Christian City Churches
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Christian City Church International (commonly Christian City Churches) is an evangelical, pentecostal church movement founded by Pastors Phil Pringle and Chris Pringle. The first church was established at Dee Why on the Northern Beaches of Sydney Australia which has since relocated to Oxford Falls.
As of 2008 there over 200 churches situated throughout Australia, New Zealand, North America, Africa, Asia and the European community. Dr Phil Pringle is the founder and President of Christian City Church International (C3I), and the Senior Minister of the movement's largest congregation - Christian City Church, Oxford Falls, Sydney, Australia.
C3I holds an international conference every few years, gathering pastors from CCC churches worldwide. Other events include conferences for the European, Asian, North American, African and Australasian arms of the movement.
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[edit] History of the CCC Movement
Phil & Chris Pringle arrived in Sydney, from New Zealand, in 1980 with a vision to begin a pentecostal church.[1] Christian Centre, Northside, as it was originally known, began with 12 people on the Northern beaches of Sydney. This church, now known as CCC Oxford Falls, has grown to become one of the largest congregations in Australia (currently has a membership of 6,000+) and has been responsible for the planting of many churches around the world.
Globally, the C3I movement now consists of over 200 churches spread throughout Australia, New Zealand, North America, Asia and Europe.
[edit] Christian City Church, Oxford Falls
Each week Christian City Church, Oxford Falls is attended by in excess of 4000 people, making it one of the larger churches in Australia.
CCC Oxford Falls is involved in a large number of local and national ministry projects including 3 on site colleges offering ministry training. These colleges include School of Creative Arts (SCA) and School of Ministry (SOM).
Christian City Church Oxford Falls is involved in planting a number of new churches every year, it has its own TV production studio, gallery, full time coffee shop and book store.
Christian City Church Oxford Falls also runs several Colleges; School of Ministry, School of Creative Arts and School of Pastoral Care & Counselling. Christian City Church Oxford Falls has a large involvement in Oxford Falls Grammar School.
[edit] Growth of the CCC Movement
The National Church Life Survey (NCLS) - the nationwide 'census' of Australian church attendance, for the year 2004 found Christian City Churches contradicting an overall downward trend (To the effect of 7%) in church attendance across Australia, finding the CCC churches grew on average by 42% to a total membership of 11,400 (Within Australia).
Growth of Christian City Churches and similar movements is attributed to their upbeat, modern and relevant approach to religious services as well as their wealth due to the running of the establishment more like a business than a traditional non-profit religious organization.
In 2002 in the tri-annual Worldwide Conference held that year in Singapore, C3I revealed its plans to have over 1000 churches worldwide with an average attendance of 500 people throughout the movement. A goal to be attained by the year 2020 (aptly named the '2020 vision'). The average attendance is 270 people per week, this is in stark comparison to the worldwide average church attendance of all churches which at last report was 35.
Part of the plan is to expand in other parts of the world, not just Australia, where there is currently around 100 churches. CCC churches however have a broad range, from Oxford Falls (over 6,000 membership), to the much smaller churches like CCC Casey (50 person average), as the focus on larger congregation sizes is a comparatively recent change.
Each church is encouraged to grow through its strengths. As an example, inner city Sydney CCC Balmain is using musicians to hold monthly creative "Event Services" in the local community. These have included "Xmas in July" with Hi 5's Nathan Foley performing carols, with a full band and two snow machines in a 1 hour service.
Another plan is to have all CCC churches use the same identification to make it easy to identify a CCC church, because many Australian churches are named 'something' City Church.
[edit] Music
Worship is an important part of the life of Christian City Churches, so it is natural that new songs have sprung up out of the experiences and life of the church.
Music from CCC Oxford Falls is published under CCC Worships. Music from various C3 churches in the USA is published under C3worship
CCC Oxford Falls generally produces one album a year. Their newest release is "For Your Glory", which became available on April 21, 2008 in Australia. Before this, their most recent compilation is "Here We Go", released in 2007. In the last few years, they released CD/DVD issues of Presence, "Great Is Our God" (CD Only), No Longer I (CCC Youth), One Day (Prayerworks) and recently the compilation album Fresh As (CD only ). The current Music Director of Christian City Church Oxford Falls is Ryan Smith.
Additionally, many C3 Churches other than CCC Oxford Falls have released albums. CCC Atlanta established the website c3worship.com to promote some of these.
Many CCC worship leaders, such as Steve Deal, Hugh Wilson, and Maria Christensen as well as the influential Chris Falson have released music themselves. C3 Manhattan musician Kathleen Monteleone is currently appearing as a finalist on the NBC program Grease: You're The One That I Want.
C3Manhattan have released Peace and the electronica album Radiate. The first American CCC, C3Long Island released Forever in 2002, while CCC Greensboro (formerly The Rock of Greensboro) has released 3 albums since late 2005 starting with Shifting the atmosphere. The US churches have also combined to record 2 albums: C3USA project in 2003 and a Live Album, The Turning, in 2006. Many of these albums are available through Cdbaby.
In Australia, Christian City Church Bridgeman Downs have released the album Dawn, and more recently, the live album "With Every Breath".
Recently CCC Oxford Falls has begun to release its music online, as new songs are written. Most if not all the aforementioned C3 material from the USA is downloadable from itunes and other carriers such as Rhapsody.
In Europe, Christian City Church Amsterdam released its first CD "Nieuwe Dag" (New Day) in May 2006. The CD was received well by local media as "one of the best Dutch worship albums out today". With contemporary original music being written in the local language (Dutch) CCC Amsterdam reached beyond local churches who use songs translated from English.
On 2 April 2007, Christian City Church (Oxford Falls) scored a hit single on the ARIA Australian Top 100 Singles Chart. The song "Here We Go" entered at #37 on the ARIA Report (and #20 on the ARIA Physical Singles Chart plus #6 on the ARIA New South Wales single sales list) making it the highest-selling religious pop song since 1970. The single dropped out of the chart the following week though as it was only available at the church.[citation needed]
[edit] Christian City Churches in the Media
Christian City Churches, as with any large or rapidly growing religious movement, has often found itself under media scrutiny, both in a positive and a more critical light. Recent examples include mention in the Business Review Weekly (BRW), Australian Edition article "God's Millionaires".[2]
The recent World Council of Churches caused a significant number of reports on the 'Mega-Church' phenomena, many newspapers and news reports specifically noting churches with other large congregations like Hillsong Church.
[edit] Controversy
A concern with large Pentecostal churches, including the Christian City Churches, is the requests for money, which leads to questioning the motives of the pastors. [3] Also concerning is the political influence of these churches.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ Barclay, John (1987). Arise! The Story of Christian City Church. Covenant Publishing.
- ^ "God's Millionaires" Pentecostal churches are not waiting to inherit the earth. They are taking it now, tax-free. Business Review Weekly Magazine, Austalian/May 26, 2005 By Adele Ferguson
- ^ a b Business Review Weekly (BRW), Australian Edition article "God's Millionaires" "God's Millionaires"
[edit] External links
- Christian City Church International - Home page
- Christian City Church International member churches
- ARIA Chartifacts
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