Joel Comiskey Group

Joel Comiskey Group
Resourcing the Worldwide Cell Church
November 2008 Newsletter

JCG NEWS

Joel's new book, Planting Churches that Reproduce is now available for purchase. Read the introduction, first chapter, table of contents, and what others are saying about the book. And it's on sale for $12.95!

Joel will be speaking on November 15 in Ontario, CA at the Christian distributor called Pan de Vida. Contact person: Yessenia Torres at yessenia@pandevida.com

On February 25, 2009, we at JCG are offering a day for more experienced pastors in cell ministry to connect with Joel Comiskey and Mario Vega. We're labeling it "A Day with Joel Comiskey and Mario Vega: A Conversation about Advanced Cell Leadership." Sign up now.

Sign up now to get the JCG blog sent daily to your email inbox for free. Go to the blog site and place your email address in the box on the upper right side

Click here to see a video of Joel talking about the Cell Church in North America on the Harvest Show.

Find out more about how you can invest in (donate to) JCG, a non-profit ministry.

No Glory, No Control, No Empires

One criticism of the cell church movement is the subtle tendency to over-promote big cell churches, like Yoido Full Gospel Church. Many pastors of smaller churches never feel like they've arrived because they don't have large churches. Some have labeled this phenomenon "Yonggi Cho envy" (trying to compete with Cho's church).

The fact is that most churches-including cell churches-are small. It's also important to remember that church planting is healthier than growing one church larger and larger.

Last week, I had the privilege of speaking in Hong Kong at the CCMN cell church networking conference. My theme was planting reproducible churches. I talked about the need to simplify and connect cell churches and house church networks into a united movement of "simple" churches that multiply. We need both large cell churches (e.g., Elim) and small, simple cell churches (e.g, the majority of churches).

At this CCMN conference, there were over 300 leaders from many, many nations. I talked with pastors from India, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Australia, U.S., Brazil, South America, and Russia (and I'm sure I forgot a few!). The theme of the conference was multiplication, and we wanted to make it clear that both large and small churches need to continue to multiply members, leaders, and churches. And the ultimate goal is to send missionary church planters around the world.

Mario Vega, lead pastor of the Elim Church, was present for the entire CCMN gathering and spoke about God's mighty move in El Salvador and around the world. Rodney, a pastor of a small cell church plant in Texas, just happened to be one of Mario's roommates (everyone stayed in dorm style "bunk-bed" rooms). Rodney commented on how amazing it was to share a room with the lead pastor of the second largest church in the world!

It was great to see large church pastors and small church pastors share the vision of reaching a lost world for Jesus. And that's the overall theme of CCMN: no glory, no control, and no empires!

Joel Comiskey