reChurch Podcast
Welcome to the reChurch Podcast, hosted by Justin and Brooke Knoop.
As we speak, there is a massive number of people leaving the institutional Church...but interestingly, they aren’t walking away from Jesus. Many of us have noticed a significant gap between what we see in the Bible and what we experience on Sunday mornings. Let’s talk about it.
reChurch Podcast
The 100K Ministry Mistake That Opened My Eyes Forever ft. Neil Cole | #reChurch Ep. 13
In this episode, we sit down with Neil Cole, a leading voice in organic church movement, to uncover what it truly means to live out the Great Commission. Neil shares the life-changing lesson he learned from spending $100,000 on a church plant that quickly failed, and how that experience shaped his groundbreaking approach to discipleship. With decades of experience and transformative insights, Neil challenges traditional models and reveals how we can return to the simple, powerful mission Jesus intended. Don’t miss this conversation—it could change everything!
📚 Recommended Resources from Neil to dive deeper into Organic/Simple Church:
👉 Organic Church by Neil Cole: https://amzn.to/40MylbU
👉 Organic Leadership by Neil Cole: https://amzn.to/3UMxF2o
👉 Primal Fire (Book to be re-released - link coming soon)
Connect with Neil: https://starlinginitiatives.com/
✅ Follow Justin:
https://www.instagram.com/justinknoop
https://www.youtube.com/@justinknoop
We recruited people, we trained them, we sent them off, we coached them. We sent off a church planning team, two full-time pastors. We sent 35 people of our 100-people church $100,000. And in less than 12 months the church that we planted died.
Speaker 2:And I often tell people that was the best $100,000 I ever spent, because there's a lot of people that have dealt with hurt in the church and what does that look like to love and forgive somebody through that when you still aren't in unity, moving forward, Say?
Speaker 1:I have lots of examples but maybe the best way to point it out is in a marriage You're going to step on each other's toes. You're going to have different values and approaches to life or ways of seeing things or ways of communicating. That will be misunderstood In our society. We break up over that Divorce.
Speaker 3:But for those who choose not to divorce, what was your process and what did God take you through to get to the place where you're now at? In that process, what did you have to lay down? What did he refine you on? What did he correct you on?
Speaker 1:I've lived my entire Christian life. I came to Christ when I was 20. I started off on staff of a large megachurch back, when there weren't as many megachurches as there are now, and we thought we could do no wrong. We thought everybody in the world should learn from us.
Speaker 2:But Welcome to the ReChurch podcast. If you're tired of business as usual Christianity and ready to live just like Jesus, you found yourself in the right place. And today I'm here with my beautiful princess of a wife, brooke. Brooke, can you say hello?
Speaker 3:Hello.
Speaker 2:I've always gotten to introduce you first, but she's here. But we've got one more guest today that I'm super excited about and we have Neil Cole on the podcast today, which is amazing. A couple of different ways I can introduce Neil. I can give you all his things he's accomplished and stuff, but for me you know, I shared this with him recently in a time where I didn't have anybody to kind of help us navigate through some of the things we were trying Jesus was teaching us and we were trying to do, brooke and I, his resources, his books were just so special to me and so I'm just super honored, neil, to have you on the podcast today and for us to have a conversation. Thanks for being here today.
Speaker 1:I'm glad to be with you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I was thinking about this when we were getting started, when I was thinking about some of the questions here to ask you, and it hit me when I look back I didn't realize that we're hitting 20 years. I'm not mistaken, since you wrote Organic Church. Yeah, that's right, that correct, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It's already 20 years since I wrote it, 20 years since it came out it's coming up yep, just coming out, yeah, and so that's kind of where I wanted to, um, start off with was seeing that book and, and you know, I read it for the first time, I think, in around 2017. So that's still quite, quite a ways after you originally wrote it. How do you see, from your perspective, uh, the need for the message of that book and the relevance of that book when you wrote it compared to, kind of, the state of the church now?
Speaker 1:wrote it compared to kind of the state of the church now. Yeah, so I think it's always been relevant because I think the kingdom of God is meant to be something that's simple and organic and reproducible and life-changing and relational, but so I don't think that's going to change. When I wrote it, it came in the on the heels of experiencing it all. I don't usually publish a book until I've done it and proven it and actually trained others to do it.
Speaker 1:Then I begin to write, and that's true with organic church, but I think it's probably becoming more relevant now not less, Because I think there's a new work that God's doing among young people all over the planet. I travel a lot, as you know. I'm in a lot of different places and everywhere I go, there's a surge of young people that are excited about Christ or wanting Christ, but they don't want church as usual, and that's why this is becoming more and more relevant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would agree I was looking at being the nerd that. I am just looking at all the statistics. Thankful to Barner Group. I'm sure you're familiar with.
Speaker 2:George Barner. You may even know him and his statistics and stuff. So I like to keep tabs on the culture and the response to church. We had an episode that we did recently just, and it was so funny because we recorded it before.
Speaker 2:We spent time with you in Houston and you began to talk, and about the current model of church and and basically how we multiply and how the current model can't really it's not the best model to fulfill the great commission, because it's it, it's not set up to reach 100% of the population, right, right. And so I was looking at that statistic and I think actually Tony and Felicity Dale speak about it in their book. They said that the current model appeals to about 30% of the population, at least in America, the, the traditional church model, and so why would we um, you know, approach that in that way? So I was. I didn't know your answer to that question, what it was going to be about the relevance of this book, but I was hoping you would say that because I know for me personally, it's as relevant as ever.
Speaker 2:Um, and and and is impactful whenever and we're seeing more and more people in millennial uh uh age group and Gen Z that are kind of waking up to this reality. They are sensing something, something is off, whether that's just by observation or the Holy Spirit kind of nudging them and saying, hey, there's a little bit more to this and a lot of people just don't have language and kind of that's. What organic church did for me was give me a lot of language of what I was feeling.
Speaker 1:Excellent, that's good to hear. Yeah. Even places like in South Korea. There's just tons of new churches reaching young people that don't want to go to the megachurches and Seoul and South Korea is the megachurch capital of the world but they're just not interested in that. They're interested in the kind of things where you meet in homes, you have relationships, you make disciples, you love Jesus. Yeah. And that's encouraging. I think the message of the book is as relevant as ever. Yeah. I would change the title of one chapter. Okay.
Speaker 1:When I wrote the book, we were still in a manhunt for Osama bin Laden, and so I was writing about six degrees of separation. So in the chapter, the chapter title is called me and osama are close because, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows where osama bin laden is yeah well, he's been captured and dumped in the ocean, so that chapter would be that's. That's a change change?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was curious about that. That was going to be one of my questions. Is there anything 20 years later that you would, you know, say I might tweet that? That is one, yeah, yeah. That's an obvious one.
Speaker 1:I still like the chapter name, but as long as he's no longer out there, it doesn't mean it's not relevant. Yeah, longer out out there, it doesn't mean it's not relevant. Yeah, um, you know what I would do differently now if I were to write that book. Now I've learned more depth of the things that I did write and so I'd probably take things a little bit deeper that's good which comes with it.
Speaker 3:That's where um organic church part two comes in okay book.
Speaker 2:Well, that's where you do revised editions.
Speaker 4:That's right when you add the chapter. Maybe that's in the works, I don't know. Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 3:I think one thing that would be really cool for people to hear is maybe like your process of getting to because you were a pastor for some time at like a traditional church setting. What was your process and what did God take you through to get to the place where you're now at? And also in that process, like what did you have to lay down? What did he refine you on? What did he correct you on?
Speaker 1:I guess as short as possible, because I'm sure that story could last a while, but Well early on, and I do not know why this was instilled in me or how it where it came from, but I've. I've lived my entire Christian life. I came to Christ when I was 20 at university, but I've always had this desire to finish well. And so in order to finish well, you have to constantly be learning. If you stop learning, you stop growing, you stop becoming someone who will finish well. Finishing well isn't something you do at the end of your life. Finishing well is something you choose to do every day of your life. And so because of that, I've been in a process of constantly learning and growing, and God has honored that by bringing experiences into my life.
Speaker 1:So I started off on staff of a large megachurch back when there weren't as many megachurches as there are now, and we thought we could do no wrong. We thought everybody in the world should learn from us, thought we could do no wrong. We thought everybody in the world should learn from us. But the senior pastor, who was on the radio every day and writing books and very famous, left the church. He left the church and then took another church just 25, 30 miles away and our church went from 3,500 to 600 in a year and that other little church went from 600 to 3,500 in that same year and I began to realize it wasn't the ministry we were doing, it was the personality behind the pulpit. That was my first eye-opener to hey, this is not right.
Speaker 1:And I became pastor of a church for about 10 years in a suburban area and in that time I developed. I always had a passion for mission, discipleship, and during that time I was asked to lead church planting in Southern California, arizona, for the denomination I once was a part of. So with that we started planting churches. What really we say? Planting churches.
Speaker 1:What we really were doing was planting worship services, but we wouldn't use that language, we didn't know better at the time. No one did House church was not something anyone did, except maybe in China or India Right, wherever there was persecution but not in the States. So we recruited people, we trained them, we sent them off, we coached them and we sent off a church planning team, two full-time pastors. We sent 35 people of our 100 people church and $100,000. And in less than 12 months the church that we planted died. And I often tell people that was the best $100,000 I ever spent, because it forced me to go back to the Bible and ask what does it say about planting churches? It turns out it never tells you to plant a church. It tells you to plant the gospel. It tells you to plant Jesus, and then Jesus said I'll build my church. Thank you very much. You make disciples. So it shifted everything for us and we began to just make disciples and we developed something called Life Transformation Groups which multiplied quickly and easily and spread all over the world actually read, all over the world, actually.
Speaker 1:And then I actually took a church planter assessment to see if I was a church planter and I failed the assessment. It's a true story. So I thought, okay, well, I won't be a church planter, I will just resource those who do. And finally I wrote a resource called Raising Leaders for the Harvest with Bob Logan, and that was a seminal publication. It changed a lot for people. It was probably the first publication where it said, hey, we're not to make churches, we're to make disciples, and how to do that? Yeah, and that came out in 95. Wow, wow, yeah, I was six.
Speaker 1:You were six. There you go. That's so funny. I was just a little older.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just a little older. Did you not read that, brooke? No, yeah, is that part of your curriculum?
Speaker 1:That's so funny Raising leaders for the harvest. When that book came out, god told me to plant a church and I said, no Lord, I can't, I didn't pass my assessment.
Speaker 1:So instead of striking me dumb or something like that, he sent me back to the same guy to assess me and I took the assessment a second time and it's one of the highest church planter assessments I've ever read, and I read a lot because they were all going through me for the church planting work. So the good news is you get more than one assessment in life and hopefully you're improving in between.
Speaker 1:So then I trained a young man to take over the leadership of the church that I was at, and after a year of training I took my family. We moved to Long Beach to start a church. We wanted to reach young people and that's always been my calling in life.
Speaker 1:I can't escape it we moved to long beach so that we could be in the city, because I'm an urban kid and so we could be where there's lots of young people, there's a huge university and a huge college there, and so I could be by the beach. For obvious reasons like baptism- right, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So we moved to long beach, california, and, uh, we were going to start a cafe and instead, uh, god showed up. We actually rented the space and had a whole team delegated. We're we're going to make the coolest christian cafe you could do, but not too christian right you know, just subtle and then God showed up in the meeting.
Speaker 1:We all felt his presence and he asked a simple question why start a coffeehouse? Why not go to the coffeehouse where they're already at? And you know, as a strategy, his plan was a lot cheaper it's cheaper to buy a cup of coffee than a cafe Right, and more reproducible. So we did that. We started going to a cafe and people started coming to Christ. In fact, everyone in the cafe did. And then we moved to another cafe and that old one went out of business.
Speaker 1:We started seeing a lot of people come to Christ, make disciples, and we were baptizing them almost weekly in the ocean. And every time we baptized someone, someone else would jump in the water and want to come to Christ and get baptized, weekly in the ocean. And every time we baptize someone, someone else would jump in the water and want to come to Christ and get baptized. And finally I said, okay, let's bring. We had enough musicians. Now we could form a worship band. That's the goal of it all. So we pulled everyone together, launched a worship service and nobody came, Did that three times, nobody came. Finally I said Lord, why is no one coming? He says why don't you ask them? So, like any good missionary, I asked the indigenous people why they didn't want to come to my worship service and they said we love the disciple making, we love the house church.
Speaker 1:We call it an organic church kind of like you guys do, but we don't see any need for that thing, that event. Wow. And God was teaching us to be missional. That's why we're not going to be attractional. You come to our cafe. Instead, we go to your cafe. Yep.
Speaker 1:And then he taught us to be decentralized so that we weren't saying everybody in our movement or church has to come to the same event once a week. So we ended up sending within a year there were people in San Francisco and Portland, oregon and Salt Lake City and Indiana and Paris, france, and Marseille, france, and then granddaughter churches in Chiang Mai, thailand, and Seattle, washington, and it it became clear that this was something God was doing and we were just following along and I'm glad we.
Speaker 1:you know I don't think I'm all that smart, but one of the strengths I have is I'm willing to learn when things don't work right and pay attention. So, that's kind of how we got there. We stumbled into it and it became launched a movement.
Speaker 2:That's so cool, Do you think? Um, cause that's a powerful statement there, like learning to recognize when things aren't working. Um, I feel like in the church at large, we kind of bang our heads up against the same wall. Um, do you think the reason that the church isn't recognizing what we're doing is not working is because we have the wrong, we're measuring the wrong thing, or we have the wrong goal, or why do you think, like we're just not seeing it, we're we continue to put band-aids on something that probably needs to be completely changed.
Speaker 1:Well, the problem is when you, when you measure the wrong thing, then everything you do is aiming at the wrong target. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so when the goal is to get more people in the building instead of transforming people outside the building, then you will do everything you can to get more people. Jesus told the parable of the soils. He said there's four kinds of soils. One of them never receives the message, but there are three that receive the message and only one bears fruit. There's one that's shallow soil. They don't have enough. It's a shallow commitment. They just easily are manipulated and they don't bear fruit. And then there's the ones that are choked out by the worries of life, the deceitfulness of riches, the desire for other things, and they don't bear fruit. Only the good soil bears fruit. Well, when you make church nothing more than an event that attracts people to come between the hours of 10 and noon on Sunday and that's all churches Then you actually revel in having more bad soil.
Speaker 3:Yes, I guess, because that's what you're attracting, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the one who has the most bad soil wins. And suddenly you go on the road doing seminars and writing books about how to get more bad soil, and never is the church actually bearing fruit. It's never reproductive. Fruit is always about reproduction. The fruit of an apple tree is not an apple. The fruit of an apple tree is more apple trees. That's right yeah.
Speaker 1:And so if you want a fruitful church, then your disciples have to make more disciples. But that's never going to happen if they're consumers. And I think and this might sound a little harsh, but one of the reasons so many churches don't reproduce is god's smart and he doesn't want more of them- wow, that's a good one. They don have health. We need to get back to health instead of measuring how many bodies warm bodies are in the pews.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that makes complete sense.
Speaker 1:You will find and we could talk about this in another episode or something but each of the five gifts of Ephesians, 4.11 has a different way of measuring success, and all those ways are right. We are just dominated by one measurement, the numbers thing, and that's kind of an evangelist criteria and that's not to be thrown out, but it cannot be the whole thing.
Speaker 2:No, that makes more sense, because sometimes I feel like it is that it's like well, it's either one or the other, but we're just not taking into consideration. Obviously you could have fruitfulness in that you can have a large number of disciples making disciples. That would be good for everybody. But when you're just focused on one thing, no, that makes total sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I've got to say this you don't want to kick out anyone who's not good soil. Jesus said love one another, and Jesus said love your neighbor, and he also said love your enemy.
Speaker 1:So I'm pretty sure we're supposed to love bad soil just as much as we love good soil, but the difference is we don't put the bad soil behind the driver's seat, where they drive the way we do church, and I used to feel that way. I used to think we'd see 10 people come to Christ. We'd get all teary-eyed, we'd have baptisms, everybody would be excited, but six months later there's only two people that are still there.
Speaker 1:I would think I did something wrong and so I'd start to change the way we do church to get them to come back, and by doing that I'm letting bad soil dictate the way church is formed, and that's what's happened across the West, where bad soil is determining what church is like, and that's why we have churches putting on shows and having good childcare and easy parking and shorter sermons and more stories and better music that you like.
Speaker 3:Good coffee shops. Good coffee shops, yeah.
Speaker 1:Bowling alleys.
Speaker 3:Yes, arcades, we've seen that, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's become a means, a place of spiritual goods and services for people. And then people walk away thinking I didn't like the music there and you know I didn't know the music was for you.
Speaker 2:Right, that's so good, no, that makes sense. I, um, there's something that you said I don't know where you've said it, but I remember you saying it's really impacted me and her in the way that we, the way that we look at discipleship and knowing that, uh, you know, we only have time to pour into so many people. And what you said was, uh, don't and it seems counterintuitive but don't, invest in potential, because everyone has potential. Invest where you have, where you see fruit. And, um, I feel like that that is in align with a lot of what you were saying. It made me think that, as you were saying, that I'm like not does not only does it attract bad soil, but seemingly, even in our case, it drives out the good soil.
Speaker 1:That's right it does well. That's why they you know. Let's say, 80 of the work is done by 20 of the people you know one quarter of the people are good soil and the rest are not, and so you know. Another thing we say is you know, my lawn is made of Augustine grass, and sometimes, you know, during droughts in California, we don't water our lawns. And so it dies, and then you have one spot of green. Don't water the dead stuff. Water the green spot and let it grow.
Speaker 1:So good, so look for the life and pour your life, your resources, everything you have there, and let it grow so good. So look for the life and pour your life, your resources, everything you have there, and multiply it, spread it, rather than trying to resurrect something that's not alive.
Speaker 2:That is so good.
Speaker 2:And it's so true to our experience I know, brooke, you can speak for this as we found ourselves in the beginning getting so worn out, chasing people that weren't interested, and I don't know if you've said or I've heard it elsewhere, but like uh, uh, I've heard the pastor's job described as uh, basically his job is to convince people who don't want to be convinced, or motivated. Motivated people and uh, it's, it's it. It breaks my heart, honestly, for leaders and pastors and those people in in in those places because places, because they're fighting for that, and then the people that are actually hungry are getting neglected because they're fine.
Speaker 1:You'd be surprised what people will do for Jesus that they won't do for your church's mission statement. And so if we just let Jesus be Jesus to the good soil, you know, if you're not motivated by Jesus, if the death, burial and resurrection of this man of God who turned the world upside down is not enough to motivate you, I'm pretty sure my sermon's going to fall short.
Speaker 3:That's for sure.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to be able to compete with that. So I stopped. I stopped chasing people who weren't motivated and I have had people that I love dearly walk away, but I let them walk. And Jesus did the same. The rich young ruler he says he really loved that guy but he let him walk away. And I think we have to get to the place where we can say he who has ears to hear, let him hear, and not busy ourselves trying to make people listen to things, trying to conform people's behavior to a certain standard. That is not the commission Jesus gave us, that is not what Jesus died for.
Speaker 1:That's not what he rose for. There's more, and so the idea of looking for the good soil and running with that is a big part of my life.
Speaker 3:I think it's so counterintuitive to the culture, though, especially like where we're at, you know, in the US. I feel like, since we've been established as a country, like every year, it's like let's lower the standard a little more so nobody gets left behind. Let's, you know, lower the standard even more so that people all feel welcomed, or whatever the case may be. And I feel like we've created a society now that everybody feels like they should be babied, you know, or catered to. And that's where I think we have to realize the gospel is not for catering to your preference, your needs, your desires, but it's really you dying to yourself so that you can actually be qualified for the kingdom of God, and I think that's what our culture has created. So I think that's what's replicated in our churches now is okay. If the people aren't coming, where can I stoop to their level? Now, jesus stooped to people's levels, did he not? But he didn't lower the standard for anyone, even the ones he loved the most. So I think that's such a good point to realize.
Speaker 3:I think that's where pastors are, why they're exhausted and overwhelmed and frustrated, to be honest, because we get to meet a lot of pastors and they're worn out. There's no joy, they're not excited. I meet a lot of pastors and they're worn out. There's no joy, they're not excited. But I think again, going back to you know their livelihood is attached to a paycheck. It's really hard sometimes. Or even just humbling themselves and saying like hey, maybe I'm doing something wrong is really sad. But it's so good to hear. Because do you feel? I'm sure there's days you're tired, but when you see the gospel work I've told that to people so many times like you can't convince me that Jesus doesn't work. I've seen it thousands of times over that he transforms lives from the inside out.
Speaker 2:And. But if you don't see the gospel work that's when you start putting methods and models.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, so yeah, well, you can feel that way. I mean, you can give the gospel to a bunch of people and see no one respond and eventually you start to think is this actually real? And I always go back to one thing it changed my life. It worked at least once it worked for me, so I'm going to keep with it, because it's done everything for me.
Speaker 3:That's so good.
Speaker 1:I always try to imagine and I know this is imagination so this is not real, but I try to imagine the first outreach committee meeting in some brick building somewhere where they try to say we've got to reach this community for Christ, what are we going to do? And somebody said let's invite them to church, let's make them get up on Sunday morning early and dress up and come here and sing songs, love songs to a man they don't know and have an offering, and have them listen to a lecture that's going to win them to Christ. Wow, I mean, who really wants that? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sounds like college. How did we ever get to the idea where that is the strategy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:Somewhere along the lines that has to change. And then you end up with a. I mean the idea of and this might step on some toes, please excuse me, it's meant in loving jest, but we have bands that rehearse for the service Can you actually practice worship? I mean, what I mean by this is rehearse it so that you get better at it, so that when you finally actually worship God, he might accept it Is that what's happening?
Speaker 1:Or are you actually worshiping while you're rehearsing? And if so, why are you rehearsing? Why not just worship? There's this whole thing, and I began to realize that when bands rehearse, it's not because God has such a high standard of music. And they've began to realize that when bands rehearse, it's not because God has such a high standard of music and they've got to meet that standard. Yeah. It's because the people in the audience do. Wow. And I'm not sure that that's worship. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or if it is worship, it's worshiping the wrong God and I really think that these things people don't ask these questions, they just go along with it, and at some point I just began to ask these questions and it just sort of turned everything upside down for me.
Speaker 3:When we first started our community back in North Carolina, that was one of the first things the Lord said to us was because we actually led worship, we were one of the first things the Lord said to us was because we actually led worship.
Speaker 3:We were one of those and we can't even really sing that well or play that well. But we got stuck in that position for a while and I remember the first thing when the Lord told us to step out of the institutional concept and go more organic was to not do worship at all for a while. Musical.
Speaker 1:Musical worship.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he said to like we needed to actually detox from worship being a song that we practice and rehearse but actually worship being a life. That was laid down, um, like a sacrifice to God and obedience to the Lord. And we got a lot of kickback. And we still have people that are like, can we plan a worship sesh? And I'm like, oh, I just can't, I can't do it. I have to. I have to evaluate the.
Speaker 3:Why do we feel the need to do that? I'm like I just can't, I can't do it. I have to evaluate the. Why do we feel the need to do that? I'm like God has angels singing day and night Hallelujah. We're down here on a mission. Let's actually obey Him with our lives and make that more of a worship than three songs and a sermon. So that's one thing that people have a very hard time is removing worship to being what pleases God, you know. So I think that's a really good point and it's kind of confirming to me that like maybe we weren't 100% off on that, you know, but that unchurching process is so uncomfortable for a lot of people when they're used to three songs and an emotional stir, you know, to feel connected to God.
Speaker 2:There's something you said and this is in regards to leadership, which I know we'll probably talk about it another time, but there's a statement you made that that the church leaders would be better off to sit at the feet of a farmer than to study with a CEO? Um, why can you elaborate on that? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, there's no business model of church in the New Testament. There is no CEO type in the New Testament, so what you do have is a farmer went out to sow his seeds. That's repeated oftentimes. Every analogy of church is organic in nature. Even when it says it's a building, it's made of living stones. So it's all organic in its approach and that's why I chose the word organic church to describe it, because it starts with a seed. It grows naturally from the inside out by replication of cells.
Speaker 1:And that's what the kingdom of God is meant to be. So I think we could learn more from the farmer Our early days, the training, Paul Kack was the teacher on our APES team and he and I developed the original material together and he did his PhD thesis on Wendell Berry, the poet farmer. So there's a lot of influence from Wendell Berry and these thoughts, and he was all about the farm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting, that makes sense. We, a lot of people, a lot of the of the, obviously I think you know, at least on this podcast, we we've actually received a lot more positive feedback than we thought um, but a lot of the negative feedback is similar to we'll go into too much detail but similar to what you received in your talk, uh, on houston, with in houston, uh, the kickback is, but I see god working in this and so it's not a lot of like pointing to scripture and saying like well, this is what scripture says, but this has been my experience and God is working in this. Why would we disturb this?
Speaker 3:Why can't we do both?
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of like okay, I see where you're coming from, but why don't we just do both? You know what would be your response to that.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know that. We have had enough experience in church world to evaluate when God is actually working. So for us, if people get teary-eyed or weep, then God is at work. Yeah. But Paul writes there's tears of repentance and there's tears of sorrow, and they're not the same thing. Repentance is a change of mind, and when your mind changes, your actions follow. And if there's not change in your life, if there's not transformation occurring, I'm not sure God is working. Just because people are crying or laughing.
Speaker 1:But I fall into that same trap. When I'm talking and suddenly everybody's weeping or suddenly everybody's laughing, I feel like I'm doing the right thing. I'm not sure that's actually it. I think we don't measure success in the seats. We measure it on the streets, when we get out there and we start seeing transformation of homes and neighborhoods, and nations, then we know God's at work.
Speaker 2:So I think. So it's almost like the theme of what you're saying is number one you know, a lot of this is a living, breathing thing, it's not something that you can constrain and box in. And number two, it's so funny because, you know, jesus taught this little thing about upside down kingdom, and yet it seems like everything you're talking about is upside down to what we're used to in the world of of of of church, and so we're actually maybe where we need to start, or where maybe people need to start, is changing our target. Yeah and yeah, and you, you say a lot, you, you, you know, um, a lot about, like even in your, in your, your, if you, if you want to call it a definition of of church, can you tell me what that, what that definition you have is?
Speaker 1:yeah sure so when I was in seminary, I was given a definition of five things. Sometimes it's nine marks or sometimes it's seven things, but it but it's a list of ingredients, because actually the Bible never defines church Right. Nowhere in the New Testament does it define church. It only describes it. Right.
Speaker 1:And when it describes it, it does it with snapshot pictures. I was told it was when the believers gathered together regularly and they consider themselves a church and they have qualified elders and they practice baptism, communion some would add church discipline, and they have an evangelistic purpose and they preach the word and they have sound doctrine, those types of things. Sure, and I began to look at that and think you're just making up ingredients. In fact, nowhere in the Bible does it say you have to think you're a church to be a church. Right, even when you don't think you're church, you're probably still church. I mean, I would imagine that parachurch organizations like Crew or InterVarsity, they gather together, they worship the Lord, they preach the gospel, they have communion. No, they don't have communion together. They don't baptize so, because they don't get wet and they don't eat crackers and thimbles juice. They're not the church and I just don't think that God looks down from heaven. That's what he thinks.
Speaker 1:I mean he sees his people. So, and the worst thing about that list is not what's on it, but what isn't on it. Jesus never made the list. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I don't know how you do church without Jesus. But the truth is, if you can define church without Jesus, then you can do church without Jesus, and we have done that. So my definition of church begins with the presence of Christ. Now I understand. The Bible doesn't define it, but this is how I see it. It's the presence of Jesus among his people, called out as a spiritual family to pursue his mission on this planet. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it starts with the presence of Jesus. Now, if you look at those snapshots of church, church is a body, church is a bride church is a building, church is a branch, church is a flock, church is a field, church is a family, every one of those things. If you take Jesus out, it all falls apart. So church is a body. Well, what's a body without a head, a corpse? What is a bride that has no groom? A widow.
Speaker 1:What is a building that has no foundation Rubble? What is a flock that has no shepherd Wolf chow? I mean basically, once you remove the presence of Jesus from your understanding of church, you're dead. What is a branch that has no vine Firewood?
Speaker 3:That's so good.
Speaker 1:There's nothing to it. So we start there the presence of Jesus. Call that as a spiritual family. Now, family, I don't think, is a metaphor, it is the actual truth. It's the reality, it's the full expression of who we are, because every book in the New Testament describes the people of God as family. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Whether it's God the Father, or we are brothers and sisters or we are the household of God, it's all family, so we are meant to be a family together. But if you did church I mean if you did family the way you do church, where you see each other once a week you mostly look at the back of your brother's head while dad preaches a message and mom passes a bag to collect money and then you leave. I know some people aren't such dysfunctional families. They may prefer that, but the truth is that's not what family is that's right.
Speaker 1:Family. You need to look people in the eyes. You need to interact with one another. In fact, one of the things that's not on that list describing church is any one another, and there are 33, I think, unique individual one another. Commandments in the new testament, and not one of them made the list. Yeah, but we are also called to fulfill his mission on this planet and typically mission is a subcategory of church. Yep, it's.
Speaker 1:It's a sub-budget and it's got its own staffing or its own people or its own committee, yeah, its own board, and it's only one of the things church does, but I think that's misunderstanding it. I don't think we have a mission to fulfill for god yeah I believe god has a mission.
Speaker 1:He's asked us to join him, so I don't think the church has a mission. The mission has a church. I've heard my friend Alan Hirsch say that, so I want to give credit to that. Sure, but we join him in his mission. His mission didn't start in Acts. His mission didn't start in Matthew. His mission started in Genesis 3, when he went out seeking that which was lost. And he has been on that mission all this time and the only reason church exists is because of his mission. If there was no mission, there would be no church.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:So mission comes before the church. Your missiology should come before your ecclesiology. So I think that that's my understanding of church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so good because I feel like it's. I feel like it probably makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but in the sense of it's stripping everything down to like, what are we actually doing here? What are we here for? What does Jesus want us still here for? Otherwise he would have just zapped us up the moment we said yes to him. There's obviously something us still here for, otherwise he would have just zapped us up the moment we said yes to him. You know, there's obviously something we're here for, and what does it look like for us to to be the church and to gather the church? And the thing that's so encouraging to me and has been so encouraging to me, is the more that, um, I learned about it and I read scripture and I see the book of acts the the less um extra fluff I feel obligated to and the more freedom it feels to just be authentic with people.
Speaker 2:We had a conversation the other day, or Brooke was having a conversation with a friend back home in North Carolina and I overheard her and she said you know, can we just make disciples, cause you're just dealing with stuff and people are, you know, all this different thing. Can we just make disciples? Can we just love people and have relationships with people and stuff, and it's so freeing to me to hear this kind of broken down, uh, in a simple way it's. It's simple in the sense of it's, it there's. There's not like so many things to learn and remember. Simple in that sense, but, as you know, like actually living that out is probably more difficult than the current form, if that makes sense. It takes more. It takes more sacrifice. Uh, especially relationally, based on my experience with people like you have to get through things and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Justin's an introvert, so that's hard oh yeah, I'm an introvert too. Yeah, that's so funny.
Speaker 1:The thing is is uh, we've practiced this kind of superficial Christianity for so long and it's been okay that if someone offends you, you just don't associate with them anymore. Sure. If they step on your toes, if they betray you in some way, you just never see them again. You find a way to just avoid them. That is not what love is. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so if we want to be a loving people of God, then we need to see what relationship is like on the other side of betrayal, and that can be a stronger relationship when love prevails, but we'll never know if we don't venture there. So there has to be a willingness to love people when they hurt you, because that is the gospel. That is.
Speaker 1:Jesus. That's exactly what he did. That is who he is. We have to be the ones that love those who betray us, those who turn us in those who deny us with a kiss. That's how we have to be, or we're nothing like Jesus and we're hypocrites to the world. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's powerful and I agree with that wholeheartedly. What does that look like when there's situations Obviously we've been through many, many situations where people have hurt or rejected or come against us and stuff like that, in the sense of, does that mean doing life with that person? Does that mean running side by side in ministry with that person? I don't know if you have any kind of specific examples of how that plays out, because I know there's a lot of people that have dealt with with hurt in the church, and what does that look like to love and forgive somebody through that?
Speaker 2:Um when you still aren't in unity, moving forward, say in, you know whatever that looks like practically Right.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm now 64 years old, yeah. So, yes, I have lots of examples, not too many. I'd want to put out on YouTube, sure, but maybe the best way to point it out is in a marriage, you're going to step on each other's toes. You're going to have different values and approaches to life or ways of seeing things or ways of communicating that will be misunderstood, that will be taken the wrong way, that will cause hurt and pain that may last for years and years, and in our society, we break up over that. We divorce. Right.
Speaker 1:But for those who choose not to divorce, they have to work through it. And when they do work through it, there's an intimacy that comes on the other side, okay, that you can't manufacture with flowers and candy. It comes only through passing through the dark valleys together and coming out on the other side.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I've had people hurt me or betray me or leave me alone when I needed help and I have chosen I'm not perfect at this, but I have chosen for some of those, in some cases, to keep on loving them, keep on accepting them, keep on walking through life with them, and it's made our relationship better in the end. And I don't guarantee that people will respond well to your love Jesus did not have that guarantee but I do guarantee that if you love those who do not love you, you'll be more like christ and your life will be more fulfilling yeah
Speaker 3:I think, going back to the example you're using through marriage, you know, I think in corinthians it talks about, you know, if an unbelieving spouse is married to a believing spouse and the unbelieving spouse wants to go, like let them go and don't convince them to stay. But if they're willing to stay, like, be Christ to them is pretty much what it's saying, and I think that's the way it is in a lot of these relationships, like, if they're willing to stay and work it out with you, work it out with them, move forward, get to the other side of the betrayal or the slander, whatever the case may be, but if they're not willing to go, you can't force them to stay either, and then that's between them and the Lord. So I think that's a really good example, you know, using that. Like Paul says, be at peace with all men. As much as it depends on you, as you can be possible, yeah, as you could do, that's good, so good.
Speaker 2:Probably the last thing I want to get into before we end. This episode is something that we hadn't mentioned, and I think it's core to what what organic church is, and and and getting started in it is.
Speaker 2:That is something that I've heard you talk about a lot, and that is the DNA getting down to the DNA level. A lot of people in our current prevailing model will start at the end. You know, we'll start. What do we need to do first? We need to go into a city. We need to start. What do we need to do first? Uh, we need to go into a city, we need to find real estate, we need to get a building, Then we need to get a leadership team together and then we need to, you know, and so it's just backwards. So how would you say, um, the, the DNA works? Uh, in in organic church. And why is it important to start at that level?
Speaker 1:Well, that's life in general. I mean, all of us began as a zygote, which was a cell that was planted, that doubled and doubled again.
Speaker 1:That's where all life starts, that's where all multiplication begins and that's what forms into what we are now and our offspring and their offspring after them. So to not think about the DNA is to try and clone somebody in an unnatural form or create a monster like Frankenstein by adding this arm to this body and this head and suddenly thinking it's alive. Or another analogy I've used often is I live in California. There's a place called Legoland and they have trees built out of Legos. Now they're not alive. They don't bear fruit, they're not growing. They can provide shade, they might be impressive to look at, but they're not a living thing and you're just plugging things in from the outside.
Speaker 1:That's not how trees grow. You start with a seed and in that seed, if you open it up, you're not going to see a tiny little pine tree. You're going to see matter that contains genetic material that, once the outer decay decays and the and it's buried, it begins to sprout roots and it begins to shoot up a stem and it grows into a tree and that tree will bear fruit. That will then do the same process all over again. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's why the DNA is important. It's everything, in fact. If you don't think about the dna and you don't do it right and I don't, I'm not saying you do the dna, the dna is something that you can't create right you can't do a sermon series on the dna and suddenly everyone's going to be healthy. Um, the dna is divine truth, relationships and apostolic mission. I know it must be from God because it spells DNA in God's language, English. King James.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:It doesn't translate. It doesn't translate. But you know, Jesus did. He talk about genetics, Absolutely he did. All the time he didn't use the word deoxyribunic nucleic acid um, because that hadn't been discovered yet can you say that in hebrew?
Speaker 3:I'm just kidding, I just did, okay, yeah that wasn't english that
Speaker 2:wasn't english. I heard you just spoke english.
Speaker 1:That's right but you know he does. He did talk about. He talked about fruit. He talked about make the tree good and the fruit will be good. Make the tree bad and the fruit will be bad. That's all genetics. So he emphasized it a lot.
Speaker 1:And those three things divine truth, nurturing relationships, apostolic mission, that's the greatest commandment. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself, that's the end. And, great commission, go make disciples. It's that emphasized.
Speaker 1:You have Paul talking about it. He says there's three things Faith, that's our response to truth. Hope, that's our response to mission. Love, that's our response to relationship. So you see, throughout the New Testament, when Jesus says I am the way, the truth and the life, he is the way, that's the mission, he is the truth, divine truth, he is the life, he is the interaction, the love for one another, the relationship. This is the DNA. When he says abide in me, that's connecting with divine truth. When he says you will be one as we are one, that's nurturing relationships. He says you'll be my witnesses.
Speaker 1:That's John 15, dna. He emphasized it. When he said my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations. We are to connect with God in prayer. We are a household, family, and we are for the nations. He emphasized DNA over and over and over again. So, ultimately, jesus himself is the DNA, so he is the word. That's divine truth. God is love, he is the relationship and he is the mission, so he is the gospel, the living embodiment of Christ, so of of who God is. So if you have Jesus, in your life.
Speaker 1:You have all the DNA and it just flows from that.
Speaker 1:We leaders need to start shifting the way we approach people and stop trying to put good stuff in people and try to get the God stuff out of them, because Jesus already deposited in them the best thing in the universe and we think my book's going to help them and that's ridiculous. My sermon's going to make a difference. No, try to think. If you're a leader in the church with God's people, no matter whether it's a mission agency or an organic church or an institutional church. Your role is to find out what God's planted in them and draw it out. And that is more organic. That's find the DNA and let it have its way. Now, doing ministry without the DNA, I want to say it's hard work, it's futile work. It does not produce life, it does not produce fruit and it will cost you everything. It'll be expensive, it'll be a lot of sweat and tears and blood and in the end you'll have little to nothing to show for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But if you just plant the right seed and good soil, you don't have to do much at all. Right, it all does it by itself. In fact, jesus told the parable. The farmer sows the seed, he goes to bed at night, wakes up by day, the seed sprouts and grows all by itself. That's the Greek word atamate. Just add water.
Speaker 1:And it grows all by itself. First the stem, then the head, then the full kernel in the head and it's time for the harvest has come. The farmer doesn't have to sing songs or stand up and shout or yell at it or motivate it with a meaningful story that makes you cry yeah it just happens organically from the dna on the inside and that's that makes all the difference you need to have. That's why the dna is so important in everything we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is so good. Um well, uh, we'll end here. Uh, I'm just, I'm really thinking about the people that are listening and how they've kind of reached out to us and the the pattern of of where people are at in there. Why we love speaking to to this type of person is because we've we've walked through that journey, and that is the person that is finishing watching this episode and light bulbs are just going off.
Speaker 2:And they're like, oh my goodness. But yet that same person we've heard time after time feels like they're completely alone where they're at. Maybe they try to begin this conversation with the people around them and they look at them sideways like they're absolutely insane, make them feel like what they're thinking, what they're doing, is either unbiblical or it's rebellious. What would you say to that person to encourage them in this particular season?
Speaker 1:Well, there's a reason why I came to do this podcast with you. It's because I've been waiting for voices to speak to the people who are disenfranchised from the organizational church but feel a love for Jesus, and that's kind of. Your voices are rising in that world and I'm getting old so I can say some things. I can be the gandalf that stands up there and says you shall not pass, but I'm not the aragorn anymore who's going to be swinging the sword. Yeah, and there's. I've been waiting for those voices to arise and when they rise I want to pour as much as I can on that, because there's going to be a new move of God among people and, unlike other times in the past where it was regional, like the Welsh revival- or the great awakening.
Speaker 1:It's going to be global because it's. I travel all over the world and odd place. I'm in Azerbaijan and there's these young people who just want. They're hungry for Jesus, yeah, they want him, and and they're they're telling their friends about want, they're hungry for Jesus, they want him and they're telling their friends about Christ. They're baptizing their disciples and you give them just a simple plan and they'll go do it, but what they don't want is to stop everything and just go to church on Sunday. And so I want to see a voice, many voices, rise up that say it's okay, you don't have to follow in line with what your grandparents did.
Speaker 1:You can do something fresh and new in this day with Christ, and you should. And it's not something, in fact, it's not hard. Organic is very easy, that's the whole point of the dna, it does it all by itself. The hard part is character formation and persecution and spiritual warfare. That's hard, but the actual ministry is easy, that's right yeah, because you're not doing it. You don't carry that on your shoulders yeah so that part's easy. Sometimes it's not the learning of the new stuff that's hard, it's the unlearning of the old stuff that's hard.
Speaker 3:Sure, and that's what seems to be this podcast addresses and that needs to be said.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Amen. Well, Neil, I really appreciate your time today. I appreciate being here Just a wealth of knowledge.
Speaker 1:I think I want to cry.
Speaker 2:It was so good, you know. Just a wealth of knowledge, I think.
Speaker 3:I want to cry. It was so good, so good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. We appreciate you being here so much and we're going to link down below just some of your resources and stuff like that. I think that's probably the best way to have people. I'll talk to you afterwards with what, what information you want to put in there and if you guys want to want to find out more you're interested in more of what Neil's got going on and the wisdom and stuff. There's plenty of books and resources that he's written we would love to connect you with. So thanks again for your time today, neil.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Awesome.