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What will the church of Jesus look like in 2040? 30 theologians, artists and visionaries reflected on this question. Their thoughts were captured into a new book called: “The church is dead, long live the King.” Marc van der Woude thinks the church in 2040 will be more simple, flexible and multi-coloured. Because of the globalisation, postmodernity, the rise of the creative class and the development of internet, there will be a shift from regular church to more new expressions of church like simple churches, 24-7 prayer rooms and many more.

The Simple Church movement is growing rapidly. Lot’s of people are starting simple churches among campuses, houses, cafes and bars. Many have written good books to help understand simple church. But what are the best books? The Simple Church Europe team tried to identify the nine best simple church books that are out there. All these resources are great to help you catch the simple church vision and plant simple churches in the harvest!

The global house church movement has many faces. Wolfgang Simson observes eight streams of house church:

1. Regular house churches: groups of Christians that meet in homes. We see both single groups and organized networks, some of which have websites and are resourced by leadership/ministry teams.

2. Off-the-grid house churches with ‘Out of Church Christians’ that intentionally do not want to be known, listed or be on anybody’s radar. We find out about them by accident or through opinion polling or sampling, the kind of research George Barna does.

200 Christian leaders from 40 nations met in New Delhi, India, Nov 11-14th, 2009, to explore the scope and significance of house-based discipling communities and emerging house church movements worldwide. Known best from the history of the underground house churches in China that report by now an estimated 100 million members, a similar phenomenon has emerged in the last 15 years in numerous nations outside of China.