Search Results for: organic church

14 Observations from Acts for Founding a Church Planting Movement

Posted on August 9, 2007

A few observations from the first two chapters of book of the Acts regarding church/church planting:

1) Jesus deliberately launched the Church by avoiding predictive talk about the timing and nature of a political future kingdom (1:6,7,11).

2) The power and presence of the Holy Spirit, not well-honed arguments, was central to the success of the global Church (planting) movement.

3) The first church launch team of 120 people was established upon a foundation of prayerful waiting on God (1:13-15).

4) The first church began in the midst of controversy and desertion. Judas, a key leader left the movement and had to be replaced (1:15-26).

5) The first church proclaimed a whole gospel for the whole world (1:8; 2:5-28; 3:1f).

6) The first church was grounded in whole Bible theology, demonstrating the unity of the Scriptures and their focus on Jesus.

7) The uniqueness and universality of calling on Jesus Christ for salvation (2:21-36).

8) The sovereignty and foreknowledge of God was central to the story of the church (2:22-23).

9) The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus was the central message of the Church.

10) Jesus was proclaimed as a living redeemer and life-giving lord over all things (2).

11) Personal repentance, baptism, faith and forgiveness was the natural result of gospel proclamation.

12) The church cultivated a profound sense of community through teaching, fellowship, shared meals and possessions, and prayer (2:42-47).

13) People were filled with awe and worship before God and his acts.

14) The church became an organic, growing movement (2:47).

Methods Debate, Gospel, and Neil Cole

Posted on December 15, 2008

In an effort to extend church planting discussion beyond model-based debate, I wrote this Wrong Debate: Attractional vs. Missional. Neil Cole has weighed in consistently, offering some insight on Organic Church and hopes to post on the Gospel soon. At his blog, he is running an Organic series. Check out the discussions in the comments here for some insights.

Review of Neil Cole's Search & Rescue

Posted on June 14, 2008

Neil Cole’s Organic Church was an overnight success. I have referred back to several times for organic church principles that have shaped Austin City Life. However, Cole’s newest book Search and Rescue: Becoming a Disciple Who Makes a Difference struggles to stay afloat.

The hyper-sensitive Calvinist shouldn’t judge the book by its cover. This is not an Arminian tirade on Calvinist failures at mission, though recent research appears to support such conclusions. Using the metaphor of “search and rescue”, Cole is not trying to make a statement regarding Total Depravity, that we are alive and afloat in our sin, versus dead and drowned in depravity. Rather, Cole uses his lifeguard experience as an illustration of how the church should make disciples, which includes “seeking and saving the lost”. And here is his where the book begins to drown.

Part 1

The book is littered with pictures and inundated with stories from Cole’s lifeguard days in California. I’m all for a good illustration, but Cole takes this way too far, dominating the entire book. Not only is this filler, it obscures some of his helpful comments on discipleship. In addition to riding the wave of lifeguard stories, in the first half of the book, Cole also attempts to surf 2 Timothy for discipleship principles and insights. Unfortunately, he offers mainly superficial observations and poor exegesis, particularly his comments on why we should not follow the reward structure of farmer/athlete/soldier in 1 Timothy 2 at a motivation for discipleship. He doesn’t seem to get Christian Hedonism. However, it’s great to see him addressing the notion of motivation in discipleship, in which he deconstructs religion and other forms of external motivation, pointing to the gospel as “that which transforms the soul” (97). You can skip the first four chapters of the book and go straight to chapter five, where he develops his insights from Organic Church on building the church by multiplication, not addition. If this is new to you, its worth reading about in either book.

Part 2

The second half of Search and Rescue is self-admittedly a rework of Cultivating a Life for God, which rehearses the story and structure of Life Transformation Groups (LTGs). These groups of 2-3 are formed around three practices: 1) Confession of sin 2) Reading lots of Scripture 3) Praying for the lost. They are simple, reproducible, and strategic. Before I came across Cole, I had been doing something similar with friends for several years. I really like the simplicity and reproducibility of the LTG concept. Cole has inspired me to implement my own version—Fight Clubs—in our church. A summary of LTGs is found on page 175.

Conclusion

Cole’s strength is questioning the status quo. He doesn’t do a lot of that in this book. However, when he does it is refreshing and edgy. Like saying that we slow down the obedience of disciples when we run them through content heavy discipleship material. Or that the Early Church met in accountability groups. Or that when pastors talk about Greek and Hebrew from the pulpit they separate themselves from the flock and distance the church from the Bible.

All in all, the book isn’t worth buying, especially if you have read Cole’s other stuff. I’ve shared most of the nuggets and purchased it in hope of finding much more. In fact, the richest paragraph in the book comes from Alan Hirsch’s preface:

It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity the other side of complexity.” Simple answers, offered without taking into account the vast intricacies of human life in an infitine universe, are close to being out right worthless to any human being in need of real truth that addresses real, live situations. Simplicity this side of complexity simply doesn’t fit or resonate with our condition and is not worth a dime. However, when simplicity presents itself beyond the complexities that we all face, and it takes into account the nuanced and often perplexing situation we find ourselves in, the these truths are worth all that we own.

Why We Aren't Starting New Ministries

Posted on May 13, 2008

We are in our first year as Austin City Life. We are City Group driven but have a Sunday service. City Groups and services are intergenerational. Now that we have the Sunday service, people are beginning to look for “ministries,” ministries to singles, ministries to couples, ministries to women, and so on. People are understandably concerned that “they get ministered to” according to their stage of life needs. I am resisting this impulse for several reasons:

1. Ecclesiology Proper: It is our conviction that in order for the church to be the church, to one another and to the world, generations must intentionally cultivate community and practice mission together. We must deprogram the church from ministry shopping and “program” the church to be intergenerational, communal, and missional. How does the Body function properly if the hand says to the foot, “I don’t need you; I just need my generation” (1 Cor 12)?” How does the Temple bring the Cornerstone glory as living stones if the stones don’t live together (1 Pet 2)? The church should not live on generations alone.

2. Functional Ecclesiology: We have pushed our ecclesiology proper into a functional ecclesiology that largely relies on City Groups. City Groups are local, urban missional communities that meet weekly to share life and truth and to redemptively engage peoples and cultures. They are comprised of 6-12 people who commit to living out Four Practices based on Four Principles. They share everything from tacos to tears. City Groups are our foundational ecclesial structure; therefore, they have been programmed as geographical, intergenerational, redemptive communities that hold gospel and mission in common.

  1. Programming versus Program-driven: Just because we are an organic church, doesn’t mean that we avoid programming. All organisms are biologically programmed with DNA. As that DNA replicates and produces a maturing organism, it naturally takes on a clearly defined structure. Likewise, Austin City Life accepts programming as a natural part of healthy church growth; however our DNA includes an element of anti-program. In order to avoid becoming program-driven, we are striving to keep church simple. We are programming for less programs and more relational connections. Thus, we are against organizing the church around various generational ministries, divvying up the church into life-stage specific ministries, and we are for the generations to sharing life, truth and mission for more than an hour or so on a Sunday.

3. Realistic Expectations: As a church that is less than a year old, we have to guard against doing to many things, against being all things to all people. Why? We don’t have the volunteer power to service every need or want. Instead of spreading ourselves thin across numerous ministries, we have decided to focus on a few things and attempt to do them well in order to be the church. These things have largely been determined by our congregational profile. For instance, although we are a city church, we are not largely a singles or young couples community. In fact, we currently have more families than singles. Therefore, in order to responsibly shepherd the flock we have, we have developed a Children’s Ministry not a Singles ministry. However, if we were largely singles we would not have a Singles ministry; we would be pursuing ways for singles to share community and mission with non-singles, while addressing singles issues from the pulpit, discipleship, and City Groups.