Organic Church Book Review by Jeff Bush

By Neil Cole 

• We expect people to come to church, when the Great Commission commands us to go to them. 

• God did not expect for us to go to Him, He came to us. 

• Since we are the light of the world, we should not be running from darkness but running towards darkness to lighten it up. 

• The key to starting churches that reproduce spontaneously is taking Jesus to the lost people.

• We should not be interested in starting a regional church, rather making Jesus available to a whole region.

• Lower the bar to how church is done and raise the bar to what it means to be a disciple of Christ. 

• The gospel says go, but we seem to stay. The gospel says take the good news to the lost, but we wait for the lost to come to us.

• Someone said that we shape our buildings, and then our buildings shape us. A church building should not confine God’s work.

• Church worship is much more than what we do weekly for one hour. The only time God mentions church and worship together was about a lifestyle of serving him 24 hours a day.

• The kingdom of God is to be decentralized, but God’s people constantly try to centralize it. God wants his people to fill the Earth with His glory.

• Apostles specifically means sent ones. 

• The church in Jerusalem was told to go, but they stayed. God had to bring persecution on the church in order for the gospel to be spread.

• Southern Baptist have said that only 4% of churches in America will produce a daughter church. 

• We cannot compete with the world’s show. Wherever the next best show is, that’s where people run. 

• The key to a healthy church is not more attendance, more money, nicer buildings, or better activities. 

• Healthy disciples make a healthy church, and reproducing disciples make a reproducing church. 

• Accountability, confidentiality, caring for needs of each other, flexibility, communication, direction, and leadership is better done in smaller groups/churches.

• One reason churches are not growing today is because they have left out the outreach chromosome.

• We are tempted to focus on models that work when we should be focused on the Master. 

• The Ethiopian eunuch was one of the best evangelists we know. After being saved, he only had the Holy Spirit and the Scripture, but he went back to his people and shared the gospel. 

• As Christians, we should repent of: 

1. 1. 1. Underestimating what God can do through new believers
      2. Overestimating what we think our value is in the growth of new believers.