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Neil Cole (Long Beach, CA) is a church starter
and pastor, and founder and executive director
of Church
Multiplication Associates, which has helped
start more than 500 churches in 16 states and
12 nations in six years. Neil is an international
speaker and also the author of Cultivating
a Life for God.
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His latest book, Organic Church: Growing Faith Where
Life Happens, is one of the newest books in the Leadership
Network Publications series, produced with Jossey-Bass.
ADVANCE: What
is the big idea--the basic message--of Organic Church?
I want to see us lower the bar on how we do church,
and raise the bar on what it means to be a disciple
of Jesus. If we can do that, the Kingdom of God will
not only be changed, it will be a change agent.
Ordinary people will be involved in extraordinary works
of God.
ADVANCE: What new ideas are you putting out there
for church leaders to consider?
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The idea that church can grow out of the harvest
of lost souls and find its expression in common
places where people live and work and play is
new in some respects. The drive in our movement
of churches for true, spontaneous multiplication
has led us to many of the simple ideas expressed
in the book. The DNA of the living church is
a new concept that has huge ramifications for
a movement.
ADVANCE: What do you mean by the "DNA
of the living church"?
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Our hope is to see the value of DNA--Divine Truth, Nurturing
Relationships and Apostolic Mission--intact at the smallest,
most basic unit of church life. An organism is only
as healthy as its smallest cell, and a church is only
as healthy as its disciples. The true test of spiritual
health is our disciples--not our preaching, our music,
or our programs.
The solution to health in a complex organic creature
is to bring health to every cell of the body. If my
church is spiritually healthy at its smallest unit--one
disciple in relationship with one or two others with
the DNA intact--and all of those units are healthy,
we will have a spiritually healthy church. We view it
from micro to macro.
ADVANCE: What one or two lessons inherent
in the concept of simple, organic ministry would you
most like to see people apply?
First,
I would like to see church leaders begin to
change their thinking from an attractional mindset
to a more missional one--where we see the Kingdom
of God infiltrate the places we live and work
and conduct our social lives, and turn the church
inside out.
Second, I think it would make all the difference
in the world if we focused on the health of
our disciples in relationship to each other,
rather than on the health of the organization
from the top level.
ADVANCE: As you talk to church leaders
about organic ministry, what seems to be most
helpful or challenging for them?
A
lot of church leaders easily recall the first
time they felt God's call. They remember the
excitement of that moment when they gave themselves
to something very
significant. Then they wake up 10 or 15 years
later, look at their job descriptions and their
performance reviews, and realize they are pushing
a lot of paper and counting nickels and noses.
In many ways, organic ministry is a call to
that primal urge they first heard into ministry
that will personally transform people's lives.
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ADVANCE: What do you hope the reader takes
away from your book?
I hope that this book awakens people to the idea
that ordinary people can do extraordinary things for
the sake for God's Kingdom. I also hope that we will
see movements of healthy and reproductive churches spring
up all over the world. This book will challenge people
to live a life of greater meaning in and among the darkness
of this world, for the sake of Christ. It presents practical
ways this can be done, and real life stories of how
this has worked.
To order a copy of Organic Church: Growing Faith
Where Life Happens, Click
here. For more resources on organic church and
articles from Neil Cole, check out http://www.cmaresources.org
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