I. Authors purpose

A. This book is about finding the 10 most influential churches in the world in the past 100 years and there imapct. Influnece pg 1

1. First I had to determine the 10 major influences on Christianity in the past 100 years.(pg 1)

2. Second, I had to discover the churches that best reflected these 10 influences, and then link their influence to worldwide Christianity pg 1

3.Third, I had to research the small details and the larger scope that explains the greatness of each church. Fourth, I had to write the facts of each church in a compelling story that would accurately tell why each is an influencer-church.

4. Then, finally, I had to write each story to actually convince you to go be an influencer-pastor.

B. To impact both Scholars and Pastors alike.

1. Scholars and researchers

a. to enable them to measure the influence

b. to continue to study churches and know to communicate this to Pastors to influnce their cultures.

2. Pastors

a. pastors and church workers to get a greater desire to build their church

b.want pastors to know that the great things God has done in the past can be done today.

C.I want them to realize they can influence the future.

II. Ten Influential Churches

A. The Apostolic Faith Mission in Los Angeles, California on Azure Street

1 . Started the Pentecostal movement in 1906 Pastor:William Joseph Seymour

2 . Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street, and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal. Colored people and a sprinkling of whites compose the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howling of the worshipers, who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve-racking attitude of prayer and supplication. They claim to have the “gift of tongues” and be able to understand the babel

Elmer L. Towns, Warren Bird, and Ed Stetzer, The Ten Most Influential Churches of the Past Century: And How They Impact You Today (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2015).

c.Innovation in worship

d. Azusa Street lives in interchurch organizations such as the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, Charisma Magazine, and thousands of other organizations that have the same ministry. It lives in educational institutions such as Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri; Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia; and scores of other schools in almost every nation of the world. Azusa Street continued in the television ministry of Jan and Paul Crouch, who carried on the message of William Seymour on TBN, the world’s largest television network. There are also thousands of other radio, television and Internet organizations that keep the message going.

B. Chinese Organic House Churches

1.Main Land China

2.Unofficially, there are more than 130 million believers in China. While there is an official Three-Self Church in China, with a registration of approximately 23.5 million members, almost 100 million people meet in house churches in homes, apartments, restaurants and other places. Observers suggest there were no underground churches in 1949 when the Communists took over China, yet today Christianity has exploded in this country of 1.5 billion people. China represents one-fifth of the world’s population, and its government is considered unfriendly to Christianity, if not hostile. The house church movement has grown without buildings, organized structure, programs, denominational support, or influence from outside nations.

3. Mao Zedong Mao did two things that laid the foundation for one of the greatest explosions of Christianity ever. Yes, Mao did throw the Western church out of China, but he also laid the foundation for the enormously powerful underground church of China. First, he organized the people into small training classes that met all across China, and these became the outward prototype of the house church movement. Second, Mao mandated a new simplification of the Chinese language and ordered that everyone use this language in these small classes. Therefore, all Chinese speak and read the same language, allowing all to attend a house church and learn the Word of God.

4. Another strength is that house churches are not joined. Just as one belongs to a family, people are accepted into a house church for who they are, not necessarily what they know or their status in life. Therefore, house churches become a powerful force that influences lives with a new purpose as people are accepted.

C. Ebenezer Baptist Church Atlanta, Georgia

1. Martin Luther King

2. Segregation ends

3. Differences between interracial and multi racial

4.When Christianity is acculturated into a new society, it should treat all persons equally in Christ Jesus, but that hasn’t happened. To paraphrase the explanation of Paul, “The things that I should do—break down racial barriers—I do not, and the evil which I should not—looking at people through segregated eyes—I do” (Rom. 7:19, author’s paraphrase). As a result, Sunday morning at 11:00 AM in the United States has been labeled “the most segregated hour of the week.”

D.The Yoido Full Gospel Church

1.The Yoido Full Gospel Church used lay ministry in home cells throughout the city of Seoul, South Korea, and became the largest church in history. David Yonggi Cho founded the church in 1958, and it rapidly grew to more than 3,000 in attendance. Cho had a heart attack while baptizing one Sunday morning after the church started holding three Sunday morning services in its 2,400-seat auditorium. Cho then realized he could not pastor or build the church on his own strength.

2. During his recuperation, Cho came up with a plan to use small cells, placed strategically in every part of the city, to reach and nurture people for Jesus Christ. Each cell would be an extension of his church where the Word of God was taught and people prayed, worshiped God and spoke in tongues as evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. By 1978, Cho reached 100,000 people, and the church continued to grow. By 2008, when Cho retired, the church had reached 760,000 in attendance, with 32,000 small groups and 50 satellite locations throughout the city and in other areas.Just as the physical body grows by the division of cells, so the local church body grows by the division of small cells.

E. First Baptist Church Dallas, Texas

1. Influenced by Arthur Flake

2. Built on a huge infro structure of Sunday school

3. W.A. Criswell was an early Sunday school innovator. He hired professionally trained Christian education directors for each age department and organized an aggressive visitation program to cover the city of Dallas. His goal was for them to visit every home until every person was reached.

Elmer L. Towns, Warren Bird, and Ed Stetzer, The Ten Most Influential Churches of the Past Century: And How They Impact You Today (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2015).

F. Scofield Memorial Church Dallas, Texas

1.Pastor: C.I. Scofield

2. Scofield spread his message of dispensationalism and premillennialism around the Christian world through the content in the Scofield Reference Bible. In addition, many enrolled in his highly successful Scofield Bible Correspondence Course. But it was not just the content of dispensationalism and premillennialism that initiated a revolutionary trend; it was also the innovative methodology of turning the Sunday pulpit into a teaching experience. This trend spread beyond “Bible churches” to influence Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Methodist, Evangelical Free and Baptist churches, to name a few denominations. Because statistics on the number of these churches were not gathered, or kept, no one knows how widespread was this trend. But church authorities recognized that something was happening in many pulpits in America

3. Preaching of Gods word

G. Willow Creek Community Church South Barrington, Illinois

1. Pastor : Bill Hybels

2. Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, is designed to give the unsaved person a safe environment where he or she can seek God and find salvation. It is the original church to use the method and term “seeker evangelism

3.Listening to Hybels preach is like listening to an executive in the Chicago group conducting a sales meeting, yet he is committed to the inerrancy of Scripture and the essentials of Christianity. His sermons are more like listening to a marketing specialist than a preacher. He communicates Scripture, but he doesn’t sound like a preacher. He doesn’t point a finger or pound a fist, nor does he thunder, “Thus saith the Lord!” Yet he preaches the Bible and speaks to hearts.

4 1. Churches are always asking for money

2. Churches ask people to stand up, speak up, and give up their name and address

3. Pastors preach down at people

4. Church is boring

5. People have to dress up to attend church

Hybels decided to address these barriers and construct a church service that would overcome them. First, instead of passing an offering plate, Hybels planned to place a box or plate in the foyer and have people leave money if they desired. Second, because most unchurched people thought church music was out of date, he decided to use contemporary music with a contemporary band and a contemporary praise group rather than the traditional church choir in robes. Third, rather than preaching what he considered a traditional “boring” sermon, Hybels decided to “answer the questions that people ask in the bars, or the questions they deal with on popular television afternoon talk shows.” So, he focused his sermons on their questions but gave answers from the Word of God.

Elmer L. Towns, Warren Bird, and Ed Stetzer, The Ten Most Influential Churches of the Past Century: And How They Impact You Today (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2015)

G. Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, California

1. A new church culture

2. Pastor Chuck Smith

3, Known as the Jesus People the hippies

4.Chuck Smith began a new form of preaching among the Calvary Chapel churches. He preferred expositional sermons to topical, devotional or evangelistic ones. Smith began at Genesis 1:1 and preached verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and book by book from the beginning to the end of the Bible.

5. The Calvary Chapel movement does not employ one of the three traditional forms of ecclesiastical government; i.e., congregational (Baptist), representative (Presbyterian), or episcopal (Methodist). Rather, they use what is called a “Moses Model.” Under this system, God is the head of the people and, as Moses was God’s leader of the people, so the pastor of a Calvary Chapel is leader of the people. Moses also had a priesthood praying for the people and delivering God’s message, but he had 70 elders to support his leadership. The Calvary Chapel movement believes their pastors have a Moses-like leadership, and their board of elders supports that ministry.

I. Hillsong Church Sydney, Australia

1.Pastor Brian Houston

2.One of the most obvious trends to emerge in the last 100 years in the evangelical church service has been the sweeping change to praise-worship music during Sunday morning services. Traditionally, American churches have used an organ, piano and a robed choir for worship, and maybe included a vocal soloist. If groups were added, it was usually a trio or quartet. However, a praise-worship format has taken center stage in our churches, and with it has come worship teams that usually include vocals, electronic guitars, keyboards and drums. Not only is praise-worship music sung to a different pulsating rhythm, but there has also been an abundant cascade of new music written that has spread through churches in America and abroad.

3. Hillsong Church is a world-class Pentecostal megachurch located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, with more than 35,000 worshipers in attendance each week. It is part of the Australian Christian Churches movement (ACC). Brian and Bobbi Houston began the church in 1983 as Hills Christian Life Center in Baulkham Hill, which they later merged with Sydney Christian Life Center to become Hillsong.

J. Thomas Road Baptist Church Lynchburg, Virginia

1.Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, used media and marketing to build one of the largest church congregations in America and the largest Christian university in the world. In the exploding era of advertising, this church first communicated its message to Lynchburg, Virginia, and then to the entire United States. Jerry Falwell planted the church in 1956 and caused it to grow with his innovative concept of saturation evangelism, “reaching every available person, at every available time, with every available means [methods]

2. Falwell organized a Sunday school strategy yet based his outreach on a heavy use of advertising to saturate his community and eventually market the gospel of Jesus Christ to all America. He built the ninth largest church in America. The dynamics of the aggressive outreach was imprinted on Liberty University, begun by Falwell in the summer of 1971. Just as the church became one of the largest in the nation, his university has now become one of the largest in the world.

3. Pioneered the use of media

III. Other churches and trends

A. Positive thinking and financial progress

B. Church planting strategies

C. Multi site

IV. How each church influenced churches today.

V. Strength and weakness of the book

A. Strength in depth disscussion on types of ministries in each

B. Ability to show the strength in weakness of the church

C. Strength in the ability to understand the pastors of each church

D. Not enough detail on how they effect church today

E. To much time spent on some of the pastor

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