Neil Cole is a thought leader and practitioner in the organic/missional/house church movement (what are we calling it this month?). In his post Lessons Learned in the Fields, he recaps what he would do differently if he were planting again today. It’s an adaption of his own book, Organic Church.

Here are the nuggets I pulled:

• Don’t start with a large team of christians – you think it’ll accelerate the work, but it has the opposite effect
• Don’t start in your own home – find a person of peace
• Let the excitement of a new life carry the movement rather than your intelligence and persuasiveness
• Leadership recruitment is a dead end – leadership farming is what is needed
• Baptize quickly and publicly and let the one doing the evangelizing do the baptizing
• Stop being concerned about whether “Your” church plant will succeed or not – it isn’t “yours” in the first place