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Church 3.0: An Interview with Author, Neil Cole
By Charlie Wear

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[I had a chance to sit down with Neil Cole, author of Organic Church, Organic Leadership, and Search and Rescue. The topic was his new book, Church 3.0]

Charlie Wear: Neil, what was the target audience for Church 3.0?

Neil Cole: Well, in my mind I was thinking about pastors and leaders of churches that want to think more about doing church organically, but they have tons of questions that are keeping them back. Church 3.0 also is very helpful for those who have launched out already doing it, and they're reaching the point where, "Well, what do I do about this? What do I do about that?"

So it's helpful on both those bases. Now I've traveled enough and been labeled the house church guy so many times, and really, Organic Church is not a model. It's not only house church. It's something that's working in all kinds of churches. So I did also want people to read this and realize I'm talking about all different models. I'm talking about a mindset of church, not a model.

Charlie: Is this the kind of thing you might get in a training like your Greenhouse training and you put in a book, or is it to supplement that kind of thing?

Neil: Most of what's in this book is not in the "Greenhouse" you've been a part of. "Organic Church" did that, and then Search and Rescue did that. "Organic Leadership" did that a little bit. This is a little bit beyond. There may be a few things that are from the Greenhouse. If you've been through a "Greenhouse," there will be a couple of times reading the book that this is familiar. But overall, it's addressing things that we haven't really done in our trainings. We've experienced, we've thought through, we might have taught on different occasions, but it's not part of, really, a "Greenhouse."

Charlie: Let's say I'm a recent graduate of a seminary, just purchased "Church 3.0." What kind of a budget do you think I need for my first year to starting a chuch?

Neil: Oh, something in the zero range would be fine. [laughs] It doesn't cost a dime to make a disciple, but it does cost your life. If you're willing to sacrifice your life, you can start a movement of churches. But it's not money that's necessary to do this.

Charlie: So you don't worry about money? How do you handle money? And do you tithe, or how does that work in the Organic Church?

Neil: Well, there's a chapter in there on finances. Much of the way the church addresses money is really more of our bias of our need in the institution. It reflects more our needs in the institution than it does what the scriptures actually say. And so I address that a little bit in one of the chapters.

Charlie: Let me back up a little bit. I mean, this seminary guy, he's just put maybe $10,000 into an education.

Neil: That's a cheap seminary degree.

Charlie: OK, $30,000. The seminary I'm going to open is only going to be $20,000.

Neil: OK.

Charlie: How's he going to make a living in this kind of a process?

Neil: Well, I think one of the things that has crippled the Church in America, in the West, is the idea that we need professional Christians to make it happen. So in order for us to upgrade, we are going to have to stop relying on professional Christians. So we need to stop seeing Christian leadership as a career choice.

Jesus did not die on the cross and rise from the dead so you could have a nice career. It's really about a crucified life, and trusting God to provide for our needs. So I think that what we really need is people who are not doing it because it's the next step on the ladder of their career, but because it's what Christ asks of them, and they're willing to trust him with their supply.

Now, a lot of people are going to be pressed to the edge: "How do I meet my family's...?" - I have been there. I have had three, four jobs at a time in my life. I've thrown papers. I've had to get up at 3:00 in the morning to throw papers. I've had to manage properties. I've had to illustrate books. I've had to write books. I've done - there has never been a time in my Christian service where I wasn't doing two or three things to make ends meet. I think that should be the norm, not the exception.

Charlie: Well I hear what you're saying if you're talking to the seminary student, but do you think that should be the norm for just, like, a regular Christian?

Neil: Yeah. Well, sometimes I'll share this stuff and there will be someone who's a leader, a Christian leader out in the audience, and there's always a funny response. They'll come up to me and say, "Well, what am I going to do for a living?" And I'll look at them, I won't even say anything, and he says, "I'm going to have to get a job." Well, welcome to the world.

Now, I'm not saying that what you're doing in the Church is not a job, but there's coming a time where churches will not be able to afford pastors or buildings. The recession is going to hit us hard. That's the rest of the world we're joining in, and that's the way Christianity has been from the beginning. Wherever the Church is dependent upon professional leaders, the Church is not moving. It's sedentary. Only when the average Christian, the ordinary Christian carries the extraordinary gospel to their workplaces, to their neighborhoods, and to the nations, is there a movement.

So I'm not saying being supported in leadership is wrong. There are those in the "New Testament" supported. I understand that. They are not supported as a rookie. They're told to go out and do the work first. When they have proven that and there are fruitful churches that have been planted, then they have a support base under them. And it's earned on the fields, but it's not necessarily the first thing - you don't get to pass the bar exam and then automatically get a job.

Charlie: So here we are at the - I guess some people are saying this is the first national Missional Community Conference, Verge 2010. There are lots of people from churches, I'm sure, of all sizes, what I would call legacy churches, traditional churches, normal churches. They've got Sunday services, maybe they have elders and deacons and that sort of thing. What does "Church 3.0" say to these people?

Neil: Well, it comes straight out and says, "We need to upgrade church." It's not just change the structure or change the strategy. That's not enough. We need a new operating system to begin with. And so I think we need to approach churches... A lot of us think, "Well, if I just get the right program or we organize the right methodology, it's going to fix everything. We'll take off." Or, "We're so big because we have the right programs." Both of those ways of thinking are wrong.

And so with "Church 3.0," it's a change of mindsets so that we see the Church as a Kingdom movement that goes into the world and expands by life change. Now, that's not opposing any model of church. Now, if you start from scratch using our principles, you will end up - by planting seeds, you'll start multiplying disciples and spiritual families, meeting in homes, in places of business, on university campuses. And they'll form networks that will start other networks, and it will look like a simple church network.

But everything we teach you can apply in a megachurch or a small community church. It can work in any model, and it can bring transfusion, life, to that model if it's applied, not as a method, but if people start to clue in, connect with the DNA. The DNA is that they're just connecting with God, one another, and the world with love. I mean, that's really what 3.0 is.

Charlie: Are there many churches that are transitioning or have transitioned and are seeing transformation and blossoming?

Neil: Absolutely. You know, we don't have all the answers, but we are seeing people beginning the process. Megachurches and medium-size churches and microchurches are all getting on board with this. At this conference you've got churches of 6,000 7,000 10,000 members, and their pastors are saying, "We've got to make some changes. This is just not cutting it." And they're willing to pay the price. Then we've got ordinary-sized churches doing the same.

Then we've got microchurches, house churches that are not multiplying, that are not missional, needing to make some changes. Just because you meet in a home doesn't mean you've upgraded your operating system. It could just be, "Honey, I shrunk the church," and just because you're meeting in a living room doesn't make you suddenly effective.

The mission for my organization, for my life, is to reproduce healthy disciples, leaders, churches, and movements, and it must be in that order. You cannot go from the top down and trickle down to the disciple. You have to start with the seed, not the tree. So if you really want to get started, you can start with any one of my books.

But I've written two books on multiplying disciples; that's "Search and Rescue," and "Cultivating a Live for God." I've written two books about leadership; that would be "Organic Leadership," and "Truth Quest." There's also "Raising Leaders for the Harvest," which is an old resource. And then there are two on the Church, which would be "Organic Church" and "Beyond Church Planting." And now this is the first one, really, on movements.

So we're getting to the point where it's time to actually talk about movements. And what this is is it's an insider's point of view on movements. There are some outstanding books on the market on movements. Alan Hirsch's book "Forgotten Ways" is exceptional. David Garrison's book "Church Planning Movements," and then Steve Addison has come out with a new one called "Movements that Change the World."

But in all those cases, it's a scholar analyzing a movement from the outside, which comes up with an external characteristics of what's there. Alan Hirsch's does a good job of getting inside, but it's still an observer's point of view in a sense. "Church 3.0" is an insider's perspective. It's dealing with the questions we have had to deal with in order to actually accomplish a releasing of movements. So it has a different take. It's not the better take, but a different one, because it does come across as very practical.

Charlie: So, now is there any material that you had to leave out of this book but you really would have liked to have included?

Neil: Yeah. Actually, there were two chapters cut out. [laughs] As thick as it is, there were actually two other chapters. One is on evaluating church, what's the scorecard? How do you know if you're successful or not? In each chapter I take on the way we used to do it and say, "Here's how we can upgrade." So I did that with the lifespan and success of the church.

Then another chapter I took out was on naming churches. Believe it or not, I actually wrote "How do we name our church?" Well, the question is "Why are you naming the church?" You really don't have the place to choose a name. Naming something, in the Bible, is not a little thing. It's an important thing, and it's from Genesis on. You don't have to go very far in the Bible before names are important. And the naming of something is an indication that you have authority over it, that you're the boss of it in a sense.

Well, when we name our churches, and we find all these cool names, we're in a sense saying, "I have the authority here." And I don't think we are the head: Jesus is. So I think it's an interesting chapter. I enjoyed it. It even had some humor in it. But if you're going to cut a chapter out, that's probably a good chapter to cut out.

You can find all the information from those two chapters on my blog, which is Coleslaw. Just do a search on Google, you'll find it. But it didn't make the cut on the book.

Charlie: Well Neil, thanks so much for talking to me.

Neil: You're welcome.

Charlie: The book is "Church 3.0" by author Neil Cole.

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