Quotes from "Houses That Change The World"

One of the great, all-time, paradigm shifting reads for me in the areas of church reformation, global Christianity, and church planting in general is Wolfgang Simson's Houses that change the world: The return of the house churches. The book has been around for nearly ten years, but for those who haven't yet gotten hold of a copy, here are a few quotes (lifted out of their original context) that give a taste of what is inside the 299 pages of this "must read" book...

• The devil's plan has long been for the pastors to stand in one corner, the prophets in the other corner looking out of the window, the teachers sitting in the library, the evangelists drinking coffee outside and the apostles roaming overseas.

• It is no surprise to me that churches who are not built on apostolic and prophetic foundations (Eph.2:20) have no apostolic and prophetic mind-set.

• The number of people alive today--more than 6 billion--is more than all those in history combined. If ever we needed to recover a New Testament church to disciple the nations, now would be a good time.

• Over the millenia, the great divide in Christianity has never really been between denominations, Catholics and Protestants, or charismatics or non-charismatics, but always between Spirit and Flesh.

• The core reason Christians come together is to share and transfer life, and since life is not predicatable, their meetings are not really predicatable also.

• We need to stop asking God to bless what we are doing, and start doing what he is blessing.

• We have all the right pieces. The Word of God, people, houses, prayer, motivation, money. But could it be that we put them all together according to a wrong original?

• There are more than 22,000 denominations in the world. How lucky are you that you happen to be just in the right one!

• The quickest way to "church the un-churched" may very well be to un-church the Church.

• Unlimited growth is not the ideal--multiplication is. The fruit of an apple tree is not an apple, but another apple tree. The fruit of a church is not a convert, but other churches that plant other churches.

• Statistically, usually 1 out of 100 who "makes a decision for Christ" in evangelistic meetings (rallies, conventions, crusades) will actually start attending a church.

• It is a fact of church history that it has always been a swift step from organized religion to institutionalism and fossilization.

• If real church growth is spelled m-u-l-t-i-p-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n, then growth may not be upwards at all, but sideways.

• Most changes in history come from quite unbalanced persons, radical in most senses. Very little innovations and true and radical changes were initiated by committees and boards; most came from visionary people who saw what no one saw, said, what no one dared to say, and did what was "forbidden" and taboo at their time.

Have you read the book? What did you think of it? Which of the above quotes speak to you? Do you have any of your own favorites?