Organic Church- review

This was a powerful book that shows how true transformational churches can happen, in ways outside the traditional church's mindset. Let me highly recommend this book.

In no way can I convey everything that this book speaks about because my mind is swimming with ideas and I am overcome with desire for a different kind of church experience.

The thing that strikes me the most is that there is no reason why any of us can not try this ourselves, today. There is plenty of permission and room to fail. There are many "radical" concepts that deserve to be comprehended and adopted. In a sense they are not that radical because they are things that the church has done in the past, but that very few churches try today.

Radical concept: Jesus is the captain of the team. How many churches have a pastor as the captain of the team? How many churches drop in attendance when the pastor is away, or people remark that they have missed him when he comes back? Imagine if one of these people were on your leadership team- Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa. Would not their personality have a big impact on the way the team works. Now imagine if Jesus were not only present on the team but the captain. Sadly, this is not the case in so many churches.

Radical concept: Do not expect people to come to you. When one successful church planter was asked why so many people had responded to Christ, his response was simple- Show up! The gospel can infiltrate whole networks of people and communities. But so often we expect people to leave their community and join something else when they believe. Imagine a church starting up inside a network of people who already exist, a ready made church appears very quickly as people respond to Christ.

Radical concept: New believers are capable of leading others to Christ, Baptising and Discipling. The traditional church behaves as if someone needs plenty of training first before they are capable of leading anything of significance. This has happened time and time again in the movement mentioned in the book. New believers lead their friends to Christ and baptise them, themselves and a church starts somewhere in their network of friends, be it a home, coffee shop or sports club- a location that their network already existed in.

There are many more radical concepts in the book, but I wanted to put just a few teasers our there for you. These ideas are bound to upset people in the traditional church, especially people who want to hold tightly to their church buildings. But I think that the church needs to be set free from the four walls that restrain it, and be let loose on a needy and waiting population. For the skeptic, let me say that the organic church movement has grown to 700 churches in 32 countries in 6 short years, with 10 000 people already a part of it. It is a revolution that has only just begun. Where as many mega churches will max out around 10 000- 700 small organic churches have exponential potential in their coming growth.

Why not start a church on your street today!