Cole on Church

I want to lower the bar of how church is done so that anyone can do it, and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple so that they will do it.

Cole on Discipleship

If you can’t reproduce disciples, you’ll never reproduce leaders. If you can’t reproduce leaders, you’ll never reproduce churches. If you can’t reproduce churches, you’ll never see a movement.

Garrett Wishall on Ministry

Based on my observations from these various vantage points, here’s what I would do if I wanted to “blow up” a church.

1. Begin my ministry as a teacher and refuse to be a learner. Seminary does this to us sometimes: we spend three or more years learning, and we are ready to use all of that knowledge in the first few weeks of a new ministry. What we fail to do is listen to the people, get to know them and understand their culture. Consequently, we are viewed more as an outsider than a pastor, and the fault most often lies with us.

2. Assume that the “honeymoon period” as a church leader is the time to make as many changes as possible. Some churches may, in fact, offer no such honeymoon period. Others do need immediate attention, but even those churches do not want to be trampled under significant change. Still others fired the previous pastor for making changes too quickly; in that case, how wise is it to follow the same pattern?

3. Expect to fix everything overnight. We who have grown up in a microwave world assume that everything can be changed quickly — but that is not the case. Most of the church problems that we inherit are long-term issues with roots that run deep in the church. Emotions surround these issues, and we should not expect that such problems will be rooted out and changed quickly.

4. Teach a theological system more than the Bible. Particularly if our theological system is new and fresh for us, we often cannot wait to bring others into our camp. We become more concerned about leading church members to become “____________ists” (you fill in the blank) than we are about leading them to follow Jesus.

5. Study always and seldom “hang out” with people. Study matters, and we cannot neglect our time to focus on God and His Word. At the same time, though, our church members deserve our time and attention. If we only study and set aside no time to develop relationships with members, we will be viewed as distant and uncaring.

6. Blame undiscipled members for acting like believers who have never been discipled. This story is repeated in church after church: its members (including its leaders) have never truly been discipled. They have not been taught how to read the Word, pray without ceasing, reject temptation and tell others about Jesus. They have not learned even basic doctrines simply because no one ever addressed that need. We can either blame them, or we can invest in them and help ground them in the faith.

7. Pray reactively rather than proactively. Most pastors do their best, pray briefly out of habit and more earnestly pray only when they face a situation they cannot solve. Such reactive prayer often shows that we are operating in our own power most of the time. This reality may not necessarily “blow up” the church, but it may leave the church in mediocrity — which may be even worse.

Obviously, our goal is not to blow up the church. Here’s one suggestion to avoid doing so: love the church before you try to change the church. Gain people’s love and respect first by ministering to them, guiding them, praying for them and consistently preaching the Word to them. When they know that you have their best spiritual interests at heart, the church will be much more willing to follow you.

Marcus Honeysett on Maturity

One of my pet hates is when people say to me "your teaching is just too intellectual. Just give us the easy stuff." While I don't doubt that I can be too intellectual, I think what is often meant it "don't stretch me too much."

The writer of Hebrews is pretty clear what he makes of Christians who aren't interested in being stretched in order to go to the next level of their understanding with God. He says that such a lack of diligence with the truths about God reveals infantile faith. He says believers ought to be quick, not slow, to learn.

5 points:

1. Christians ought to be obsessive about getting as much truth about God as we can, and going as far in our knowledge of God as we can. Else what does it say about our attitude to God? I like what he provides for me but don't want to go any deeper with him? The previous section finished with the world-shattering claim that Jesus has become the source of eternal salvation for those who obey him! Not having a profound desire to know and to grow in him is scarcely Christian

2. He writes to people who should be teachers about God but who aren't because of their lack of diligence to learn from God. This is interesting because it shows that God releases spiritual gifts of teaching in response to desire to learn of him. If you want to be a teacher you have to be a perpetual learner. There are people who ought to be teachers who aren't because of their carelessness. And there are people who have teaching responsibilities who shouldn't because they are careless to carry on growing. Don't listen to teachers who are habitual spiritual infants, regardless of how persuasive they sound, or how big their following

3. The immature can't distinguish good from evil (v14), because that comes from constant practice and reflection on the things of maturity, not the things of infancy

4. The things of infancy he lists fall into three categories: beginning the Christian life (Repentance and faith 6:1), basic church practices (baptism into Christ; laying on of hands in participating with God in the impartation of spiritual gifts and setting people aside for specific kingdom tasks 6:2), teachings about the future (resurrection and eternal judgement 6:2). Note that he thinks these are the basics. If you haven't grasped these, you haven't grasped the basics. And if you have grasped them, you have only grasped the basics. If your church only teaches this, it only teaches the basics. If your church doesn't teach this, then you haven't got the basics

5. The things of maturity with which this is contrasted is the teaching about righteousness (5:13). That is: about having a great high priest, about grace, about justification by faith, about the great exchange which sees us clothed in white as children of the king. It is the teaching about our adoption and status, about the fact that we are saints, about the fact that God's righteousness now determines the whole purpose of our existence - to be for the praise of his glorious grace

Now why on earth would people not want to go on to grasp these latter truths? But often they don't. I come across people who effectively say "I have had my sins forgiven, I am going to heaven, so that's enough. I can now relax and get on with my life." It's like they have ticked the right box on the heavenly insurance application form so that they are covered. But just like any other insurance the policy can now quietly sit in the drawer where they will only refer to it when the need arises.

That is the definition of a stalled Christian. They think they did a one-time only deal with God and life carries on basically as normal. How sad! How much they are missing! And in what danger they stand. The writer to the Hebrews says that not going on to maturity is, in fact, going backwards. There is no neutral gear. A stalled Christian is a Christian going backwards. And a Christian going backwards is always in danger of falling away.

The only way to keep secure from falling away is to keep going forwards. And that means having a desire to press on to maturity.

Marcus Honeysett on Church

Here are some highlights to whet your appetite ?

1. The church forgets who we are and what we are for ? When we forget that we are the community of disciples for declaring God?s greatness and making disciples, mission quickly becomes just one among many activities rather than the defining vision of who we are as a community.

2. The majority of believers are no longer thrilled with the Lord and what he is doing in their lives. When questions like ?What is God doing with you at the moment?? cease to be common currency, it is a sure sign of creeping spiritual mediocrity.

3. ? In my view, the single biggest cause of stalled churches in the UK is the belief that material comfort can be normative for Christians. It is the opposite of radical commitment to Christ.

4. When [Christians] see church as one among many leisure activities, usually low down the priority list. They are unlikely to see the Christian community as God?s great hope for the world and unlikely to put commitment above self-interest.

5. ? Where people take no personal responsibility for their own spiritual growth a stalled church becomes more likely.

6. ? When preaching, teaching and Bible study become ends in themselves rather than means to an end, something is badly wrong.

7. A church becomes afraid to ask radical questions ? The danger is that people start to equate serving the church with living out the gospel. Few churches regularly evaluate every aspect of church life against their core vision.

8. Confusing Christian activities with discipleship ?

9. Not understanding how to release and encourage everyone in the church to use their spiritual gifts for the building up of the church ? There are two types of DNA in churches. One type of church says ?we exist to have our personal spiritual needs met?, the other ?we exist to impact our locality and the world with the gospel of the grace of God in Christ?. The first type is a stalled church.

10. ? No church was stalled at the point that it was founded. At the beginning all churches were adventures in faith and daring risk for God. No one actively decided for comfort over risk, but at some point the mindset shifted from uncomfortable faith and daring passion for the Lord to comfortable mediocrity ? The mantra of the maintenance mindset is ?if it ain?t broke don?t fix it?. But just like buying shoes for growing children, if structures don?t take account of future growth then fellowships end up stunted and deformed.

Peter Brain on Leadership

Great quote from George Carey (in Peter Brain "Going the Distance" p16):

Churches die when leaders die. Churches die from the top downward. Show me a growing church and you will show me a visionary leadership. It is leaders who make growth. When you have spiritual leaders, men of prayer, women of prayer - imaginative, alert, intelligent - there we have growth



I have three questions to pose from that:

1. are the leaders in your church given the time, resources and freedom to lead (pray, bring vision, develop strategy) as opposed to manage or keep all the activities running?

2. are the leaders in your church given the time, resources and freedom to bring on the next generation of leaders? If they are too rushed off their feet it will never happen

3. what are the main reasons why your church and its leaders don't develop more new leaders than they do, if there are possible candidates to work with?

Neil Cole on Discipleship

We should lower the bar of how church is done and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple. That is, if we can conceive and structure a church that is simple enough that anyone can do it, and is made up of people who follow Jesus at any cost, the result will be a movement that empowers the common Christian to do the uncommon works of God. In contrast it seems that many of our current practices run contrary to this - we make church complex and discipleship too easy.