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
