Some personal highlights from Neil Cole’s Organic Church
People are leaving the church to preserve their faith
Most warm blooded-living things grow to a point and then reproduce
Many a church continues long after the soul of the church has departed because the building itself keeps them going. A building can become an artificial life support system that keeps a church alive even though it died long ago.
In many of the churches in the West, ministry is done for Jesus, but not by Jesus.
Only 4 percent of churches in America will plant a daughter church.
See Tony’s blog for a much more in-depth review and additional quotes.
Overall, the book helped me think through what the church really is and re-align myself to the Christ who builds his church.
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Very cool. Tiffany is beginning this book soon.
I see that Soul Cravings is on your list to read, have you started it yet? I have it to read but am in the midst of a couple of others. Let me know.
Jw4man, I’m a third through Soul Cravings. It was written more towards those outside of the faith, so in that sense I think it’s great.
However, I absolutely love his other books much more so far… we’ll see!
Organic Church -
I thought the book was just ok. I thought his chapter that went through the Jesus Builds the Church, owns the church, the church was meant to grow, there will be opposition, and the church is unstopable was brilliant. There were several other good points, thoughts, and insights.
At the same time I felt Neil Cole came off as critical of others while being quite confident of himself and his way of planting. He seemed quite ok with attacking many things that have been fruitful – example study bibles.
Hey Marty, agreed. It was uneven in some places. I thought the first third was excellent, especially the points that you mentioned.
I think there’s a plethora of ways of doing church (which is why we’re all still trying to figure it out), but that section on Jesus building his church was a healthy reminder for me, and worth the price of the book for me.