My second workshop today was an interview with these three authors.  Neil Cole wrote Organic Church, Alan Hirsch The Forgotten Ways and Shane Claiborne is best known as the founder of a community called the Simple Way, and has written a couple books, too.    I’ve organized their notes here:

Neil Cole

• All begins in prayer
• Simpler teams, smaller start
• If all we do is start churches, we miss something
• Church should not be a separate domain, but incarnate presence
• Bad people make good soil, they have a lot of fertilizer in their lives
• You can judge a church’s health by its willingness to die
• One of the greatest sins of the church is self-preservation
• Plant Jesus

Alan Hirsch

• An Evangelist brings shape to how God is trying to woo people to Him.
• God does make passes at us all the time
• God is already there
• To create connectivity:
  • Proximity (on their turf)
  • Frequency
  • Spontaneity
• You can’t frontload your idea of church or the gospel.
• To know a culture’s longings, look at their art.
• People he knows struggle to be Christians, but not to be with Jesus.

Shane Claiborne

• Us: “God, do something!”  God: “I did do something, I made you, now get out!”
• How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday, and ignore one on Monday?”
• We were not church planters (the Simple Way).  We say morning prayer together, help kids with homework, plant gardens.
• Independence is not a gospel value
• Poverty in the suburbs  is different from the city
• Jesus & justice have to kiss

Church - General, Church Planting