Neil Cole
Church Multiplication Associates
www.cmaresources.org

Neil Cole is the founder of CMA and Awakenings Chapel. He is the author of Organic Church and Cultivating A Life for God. Neil spoke this morning with Dave Ferguson on the topic of Reproducing Churches. Dave started off with the statement Dream Big, Start Small. Neil is an advocate of the organic church movement of house churches. While sharing the stage together, Dave stated that the belief is that we will be able to reach 35-50% of America with churches that are culturally relevant, but the remaining 50% will be reached by organic churches that Neil advocates. One thing I have come to realize and that I have written in this blog several months ago, the seeker sensitive church movement is over. It is the time of the people sensitive church and I believe that will be played out over the next few decades through the organic church movement.

Neal asked a very probing question. The question was, “What would you do if one hundred people came to Christ in your church in one day?” “What if that number was one thousand in one week?” God wants the church to multiply and he will multiply churches that are ready for that blessing.

A few other miscellaneous notes I took from Neil’s talk.

What multiplication is NOT:
*Church planting Movement without multi-generational reproduction.
* Gathering other Christians from other churches to form one.
* Adding another service or satellite locations.
* Centralized institutions that send out church planters.

If you cannot reproduce disciples, you cannot reproduce leaders.
If you cannot reproduce leaders, you cannot reproduce churches.
If you cannot reproduce churches, you cannot see a movement.

DNA

Divine Truth: Great Commandment
Nurturing Relationships: The Second Part of Great Commandment
Apostolic Mission: The Great Commission

Your church is only good as your disciples. 2 Timothy 2:22

One of the reasons we came to this conference was to get the piece of the puzzle on how to reproduce what God is doing at Bridge Church in other locations in Lake County as well as the region of NE Ohio. We still have our hands full with Bridge Church, but I can see us launching out into multiple sites within the next two years. We will begin immediately to start to train artists and leaders that we need to send out to launch our next church. I can envision us starting four to eight other Bridge locations in Lake and Geauga counties in the next two to four years.
Darin Avery, our Pastor of Worship and Students was a house church planter in the Cincinnati area before coming to Bridge Church and has a heart for the organic church planting movement. Darin is a great asset to us at Bridge and will be able to use his skills and experience to help Bridge as we explore house churches in the future.