Simple Church

I've often looked at the life of the average cutch and wondered to myself how it managed to get this complicated. The church, in its mainline, established form, take a lot of organising. There are meetings to plan, events to arrange, rotas as to fill. Hardly surprising that one well-known church leader once said they resigned because they no longer wanted to "run the church".

I have often commented that the church is more like a garden than a business. It needs nurturing not running. But we so easily fall into maintaining our structures and meeting our internal needs, that in the end it can look more like a maintenance programme or a business plan than a mission.

So it is that I find myself wondering how to simplify church. When I first read Neil Cole's book about Organic Church I was captivated by the idea of simple church structures that allowed a more organic approach to church to flourish. It's not without its challenges for an established church, but that doesn't mean it's not worth the effort of exploration.

Two websites have come my way recently that together explore simple church and tell stories about it. If you are interested in exploring these ideas, then you might like to visit Simple Church and its related site Simple Stories.




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