What if? Global Gates

Here's a cool video from the folks at "Global Gates" and a great diaspora worker and thinker named Chris Clayman.  Check it out, it raises some great questions.  My favorite is "What if churches were started by Skype?" That intrigues me especially alongside another "What if movements were started using networks that already exist?":

What If? from Global Gates on Vimeo.

Church Planting: Reaching the Lost or Gathering the Saved?

Interesting article in CT about urban church planting, especially mega-churches. Take a look . . .

Urban Planters: Building off Believers? | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction: "David Fitch, associate professor of evangelical theology at Northern Baptist Seminary, believes churches like Tim Keller's megachurch, Redeemer Presbyterian, aren't reaching new converts, for the most part. Instead, they are attracting people who are already Christians who have moved to big cities like New York. They are bringing in the pre-churched—Christians looking for a new spiritual home.

'The attractional dynamics that often typif[y] these kinds of church planting depend largely on existing Christianized populations,' he wrote in a blog post in January."

World's Largest City to be "Created" in China

Note the link and excerpt below.  Big challenge and opportunity for mission is presenting itself in the formation of the new largest city in the world -- a city of more than 40 million people!

World's Largest City | OMF: "Texans may brag about having many of the largest things, but China is now definitely in the running for having the largest population; and soon, the largest economy and the largest Christian church! Now it seems it may soon have the largest city in the world, twice the size of Wales.
China is planning to create the world’s biggest mega-city by merging nine existing cities to form a gigantic metropolis with 42 million people. Nine cities in the Pearl River delta, which account for a tenth of the Chinese economy, will be merged to create a 16,000 square mile urban area 26 times greater than Greater London.
The cities to be included are: Guangzhou (Canton), Shenzhen, Foshan, Zhaoqing, Dongguan, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Zhongshan and Zhuhai. It is often claimed that Chongqing, with a total population of more than 30 million, is China’s largest city. However, close examination reveals that most of this “mega-city” is in fact taken up with countryside and the urban area accounts for only some 6 million. In contrast, there is precious little countryside separating the nine cities in Guangdong, as any train traveler from Hong Kong to Guangzhou can easily witness for himself as he gazes at the endless urban sprawl."