it can look like we are coming to sit more in an urn. Especially in Belgium we are in distress and can do with some support form abroad. Though looking at other countries can show us also how important it is to make more work of the announcing or making known of our society.

All over the world people may not forget that the church of Jesus Christ is never a majority, in any fallen culture, even if we happen to outnumber every[one] else around us. They should come to see that the real church of God is the church of Christ were people are willing to follow Jesus his words, his teachings, but also his manners and his aspirations. It is a place where people are willing to share the agapè love of Christ, who was even willing to give his life for others, even for those who turned against him. Would we do that?

Where Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered very seriously out of the right way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result, and got many sorts of denominations which have lots of rituals people may like very much but which are not according to God’s Law. And that part is the most important in our building community. We should all try to live according God’s Law and love His Words more than the words of man.

Unfortunately, lots of Christians do not closely follow the Bible today and prefer to join churches in which they can keep up their human traditions. They have changed things to how they want them to be.
Since the times of Jesus, there have been small groups of people who believed what the Bible said. Many of these people were cruelly treated in times past as a result of their beliefs. Such believers united in the North of America when in 1864 broke out the Civil War. Dr. Thomas thought up the word “Christadelphian“, a name combining the name “Christ” with the Greek word “adelphi” meaning “brother”. So the name “Christadelphian” means “brothers and sisters in Christ“.

Christadelphians are grateful to John Thomas for his efforts in searching out the message of the Bible. John Thomas was not a prophet or someone special. He read the Bible, just as we try to do. Christadelphians follow Jesus Christ, not John Thomas. Not following just one man or just one human organisation gives that we may have different ideas about certain things, but that doe snot mean we would not have union with each other, though we must agree that there are certain Christadelphian groups who shamefully do not want to have contact with other Christadelphians. According to the Belgian Free Christadelphians this is also part of the reasons why it is so difficult to show the world a bigger group of religious people under one name: Christadelphians.

Being joined together by our common faith in the Bible, and the way we live, we all should try to meet each other and have contact with each other as loving siblings. All being brothers and sisters in Christ. Though each “ecclesia” has to look after its own affairs, and choose members who determine arrangements and organise activities on behalf of their members they should feel that unity with Christ with other Christadelphians world wide and show the outside world that Jesus Christ is their head of each ecclesia.

Living in this world we do agree that “It’s not about the numbers” … …but the “numbers tell a story”. And those numbers in west Europe may be alarming. Therefore there was the call to come thereto in the UK to discuss that matter of dwindling ciphers.

Like any other western capitalist country in the UK Bible ownership and Bible knowledge has slumped, some english people also do find it a form of indoctrination when parents in their home pray and talk about God in front of their children of that child.

Jon Downes presented the anxious members a snapshot of our society in the UK.

and showed those present how a typical ecclesia looks like.

When we look at the adult baptisms in our community from related people (3,5) and from non related
(1.0) plus counting the (0.5) refellowshipping members, comparing them with the average of 10 people falling asleep and 2 people leaving the fellowship, we might say that such numbers bring the graphic line downwards.

What might happen to the Christadelphian community in the United Kingdom when they do not something to change the coarse.

happened.

Therefore lets look at the United Kingdom as an example.

what might this give to that community, where we find, like everywhere in the world members becoming older and dying, whilst the world is getting less interested in God and commandment.

In case we can bring the Gospel of the Good News to many more ears, we should be able by a co-effort of preaching to increase the interest in God again and get again some people interested in joining a community of lovers of Christ and lovers of God.

We must see that

The lost are our hope

and that there is good reason to try to reach the lost. We as brothers and sisters in Christ should love the people in the world so much that we will be offering some of our spare time for preaching work.

We are the hope of the lost

Luckily it is not all ad or sad news.

Good News!

tells brother Downes is that we can look at

120 baptisms a year (4 average sized ecclesias)
In the last 40 years, 39 new ecclesias. (Although 96 have closed & some were renamed).
In the last 15 years,1/4 of all baptisms from non Christadelphian backgrounds were by just 16 ecclesias. (Although 1/3 didn’t baptise any)
While many ecclesias are shrinking many are growing.
Numbers in Africa are growing!
Bible Learning Centres & Learning English are having a big impact

Instead of going for Plan A is it not better that we go for Plan B?

Plan A discussed at the Big Conversation of 2015 October 10 at Dudley college, UK

Current UK Christadelphian population of 8-8500 is based on 223 2015 ALS Diary returns on households & 178 2015 CCH survey returns. 10 Ecclesias had neither return and were estimated on previous diary returns.
1985 to 2015 data based on records kept from the back of the Christadelphian, clearly subject to some error, gaps and misreporting. The last 12 months of Magazine entries were analysed separately and yielded results consistent with the records obtained.
Net loss of 120 per annum and the 10, 5, 1 ratio derived from average of last 10 years data. Approx 240 out and 120 in. These do not include brothers and sisters movement in and out of the UK.
Forecast from 2015 based on a linear continuation which could easily be a) more dramatic because of rapid closure of small ecclesias, ageing population, reduced home pool to draw from, fewer people to witness, higher rates of leaving the community b) less dramatic as in a smaller community there are fewer people falling asleep each year.

How to cope with small churches getting growing ecclesiae

One of the deceases of this time is that too many people want to enjoy their own little cocoon and not getting out of their comfort zone to share life with the spiritually needy. Those who call themselves Christian may not forget that this means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and demands also doing what he required from his followers. Jesus asked us to go out in the world to proclaim the Kingdom of God. We are to make every effort to bring hope and healing in Jesus name to those in need.

We are to see that the tangible goodness of God flows into every nook and cranny of our communities – especially in those places where darkness seems to prevail. {Walking With Intentionality}

Preceding articles:

Religious Practices around the world

Manifests for believers #3 Catholic versus Protestant

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

The Ecclesia in the churchsystem

Reasons to come together

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Reasons why you may not miss the opportunity to go to a Small Church

Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

Feeling-good, search for happiness and the church

Members of the ecclesia uniting and seeking God’s help in tribulation

Why we do not have our worship-services in a church building

Belgian Christadelphians 2013 & 2014 in review

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

Additional reading:

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Other articles of interest:

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Engaging the culture without losing the gospel

As the culture changes all around us, it is no longer possible to pretend that Christians are a Moral Majority. For the Christadelphian community it was already very clear that Christendom had gone astray and that not many people knew the essence of the Divine Creator and His Plan.

Guestspeaker’s 1° article 2014 March 26 on “From Guestwriters”

In certain parts of the world we may find mega churches, like in the United states of America. But what we also see in those countries is that there is a very strange discrepancy between the way of life and the way presented in the Holy Scriptures. In the talks about pro-life issues and arguments at our website From Guestwriters this is made clear in the different reactions where some readers point out at the huge amount of abortions been done every day. Such points of discussion as the abortion debate show how values and attitudes have changed over the years.

Those people who call themselves Christian either are not so much interested in having an active faith or going to worship services or when they want to go to worship services they expect them to be relaxing and entertaining. For many the entertaining factor receives priority. This makes it understandable why certain churches in the States get full house whilst the churches really interested in and giving eye and ear for the Word of God do not have so many people coming to their service.

In general people are very much influenced by the media and television and show business are not the instruments who, today, bring the people to God. the television church services are full of show elements and short quoting form a few words taken from Scripture but also taken out of context. No time is given to sincerely listen and to sincerely study a full paragraph of a Bible chapter.

Our very fast changing world can do with a sort of new reformation. What’s needed now, in shifting times, is neither a doubling-down on the status quo nor a pullback into isolation. Instead, we need a church that speaks to social and political issues with a bigger vision in mind: that of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Christianity seems increasingly strange, and even subversive, to our culture, we have the opportunity to reclaim the freakishness of the gospel, which is what gives it its power in the first place.

We should seek the kingdom of God, before everything else and we should love to bring others to the entrance gate of that Kingdom. We connect that kingdom agenda to the culture around us, both by speaking it to the world and by showing it in our churches. As we do so, we remember our mission to oppose demons, not to demonise opponents. As we advocate for human dignity, for religious liberty, for family stability, let’s do so as those with a prophetic word that turns everything upside down.

Today more than ever those who feel the connection with the Nazarene master teacher Jeshua should connect with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and show their love for each other. Not staying in their small local cocoon, but also connecting to other brethren and sisters from all over. They should be welcoming any visiting brother or sister and when they receive mail from some brother or sister form somewhere in the world they should take time to answer that mail and to show their love to that correspondent by not ignoring him or her but letting those writers be feeling recognised as brothers and sisters of the body of Christ.

Though that Body of Christ may be composed of different nationalities, different cultured races, they should all show that they have union in that body of Christ by the unity of spirit in Christ. Unity should be shown by their willingness to communicate with each other and to be respectful for the different characters and different opinions. Unity does not have to mean that all have to say exactly the same or have to use the same bible translation, read the same books, may not have different ways of civilian life, may not have different tastes. Those differences make the world coloured and not boring. We should be happy with such diversity and the differences between ecclesiae may provide different pastures for bible believers to find themselves at ease in one or the other ecclesia.

Jubilant Joel Osteen Juice Megachurch

In Jesus time the apostles were also of different character and different opinion or used not always the same words. We should neither. In our way of reaching people we should recognise that they should not know Christadelphianisms and may have a religious vocabulary closer to the denomination to which they belonged originally or still belong. By preaching to them we do have to be able to use different words and different Bible translations so that they can come to understand what the Word of God is saying. We are just some intermediaries who want to show them that Jesus is our mediator and the Way to God.

The Lord’s Hall a Christian megachurch in the Philippines that is managed by the Day by Day Christian Ministries DBD since 2005 situated and leased from the CCP, due to numerous concerns at the time though the church is known as DBD’s flagship church, and is known for being a venue for massive Christian gatherings by Rev Gamaliel Alba and Sun Cruises, CCP Complex, Roxas Blvd.

Those we want to attract to the Word of God we have to convince that it are not the megachurches or the churches with the most members that are really following the Word of God and would not have false teachings or wrong doctrines. Lots of people may also put their hope in such megachurches because they expect megachurch pastors to have all the answers and that those churches could grow so much because those pastors are personally successful as well as leaders of successful churches because they can offer the best for man.

At conferences such preachers also may attract a lot of attention because many think they have the solution for today’s problem, a diminishing church.

and so we come to see what crumbs of wisdom they might cast our way that will help us and our small churches be”successful” like they are.

writes pastor Jim in his article “Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?“. Like many of us in the Christadelphian community is has seen Abraham and should have gathered enough experience to have some sound opinion. He believes that such leaders of mega churches may deliver good sermons. For sure they probably are good administrators, very good players with words or good speakers having a good deal of charisma. He correctly points out

Their churches offer tons of programs for children and adults—from support groups for people with various problems to children’s ministry and everything in between. But are a variety of programs offered to attract large numbers of people to their church a measure of success as Jesus defined success? I’m not so sure of this… {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

He is leading a Home Fellowship Group in a Bible Study of the Gospel of Mark. At their last session they discussed this question of “supersize” as Jesus seemed to see it.

He accepted the large crowds he attracted—some so large along the Sea of Galilee that he acquired a boat to get in so he would not be crushed by the crowds seeking to touch him and be healed. But Jesus tends to see those crowds as no reason for gratification. He feels that many of them are there for the wrong reason, to be healed of their infirmities and to see the miraculous. Jesus heals them and has compassion for them, but proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God is his main mission. That proclamation is his main mission because it has the power to transform people’s lives, and sometimes people who are only seeking physical healing and entertainment can get in the way of that proclamation. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

In those days Jesus also had to get listening ears. In that age people were much more willing to listen and to go into discussion about religious and spiritual matters. There was much more interest in God than today. But Jesus knew that from the many that came around to hear him speak, there were also many who came out of curiosity or wanted to see miracles or hear controversial talks.

Jesus saw the crowds to whom he sought to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God in the same way as a sower.

Only a small portion of the crowd would actually be transformed by the good news of the Kingdom of God. The rest would let other things choke it out of their lives and die unchanged. Thus I feel Jesus was not impressed with numbers but with changes in the lives of people who heard him. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?} {Please do read also Mark 4: 1-9}

Too often people think it our the numbers that make it to be good. Perhaps the numbers show the popularity, but for sure they do not always show the integrity or the good value of a product or group.

The pastor thinks the answer to his and our question “Is Bigger Better?” as it pertains to churches is this:

it is not size alone that leads to success of any church, large or small, but it is its ability to follow Jesus and in doing so transform the lives of those who are a part of that church and those who that church reaches out to. The measure of a church’s success is the number of lives that have been changed and transformed due to its proclamation both in word and in deed of the Kingdom of God. The successful church is the “good soil” in the Parable of the Sower” that brings forth transformation of people’s lives and nurtures their growth in relationship to God and God’s Kingdom.
A successful church, regardless of the names on the roster, changes people into devoted followers of Jesus and his teachings as they live their lives each day. Small churches can be just as successful as large churches in changing people’s lives as they live the great commandment to love God and neighbor as yourself.” Sometimes because small churches are more personal, they are able to live this better than those with thousands on their membership roster. {Is “Bigger Better” in Churches?}

The Christadelphians are a very tiny community. We only can hope that all people in this small community bear their hearts on the right place. God knows the heart and it is for him that we should work and go out in the world getting people to know the Master works of God.

We may not forget that by being such a small community we have the advantage that we can get together in small cosy groups and feel much more the unity of the small group than in such mega churches were everybody can sit next to each other without knowing the other. When sitting in a stadium, arena or in such a huge church were there are hundreds or thousands of people it can well be that the individual may be drowning in the numbers.

We should be ready to throw out the lifeline and to pull those people who are looking for the Truth, to get to our meetings and let them feel that we are real followers of Jesus, keeping to his teachings and not adoring human doctrines, but keeping to Biblical doctrines, studying the infallible Word of God daily.

Preceding:

Personal thoughts, communication, establishing ecclesia and guest writings

The Big Conversation

The Big Conversation follow up

Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism

The Right One to follow and to worship

Wanting to live in Christ’s city

A participation in the body of Christ

Positive Preaching Day 2015

Doubting and going astray

Ecclesia to exist, grow and communities to have people communicating with each other

Additional reading: