Customer Reviews

Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the most practical book on starting new churches I have found to date. Neil looks at the basic DNA of the church--what Jesus intended church to be and to become. The answer for the church to become relevant in the current culture and impact the future is to get back to the ancient model that the first believers adopted. It is simple, reproducable, and transferable across any culture. A blueprint for Church the way it was menat to be.

After reading George Barna's "Revolution", Reggie McNeal's "The Present Future", and Tony and Felicity Dale's "Simply Church" I am convinced that the traditional church model in America is not "getting the job done", and will increasingly have less and less impact on the culture. I say this as a 20+ veteran of local church ministry. What we have created is NOT what Jesus had in mind.

Neil Cole gives a very practical guide that is easy to follow if we have the courage. Without the need to invest huge amounts of money in buildings and paid professional staff, churches will be able to use their financail gifts to do practical ministray and need-meeting in their communities and around the world.

I highly recommend this book. I feel in many ways it points to the solution for the problems with the Western church. The original model of church life which was inaugurated in the 1st century will become the most effective model for church multiplication in the 21st century. A MUST READ for anyone serious about planting healthy, growing and reproducing churches.

Neil Cole sees something that many of us see. The church is shrinking and in trouble. The way we do church now, for the most part, is not growing God's kingdom in any significant way. We are wrapped up in programs and neglecting people. What should we do?

Cole suggests that we take a more "organic" approach to church. Go to the places and people who need Jesus the most, minister to them, and plant churches right there in their homes, parking lots, coffee shop hang outs, and wherever people gather. When someone comes to Christ empower them to go and start their own church in their own sphere of influence. We should reject the traditional church with its building, pastor who does ministry for the congregation, and inward looking approach to ministry.

Cole convinced me of the problem, but his solution is throwing the baby out with the bath water. He had plenty of biblical proof for the existence and proliferation of New Testament churches meeting in homes and other small group venues, but he shrugged off defending his thesis against the problems of putting new believers into leadership too soon, and protecting his new churches from bad doctrine. He mentions these problems, but gives glib answers that did not interact deeply with the major problems his approach brings to church planting.

I am glad to have read this book to get a new perspective from a man who obviously loves the Lord and is thinking outside the box about how to reach the lost. It convinced me of the power of small groups, and the biblical idea that we should empower all Christians to minister to the people they have the most influence over without holding them back by too rigid a church hierarchy. I am even persuaded that, with proper training and accountability, tiny church plants meeting in homes and elsewhere can be a great vehicle for kingdom growth. However, I am not convinced that this is the way to do church or even the wave of the future.

Recommended, but keep your brain turned on and your bible in hand.

As other reviews have stated this book lays out some basic principles of the simple church movement which Neil Cole is a part of. We read this book as a part of a leadership discussion/discipleship group of our church. We were all challenged.

Neil Cole does a great job of addressing the problems of the current church structure without being so negative as to discourage those of us who are still involved in "traditional" churches. He then gives the blueprint (DNA) for how the movement he helped begin has made disciples and reproduced so many times that he can't keep track of it.

The strengths of this book are the amazing way that disciples are made and transformed into leaders so quickly. This really looks like the Bible! Secondly, the missional focus of Neil Cole and his group is truly the root of all the multiplication. There mission and built in DNA is to reproduce themselves and this helps prevent stagnant groups to develop. Thirdly he has a great chapter on the mistakes they made and how to deal with failure. Up until that point it almost seems like everything goes perfect but this chapter gives a clear clue to the fact that they were so dedicated to reaching the harvest that they were willing to "fall with style" rather than not try anything at all.

The results speak for themselves. Read this book to get challenged to get out of your comfort zone and to allow your mind and heart to see that the Church of Jesus is more than you ever thought it could be!

Neil Cole's book *Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens* did a number on my brain. His book messes with you like a stone in your shoe or a tune you keep hearing in your head even if you don't want to.

While this book is easy to read, it's hard to shake. It sticks to your brain. For those of us involved in the conversation about what the church will look like as we head into the early years of this 21st century, Cole injects his ideas, his practices, his emerging ways. I like this book because it's written by a practitioner, not a theoretician; by a pastor, not a theologian, even though Cole seems to be a highly missional, theologically informed pastor. The book's ideas are dressed in city street clothes, not suburban suits.

As I read Cole's book, I couldn't escape the thought at certain places, "What if Cole is really onto something here?"

I like *Organic Church* for these reasons:

1. It begins with Jesus and what he dreamed and worked for concerning church. Jesus trumps the church. Christology precedes and forms ecclesiology.

2. It takes the Gospels seriously as sources for church-planting strategies. The life, stories, and ways of Jesus should heavily influence those of us who want to define, discover, discern (whatever) the reality of "church."

3. While Cole appreciates church history and church tradition, he is not bound by either. This is striking because so many evangelicals who rant that the Bible is our sole authority on the crucial issues of the faith seem to concede too much when it comes to the crucial idea of "church." It's like we say, "Yes, Cole, may be onto something here about what Jesus may have envisioned as 'church,' but church history teaches us blah, blah, blah...; and the kind of expressions of church Cole espouses seem to be more like the communities the Apostle Paul addresses in his epistles, but church tradition tells us blah, blah, blah..." It's like so many of us have a vested interest in protecting our favored forms of church.

4. If life transformation is a core reality of the kingdom of God and not just the transmission of our well-worn ideas of church, then Cole hits a home run. The stories he cites are mind-boggling at times. I found myself saying, "This seems to be the way its supposed to be."

My mind is still rumbling with questions about Cole's ideas and I'm in the process of synchronizing his ideas with my own study and journey. One thing I can't do is escape the persistent question, "What if Cole is really onto something here about 'church' "?

I could not tell from reading this book the extent to which Neil Cole is really a practitioner of organic church planting or if he is mainly a writer for Leadership Network resources.

I loved the model of evangelism ministry and I embrace the let-the-spirit-lead-where-he-may approach described in "Organic Church." But amid all the tales-from-the-trenches, Cole never really gets explicit about what exactly they are doing and what exactly is transpiring in the 800-and-then-lost-count churches planted through this work.

I also wish he would have said something about the background/tradition of those working in this ministry, as it would help contextualize what we read. He certainly is not mysterious about his present Leadership Network association. On the one hand he says he doesn't want to lay out a play-book because it is important for organic church plants to be original, but on the other he goes into specifics about what Leadership Network resources they employ. Hmmm.

Through the whole book it just seems like there is a pattern of selectively telling some things while not telling other things. When I worked in politics we called that "spin." I could not help the feeling that something was either being sanitized or exaggerated because of the narrative gaps.

All that said, I would jump at the chance to spend about six months with this crowd, doing what they do. I have NO disagreement with the ideas in the book, and I actually encourage anyone passionate for the Kingdom of God to buy it, read it, and pass it on.

It just seems under-edited and outside of the normal accountability expectations for published work.

Over 10 years ago I attended a "Superconference" in Reno, NV where a young pastor named Neil Cole shared a revolutionary concept called Life Transformation Groups (LTG's). I was so impressed with his simple concept that I began to use them in my own church and my own life and have been in one nearly continuously for all of the intervening years. I have watched it transform my life and that of every person I discipled that remained committed to it for any length of time.

Some 5 years ago I had a professor in seminary named Dr. Thom Wolfe. Just as Neil Cole describes in his book, Thom shared the Universal Disciple/ Church on a napkin in Starbucks (his favorite place).

At the time I met him Neil was pastoring a growing church in Southern California and his commitment to scripture and the priesthood of all believers showed in every way. At the time I met him Thom Wolfe was Chair of the Kim School of Intercultural Studies at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. Today both men are successfully planting churches and making disciples in large numbers. Neil is in the USA and Thom is Central Asia.

Some have written reviews critical of the methods described in the book or written as if Cole is attacking the way church is done in general. This is a point, but it is not his primary point. The proof is in the doing. The methods described in this book are solidly biblical, coming primarily from Paul's model of church as found in Colossians 3-4 and in other places. Unfortunately, Cole does not share Wolfe's actual drawing (I will email it to anyone who asks). I have often wondered how Paul could go into Thessalonica for two weeks and leave a thriving church behind. That question is answered in these pages.

Though I dearly love Neil, I have to drop this review to four stars because I think that his message about how to do church in a way that reproduces rapidly and easily gets lost in his sometime polemic against the established church. This is clear in so many reviews that have missed the main point of the book. Yet, every Christian can still benefit by reading this book with an open mind. I strongly encourage you to do so.

What Neil describes in this book is what we all long for - it's what we know ought to be happening - it's what makes us want to be missionaries to China - it's what makes our heart beat fast when we read the book of Acts, but we don't see often enough. It's a description of the Great Commission being lived out in pure and simple faith in - believe it or not - the USA! I'm making my small group read it now and we're having the best discussions ever. Don't read this book if you don't want to be inspired to try something new.

Neil Cole provides a stinging analysis of Western Christianity, challenging the foundations of traditional church life.

He is obviously committed to the Organic Church concept, and his dedication to this new model shows in his passionate argument against centralized, building-based churches.

Though some may consider his stance a little too radical, it is still worth examining. The book is worth reading for his exegetical and hermeneutical approach to Jesus' teaching on Church, and for several good sermon illustrations.

I would say that even if you are not ready to throw aside all traditional church models, this work would still give you a good start on the proper thinking behind an effective small group ministry strategy.

This book is an easy read and the most relevant book so far on the organic/simple church movement. I highly recommend this book especially for those in the millenial generation (born 1981 and after) this is the kind of church this generation is looking for. Ron Luce and Josh Mcdowell did a research reporting that the generation born after 1981 is only 4% Bible believing Christians. This tells us that the way we have been doing "church" in North America isn't somehow reaching the youth. Organic Church is something that will challenge us to rethink the wineskin and challenge us to stop trying to bring this geneartion to church (which isn't working) and instead bring Church or God's kingdom to them. This book is a must read if you want to reach the future!

"Organic Church" is the new gold standard for understanding simple/house church movements that are rapidly developing around the world. If the new church movements in North America are characterized by the DNA that Neil Cole describes in this book, namely: Divine Truth/Nuturing Relationships/Apostolic Mission, then the church is indeed moving in the right direction. This is a must read for those wanting to understand currently emerging house church movements.