C3 Church Global
Christian City Churches are 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 2003 there over 100 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.
The vision of Christian City Churches worldwide is to provide a relevant, vibrant, modern and 'bright' church experience.
History of the CCC Movement
Phil & Chris Pringle arrived in Sydney, from New Zealand, in 1980 with a vision to begin a church. Christian Centre, Northside, as it was originally known, began with 12 people on the Northern beaches of Sydney. This church has grown to become one of the largest churches in Australia (currently has a membership of 6,000+ people) and has been responsible for the planting of well over 35 churches.
Globally, the C3i movement now consists of over 140 churches spread throughout Australia, New Zealand, North America, Asia and Europe.
Christian City Church, Oxford Falls
Each week Christian City Church, Oxford Falls is attended by in excess of 6000 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.
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 11400 (Within Australia).
Growth of Christian City Churches and similar movements is attributed to their upbeat, modern and relevant approach to religious services.
In 2002 in the tri-annual Worldwide Conference in Hawaii, C3I reveled its plans to have over 1000 churches worldwide with an average attendance of 500 people throughout the movement. The average attendance is somewhere within the high 300 number, 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).
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.
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. The music from CCC Oxford Falls is published under the name CCC Worships.
CCC Oxford Falls generally produces three or more albums a year. In the last year, released albums included Presence (CD & DVD), No Longer I by CCC Youth (CD & DVD), One Day by Prayerworks (CD & DVD) and most recently Fresh As, (CD) a compilation album.
Recently CCC Oxford Falls has begun to release its music online, as new songs are written. As one of the first Christian organisations to use this release method, it remains to be seen whether or not it is successful.
Recently Christian City Church Bridgeman Downs released the album Dawn. Many CCC Churches other then CCC Oxford Falls are now releasing albums. CCC Atlanta runs the website c3worship.com, which spotlights many CCC artists. Generally, music released from with in the CCC US movement is released under the c3worship label.
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Fresh As
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No Longer I
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Presence
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One Day
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 BRW (Australian Edition) article "God's millionaires".
The recent Council of World churches caused a significant number of reports on the 'Mega-Church' phenomena, many newspapers and news reports specifically noting CCC churches with other large congregations like Hillsong's.
External links
- CCC Global
- Australia
- Australian Capital Territory
- New South Wales
- CCC Oxford Falls, Oxford Falls, NSW, Australia
- CHANGE - Young Adults of Christian City Church, Oxford Falls
- CCC Metro Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- CCC Ballina - RiverCity Church, Ballina, NSW, Australia
- CCC Carlingford, North Rocks, NSW, Australia
- CCC Coffs Harbour - Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia
- CCC Chatswood, Chatswood, NSW, Australia
- CCC Penrith, Penrith, NSW, Australia
- CCC Ryde, Ryde, NSW, Australia
- CCC West Harbour, Balmain, NSW Australia
- City Church - Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Mount Annan Church, Mount Annan, NSW, Australia
- Hunter CCC, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Queensland
- Victoria
- Tasmania
- Western Australia
- USA
- Canada
- New Zealand