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

Going Where God Wants you to Go

Going Where God wants you to Go

Acts 16:1-13 

In vs. 1-3 Paul comes Derbe and Lystra where he meets and picks up Timothy to takes him along on his missionary journey. Timothy was already a disciple, follower of Christ, and had a good testimony but Paul was going to take him further in ministry and spiritual life. This is a great example of how a Paul should always keep his eyes open for Timothys and how a Timothy should keep his eyes open for a Paul to help him do more for the Lord.

So Paul and Timothy begin their journeys with anticipation of open doors, serving God and seeing much fruit. In vs. 6 and 7 they desired to go but “the Spirit suffered them not” and they were “forbidden” twice (whether closed doors because of money, no peace, being refused by authority or some other way we do not know, but Spirit didn’t allow to go). Finally in vs. 9 they had a vision and a man “prayed him” saying come over and help us. My favorite part is vs. 10 where it says they were “assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us” to go preach there. It’s almost like they were told not to twice and finally were told to go and so they figured this must be where God was calling them to. This is contrary to what most Christians believe, or at least practice. We want to have all the confirmation and then move, where it appears that Paul clearly just tried serving God wherever and left the geography part up to God. Paul didn’t care where he would serve, he just knew he was going to serve the Lord… and God would take care of the “where”.

May I have the same attitude as Paul of not worrying about where, just serving God faithfully and letting Him take care of the geography.