Northern Africa: his arm grew! 

"A group of young Christians were sitting together late in the evening in a church in Northern Africa," reports Operation Mobilisation's Markus Flückiger. "A. was there, a man whose left arm was deformed since birth, and shorter than his right arm. His friend M. said 'I want to see a miracle!', laid his hands on A's arm and prayed to Jesus. As he prayed, A's arm grew until it was the same length as his right arm. Rejoicing, A. jumped and danced around, clapping - which he had previously been unable to do." 

Source: OM News, Postfach, 8304 Wallisellen, Switzerland; e-mail info@ch.om.org 

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India: hundreds of new churches in Jammu and Kashmir 

The Northern Indian state Jammu and Kashmir, previously mostly unreached, consists of 14 districts, 6,000 villages and has some 18 million inhabitants. "In the past five years, thousands of people have decided to follow Jesus Christ, and hundreds of new house churches have formed," reports Agape Voice. Whole families regularly come to faith, as in Badaol, a village in Doda district. "Our church-planting team encountered a whole family lying sick in bed. None of them was able to fetch the doctor. Our team explained the Gospel, and prayed for them. Jesus healed every single person, and the entire family decided joyfully not only to follow Jesus, but also to open their house for regular church meetings." 

Already 40,000-60,000 house churches in India 

Northern India is also home to one of the fastest-growing revival movements on Earth. Last year alone, 200 new house churches were planted in Hariyana, which was long considered to be one of India's least evangelised States. According to an April 2004 report, the number of house churches in Northern India has grown to around 30,000 in the past 7 years, with an additional 28,000 regular home prayer meetings. Experience shows that these rapidly become house churches. Church growth adviser Joshua Pillai reports that there are a further 10,000 house churches in Southern India. 

Source: Agape Voice, Joshua Pillai and others. 

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Evangeliformed Baptolic with a PenteBrethren background 

Marc van der Woude, Dutch publisher of 'Joel News', writes his opinion of Christian labels on his website: "Sometimes people try to label me and categorize me in one of their 'church flavour boxes'. When this happens, I tend to give them a hard time. The question "To what church do you belong?" is an easy one. I use to reply: "To the only church there is - the church of Jesus Christ, as expressed 'locally' in my city and social network". When I'm in a funny mood, I might answer that I'm an Evangeliformed Baptolic with a PenteBrethren background. And when I really want to give them a bad day, I'd say I'm unchurched and that I don't show up anymore in George Barna's statistics. ;-)" 

Categorisation? No thanks. 

A growing number of Christians are uncomfortable with being categorised. Labelling is often an attempt at control and imperialism, trying to keep people 'in our camp' and hide our inability to deal with other-minded people. Some denominations, deliberately or not, practically divide the Body of Christ, thus weakening it. We sit penned up in our church structures, doctrines and church buildings. At conferences, student gatherings, inter-church prayer groups, citywide Celebrations and evangelistic outreaches, we suddenly discover that we are one in Christ, and enjoy the unity - but the following Sunday, we sit in our own church castles again. Did Jesus foresee this in his prayer for unity in John 17, or Paul, when warning about denominationalism in 1 Cor. 1:9-13 and 1. Cor. 3, pointing out that denominational behaviour is basically fleshly, based on a foundation other than Christ, and hence anti-Christian? 

I believe that I am not the only one to find church and denominational borders simply an irritation. We say "but we are one in the Spirit," but hold on to our favourite theologies and church structures which practically imprison people. I believe that the time has come to live something new - or is it something really very old? There is only one Church of Jesus Christ, and we do not have the right to define church membership, who is 'in' and who is 'out'. That is a form of spiritual racism. Paul says that the only thing which counts is that we are 'in Christ'. To be honest, many denominational labels don't have very much substance left. We've all realised in the meantime that "Full Gospel" churches have a rather superficial theology and are anything but powerhouses of the Holy Spirit. We all know that the Reformed Church no longer really stands for reformation and change, and that the Baptists do much more than just baptise. True followers of Christ need no label, and if anyone does feel the need to label us, then it should only be people who see us and are astonished, because they see Christ in us. And that is exactly where the label 'Christians' came from in the first place. 

Source: Marc van der Woude, 
http://marcsmessages.typepad.com/mm/2004/04/no_labels_pleas.html 

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