Another Hero - Neil Cole


Neil Cole's book Organic Church has been very formative on my life and ministry. Through his writings, I now articulate that I want to become an expert on Prayer, Discipleship, Leadership Development, Church Planting, and starting a Movement (in that order). You can 't skip a step. However, the most powerful tool I got from him was his Life Transformation Group idea. (http://www.cmaresources.org/files/Cultivating-NeilCole-chap8.pdf). This is basically where you get groups of 2 or 3 who regularly go through 11 accountability questions, read 25-30 chapters weekly out of the Bible and pray for friends and family to meet Christ. The first year I did this I saw my one group multiply in many more. More importantly, it got me reading on a consistent basis large amounts of scripture and taught me what it is to have deep friendships with other men. I have only met him once in person in Germany at a conference, but his teachings have born much fruit in my life and ministry. I alway recommend his book(s) to people who want to get involved in church planting in a Western European context.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
(Pastor Alejandro & Mayra Lopes in a conference in Costa Rica) Yesterday I visited a Hispanic church here in Amsterdam which was celebrating the opening of its brand new temple. Iglesia El Encuentro con Dios was founded 18 years ago by Mayra Lopez, the wife of Alejandro Lopez who is now the senior pastor. Their new church building has cost them more than 2 million euros (3 million dollars). It sits in the middle of a commercial/factory zone, so you don't expect to find a building packed with 400 Latin Americans worshipping God in their native language. It is an unbelievable story. Pastor Alejandro has planted churches in the other major cities of Holland as well as in New York and the Domican Republic (his native land). What I did not expect is that yesterday he called me and two other missionary families to give us awards. One award was to an elderly American missionary who led his wife to Christ 18 years ago. I mentioned to her that she was the spiritual grandmother of so m
Read more

Ten more weeks...

Image
Ten more weeks until my due date, November the 9th, and the pregnancy is going great. I had to be tested for pregnancy diabetes, because Judah weighed 10 pounds at birth (which is usually an indicator for diabetes). But yesterday the results from that came in and my blood sugar is normal! Praise God! No sugar free diet….! We are expecting a little girl. We have picked a beautiful name…Hannah Grace. Judah calls her “Hannah Gracie”. Talking about Judah…we just celebrated his birthday on the 17th of August. He loved it! It was the first time he could realize that this was all for him and he is still singing birthday songs. He is just developing so quickly, he learns new words every day and because I speak to him in Dutch, he is picking up Dutch real fast. Here are some pictures!!
Read more

T. L. Osborn - A Man Who Made God's Message His Own

Image
Then he said, "Son of man, get all these words that I'm giving you inside you. Listen to them obediently. Make them your own. And now go. Go to the exiles, your people, and speak. Tell them , "This is the message of God, the Master.' Speak your peace, whether they listen or not."  Ezekiel 3:10-11 The Message Bible In order to effectively communicate God's message, we need to first digest them; internalize them, make them our own. When we  have allowed them to enter into the deepest recesses of my heart, then they can change us at the core of our being. Nevertheless, we must also be actively listening and internalizing how the culture around us thinks. When this takes place, we will be able to fluently speak God's words to the culture we live among in a way that they can understand. ( The late Dr. T. L. Osborn) A  good example of this comes from the life of the late T.L. Osborn. Osborn was a pioneer in mass crusade evangelism outside of the Uni
Read more