Sometimes I read a book or hear a talk that makes me think just about everything else I’ve ever read or heard about it is wrong.
If the subject is something trivial like, say, what’s the best car on the market, or how to bake a souffle – who cares.
But when the book is about what you have devoted the greatest part of your adult life to, and which you intend to devote the rest of your life to, that’s either infuriating, exciting, terrifying or shattering. Or all of the above.
Yesterday I read a book that nearly did that, I read it in one sitting:
Gary Bishop’s book Darkest England and the way back in is phenomenal and very challenging, but left me with some, “Yes but hows” personally. I cried a couple of times reading it, was challenged by the terrible injustices of a nation like Britain where the poor are desperate to hear the gospel but hardly anyone goes with it, while we encourage consumerist Christianity that has a form of religion but denies its power. I manfully managed to shake the Holy Spirit off for a while enough to just watch a bit of TV before bed time. I can do that with a lot of books, even excellent ones.
This morning though, I picked up the book that is really doing it. That, “This is Jesus talking and I’ve come to screw you up” thing.
When you never want to just go and watch telly or just try to get on doing what you were doing anymore because now there’s an opportunity to do something greater than anything else and you’re invited to partake. I bought the the book a few weeks back, started it, then started something else. The time wasn’t right then, but now I feel like God’s talking off every page. I’m at 104 and can quite believe that by the time I’m finished, I will have to reassess everything in the light of this teaching.
What’s the book? Organic Church by Neil Cole.
A mutual friend of his wrote the foreword, I’m going to get in touch with Neil Cole direct if I can and talk to him about this. One constant: Everything’s changing.
One quote is all I have time for, then I’m getting back to reading this!
If any one Christian alive today were to lead just one person to Christ every year and disciple that person so that he or she would, in turn, do the same next year, it would take only about thirty five years to reach the entire world for Christ! Suddenly world transformation seems within our grasp. But it could be even closer than that. If every Christian alive today were to reproduce in the same way, the world would be won to Christ in the next two to four years. What if all of us decided to put everything else aside and focus on truly discipling another for just the next few years in a manner that multiplies? We could finish the Great Commission in just a few years.