Blog
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What is Revival? Introduction
Answers to this question are essential if you want to understand the rationale for the Church Growth Modelling project. The first in this series of five articles is based on Acts 1:1-12.
Read about the Breadalbane Revival in Perthshire, Scotland in 1800
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Church Growth Modelling – The State of the Art
Background I started the church growth modelling project back in 1995 following a chance comment concerning the then-popular “Toronto Blessing”. A friend of mine noted the phenomenon’s growth and said: “It is spreading like a disease!” That got me wondering, […]
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Enthusiasts – Quantity or Quality?
In the church growth models, “enthusiast” is the name given to the Christian believer who is responsible for bringing unbelievers to faith. Which is better for church growth, more enthusiasts or better enthusiasts?
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Billy Graham, Church Growth and Revival
Given the news yesterday of the death of the great evangelist Billy Graham, I felt I needed to blog a few words in honour of a man who God used to do so much for the cause of the Gospel in the 20thcentury.
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John Wesley Under the Contemporary Spotlight
Recently I had a lengthy comment on my blog post about John Wesley in Wales. The comments raised so many issues that I felt it needed a long reply. So I have made the reply into a blog!
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John Wesley, Enthusiasm and Today’s Church
Recently, while on holiday in Pembrokeshire, I passed a plaque in the town of Haverfordwest dedicated to the memory of the pioneer Methodist evangelist, John Wesley.
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Church Growth Limited by Evangelistic Purity
The fourth in the series on limits to church growth. The relationship between a mixed church and the effectiveness of evangelism.
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Church Growth and the Perils of Second-Order Feedback
Feedback is the process where an action has an effect, which in turn changes the original action. Either it magnifies it – reinforcing feedback; or it corrects it – balancing feedback
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Feedback and Church Growth
Feedback in a system that changes over time is the mechanism where an action results in an effect, which then, in turn, influences the original action. The action literally “feeds back” on itself. Reinforcing Feedback For example, if a population […]
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A Prophecy of Church Decline
At the beginning of the New Year, David Robertson, a well-known Free Church of Scotland minister and blogger, gave ten prophecies for 2017 [1]. One of these particularly caught my eye: The Church of Scotland and the Church of England in […]
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Infectious Church Growth
An “Agent-Based” View The central hypothesis I use to model church growth is that religious belief spreads like an infectious disease. This principle is built into the limited enthusiasm model of church growth. The church contains enthusiasts who pass their […]
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The Rise and Decline of British Methodism
Application of the Institutional Model of Church Growth Some while ago, I introduced a model of church membership that explain the rapid growth of a church, only to be followed by decline as institutionalism set in [1]. The primary effect […]
In 1904-5, Moriah chapel was the centre of massive church growth in Wales through a God-sent revival.