Churches have tried all kinds of ways to attract new and younger members – revised vision statements, hipper worship, contemporary music, livelier sermons, bigger and better auditoriums. But there are still so many people who aren’t being reached, who don’t want to come to church. And the truth is that attendance at church on Sundays does not necessarily transform lives; God’s presence in our hearts is what changes us. Leaders and laypeople everywhere are realizing that they need new and more powerful ways to help them spread God’s Word. According to international church starter and pastor Neil Cole, if we want to connect with young people and those who are not coming to church, we must go where people congregate. Cole shows readers how to plant the seeds of the Kingdom of God in the places where life happens and where culture is formed – restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, parks, locker rooms, and neighborhoods. Organic Church offers a hands-on guide for demystifying this new model of church and shows the practical aspects of implementing it.
Table des matières
About Leadership Network xi
Foreword xiii
Preface xvii
Introduction xxi
Part One: Roots of the Organic Church 1
1. Ride Out with Me! 3
2. Awakening to a New Kind of Church 17
3. The Zombie Bride Lives! 31
4. A Dangerous Question 47
Part Two: The Organic Nature of the Kingdom of God 59
5. Kingdom 101: You Reap What You Sow . . . and You Eat What You Reap 61
6. An Enchanted Kingdom with Magic Seeds, Fast-Growing Trees, and a Beautiful Bride to Rescue 83
7. We All Began as Zygotes 91
Part Three: From the Microscope to the Telescope 107
8. Mapping the DNA of Christ’s Body 109
9. Epidemic Expansion Starts in the Genes 123
Part Four: The Epidemic Kingdom and How It Spreads 141
10. It Takes Guts to Care for People 143
11. Me and Osama are Close 159
12. The How-To of Spreading the Epidemic 171
Part Five: The Call to Organic Church 193
13. Falling with Style 195
14. Tales That Really Mattered 207
Notes 219
Acknowledgments 225
About the Author 227
Subject Index 229
Scriptural Index 235
A propos de l’auteur
Neil Cole is a church starter and pastor, and founder andexecutive director of Church Multiplication Associates, which hashelped start over seven hundred churches in thirty-two states andtwenty-three nations in six years. He is an international speakerand the author of Cultivating a Life for God.
Visit the Leadership Network Website, www.leadnet.org, for moreinnovative resources and information. You can find more resourceson organic church planting at www.cmaresources.org