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Neil Cole’s newest book Church3.0: Upgrades for the Future of the Church is releasing this week, just in time for the Verge2010 Conference.  As a fan of Neil’s work, I’ve been eagerly anticipating this contribution to the organic church conversation since I first heard he had another book in the works.

It seems like everybody today is trying to get in on the organic conversation.  And, of course,  it’s all Neil’s fault.  With his book Organic Church, Neil described a model of small house churches and captured the imagination of many.  Following Organic Church, his book Organic Leadership spells out scriptural principles of leadership that work regardless of the size of the church, and in Search and Rescue Neil describes what organic discipleship looks like and how it functions.

Now, in Church3.0, Neil gives us an ecclesiology of the organic church. But the application of Neil’s message is not limited to organic/simple/house churches.  Church3.0 offers a vision of a new future for existing churches that are seeking to make the transition how they understand and structure themselves, and how they do ministry today.

The key to the future, he says, is not just tinkering with the church’s existing operating system. What we’ve got to do is a complete upgrade to an entirely new version of how we define our mission, engage activities, and make disciples.

Neil is not afraid to be blunt in his assessment of the conventional church:

One of the reasons I believe our conventional churches are not multiplying is because God doesn’t want to multiply them. Frankly he doesn’t want more of the problems we currently face. (p. xiv)

What we do not need–and what will not work–is simply finding more and better ways of doing the same things we’ve been doing. What we need is a “transfusion” of what Neil calls an of an healthy, biblical DNA:

• Divine Truth
• Nurturing Relationships
• Apostolic Mission

Beginning with an exploration of  New Testament models of church (Jerusalem, Antioch, Thessalonica, Rome, and Ephesus), Neil then turns to a discussion of a more decentralized model that has been documented in Church Planting Movements–the rapid, indigenous (organic) multiplication of churches that is taking place around the world. After defining some characteristics which consistently appear within these churches,  Neil shares practical wisdom on a range of questions–how to handle children, how to prevent doctrinal heresy, how to handle finances, baptism and communion–drawn from his many years of leading organic churches.

In short, Church 3.0 is a passionate plea to rethink the Church in order for it to do more effectively what it was commissioned to do by Christ: Go into all the world, reach those who are far from God, and then disciple them to go into the world so that the cycle repeats itself.

Church 3.0 is not a spiritual Happy Meal for a franchised McChurch.  It’s solid meat-and-potatoes for those who want to get serious about advancing the Kingdom!

Note: Even though the Federal Trade Commission (by its own admission) has no idea how they are going to enforce it, they now require that I “clearly and conspicuously” disclose that I received a courtesy  copy of  Church 3.0 from the publisher for this review.  I also need to tell you that if you click on the links above, they will take you to my affiliate page at Amazon.com.  If you order any of Neil’s books through those links, I will receive a small amount of compensation (in the form of credit with Amazon) for your purchase.  If I do not bore you with these banalities, they could come and fine me up to $11,000.  It must have been a slow day inside the Beltway when they came up with these regulations!

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