emerging church, emergent, simple church, house church, home church.
Thursday, November 3
neil cole interview
Interview with neil Cole of Church Multiplication Associates in Next Wave magazine. (Click on the pic for full interview)
Next-Wave: What are the implications of the Organic Church for professional clergy, seminary-trained pastors?
NC: For people who choose Christianity as a career, it is very threatening. I don’t think the Kingdom of God was ever meant to be a career. For those who have that calling, that primal urge to be a part of the Kingdom, to be part of transforming lives it can mean freedom. It can bring them back to what they always wanted to be a part of. But it may still cost them a profession. There are people in the Organic Church movement who get their support from doing ministry. But I think it should come after you have been doing ministry, not before. It should be based on proven-ness, not potential. And I think you should do it whether or you are paid or not.
Next-Wave: Do you have any words of encouragement about the Organic Church for those in the emerging church?
NC: I think we are making a shift from the day of the ordained to the day of the ordinary. A day when common Christians are empowered to do extraordinary things for God and they are no longer going to wait for their pastors to say, “Go.”
I think the layers and layers of decision-makers between God’s people and God will be removed, so that God can have direct communication with His people without any filters, without any middlemen to interpret. When we reach that state we will see massive global implications.
I think God is setting us up that way. Some of the trends that are happening today are global in scale. They are not just regional or national, but all across the world people are saying and discovering these things. That has never happened in history, except maybe in the first century. We are on the verge of seeing something akin to the Book of Acts happening in our day, if we are faithful to God’s voice.
Something is happening across Britain today: a new kind of church is beginning to appear; increasing numbers of
christians (recent research suggests between 40 & 100,000) are starting to gather in homes, colleges and work places.
Living out a 24-7 faith, they are missionally focused with a 'go to them' dynamic instead of a 'come to us' invitation.
These communities are small, fluid, organic, reproducible and most of all simple; so simple that any believer would respond
by saying "I could do that!"
The aim of this site is to connect, report and resource these new groups.
If you'd like to know more check out the vision page.
