Two Years Back

This article on Organic Church Movements is from May 2004, but it is worth the read. The article mentions 400 simple churches . . . . I believe that it is now closer to 700. Part of he artricle states:

In 1999, Cole jettisoned his traditional pulpit ministry in Alta Loma, California, to launch Awakening Chapel--founding it literally in the smoking section of The Coffee Tavern in Long Beach, an urban beach town southwest of Los Angeles. In a little more than four years, the crew he gleaned from the smokers' ranks on the patio at The Coffee Tavern has ballooned into a movement of 400 churches in 16 states and 12 countries.

I think one of the key words here is 'jettisoned'. There is a sense in which Neil could have never done what he set out to do without radically changing what he was currently doing. All to often I believe we want to simply adjust what we have and our minor surgery is never enough to truly bring radical change. We may have to kill what is in order to birth what could be.