Leading by creating a gospel culture
More quotes from Organic Church by Neil Cole …
Leadership in an organic church multiplication movement never prescribes the work but instead describes it, allowing great diversity and multitudes of expression, all containing and contained by the original DNA. There is order but not control. There is leadership but not micromanagement. There is accountability of relationship but not subjugation. There is not delegation of authority but distribution of it. Dependence and independence are replaced with a healthy interdependence of the many expanding member communities. (134)
In a top-down hierarchical structure, delegation of authority is important. But there is a vast difference between delegated authority and distributed authority. All authority comes from God. True authority is recognized and granted from those who follow; however, sometimes that authority is forced by position, power, or even the threat of violent enforcement. This is how the world operates, but the Kingdom of God is not to be that way. (134)
Cole speaks about the DNA of church and mission – a pattern, he says, which must meet three criteria if it is to spread epidemically:
- Received personally. It has a profound implication: it must be internalised and must transform the soul of the follower.
- Repeated easily. It has a simple application: it must be able to be passed on after only a brief encounter.
- Reproduced strategically. It has universal communication: it must pass on globally by being translated into a variety of cultural contexts and languages. (110-111)
