I've Been Thinking About This…

Finished these books last year (the links include my Amazon Associate number, so if you want to buy the book click through the link. You don’t pay any more, and I get a teeny tiny bit ): Church Marketing 101: Preparing Your Church for Greater Growth by Richard Reising

Readability: 7

Insight: 8

Practicality: 8

A great book about using excellence and common sense in helping people to find value in your church. ‘Marketing’ doesn’t have to be all about our perceptions of sleaze-ball Madison Avenue hard-sell. This is about connecting and communicating. A great book – lots to learn in here.

“The battle for growth is first fought in the hearts of churchgoers who want to better the lives of those around them”

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Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan

Readability: 8

Insight: 5

Practicality: 7

Much of what Chan is writing here is obvious. I don’t mean that slightingly. Sometimes we need to have the obvious thrust upon us because we’ve ignored it for too long. Sometimes it’s time to recognize that, just because a whole bunch of people say something, it doesn’t make them right.

“To put it bluntly, when you get your own universe, you can make your own standards. When we disagree, let’s not assume it’s His reasoning that needs correction.”

His chapter on lukewarm people is particularly damning, but the encouragement throughout the rest of the book is powerful – what does “God is Love” really mean? What do people who are obsessed with God do and think? If you’re really in love with God, life gets different.

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C.S. Lewis In A Time Of War by Justin Phillips

Readability: 8

Insight: x

Practicality: x

This was a gift from good friends last Christmas – an excellent account of the way Lewis’ radio broadcasts became Mere Christianity. More on the book in my review here

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The Elephant in the Boardroom: Speaking the Unspoken about Pastoral Transitions (J-B Leadership Network Series) by Carolyn Weese & J. Russell Crabtree

Readability: 6

Insight: 6

Practicality: 7

I bought this because I sensed that the minister of the church I was attending was planning on leaving – as indeed he did, 6 months later. It gave me some good insight for what was about to happen, and in general, I thought that – for the narrow scope of life it was tackling – it did a pretty good job. I wasn’t overly impressed with the organization of the material, and I seriously question using the CMM approach for a church! However, other than small specific points of disagreement there are some excellent points being made from both common sense and experience. One significant shortfall however: There are a number of innocuous reasons for a minister to leave – such as retirement, ill-health or term limit – but there are also far more painful reasons, such as crises brought about by divisiveness between ministers or between clergy and laity. I felt that one quick chapter on low-performing churches was inadequate to cover this painful area. But there aren’t many books on this topic, and as a starter it did cover some much-needed ground.

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The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations by Dan Kimball

Readability: 7

Insight: 7

Practicality: 8

All about the post-modern church – although Kimball defines the ‘modern’ church as being ‘seeker-sensitive’ and the ‘post-modern’ church as being ‘post-seeker-sensitive’. My impression is that seeker-sensitive services were on the cusp between modern and post-modern – a brief movement that was tried by a number of forward-thinking congregations and found wanting. The book has the same friendly layout as Emerging Worship, and a great deal of helpful and relevant material based on Kimball’s experience in developing a post-modern church. Good stuff.

“…Scripture indicates it’s the parents’ responsibility to teach their children the things of God (Deut. 11:19). The church should supplement rather than replace the parents’ role.”

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Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations by Dan Kimball

Readability: 9

Insight: 9

Practicality: 8

This was the first book I read on post-millennial worship, and it was very much the eye-opener. I was excited about how many times throughout the Bible the call to worship is made (190 times), either by God, priest, prophet, king or apostle. My copy is full of highlighting and checkmarks (and a few scratch-outs as well). Definitely an exciting book.

“To be blunt, many modern … worship services are more anthropocentric than Christocentric. Jesus’ name is mentioned here and there, yet he [sic] is almost a side issue to the real focus…”

More on the book in my review here

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Essential Church?: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts by Thom S. Rainer and Sam S. Rainer III

Readability: 7

Insight: 5

Practicality: 5

I was able to download a free version of this book as a PDF, and while in general it’s an interesting book, it seems to be very confused about statistics. It pulls a great many of them, and displays them as authoritative, but I was often unclear as to how the statistic proved the point being made. It seemed as if the conclusion was arrived at by common sense, then the statistics were retro-fitted to confirm it- a very dangerous use of statistics. The book also suffered from some terribly ‘hokey’ interview descriptions:

“How do you feel it’s your fault?” She stared at the wall several moments. We could tell she was choosing her words carefully. (p. 71)

And

“I was raised in a Christian home,” he said softly. … John swallowed hard for a second and then gave us his story about becoming a church dropout. (p. 2)

Definitely not on a par with Rainer’s previous offering, Simple Church.

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The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again by George C. Hunter III

Readability: 7

Insight: 7

Practicality: 7

The book states that the Roman way of evangelism was to offer a rigid protocol – this is how you must ‘do’ Christianity – and get people to adopt it, often by carrot and stick. The Celtic way of evangelism was for the missionaries to adapt their own lifestyles so that they could reach people from the local culture; then those people could understand (a more fluid) religion and faith. Hunter then goes on to posit that newer churches in America are successful when they break from the traditional European denominational views and speak to local people in local terms. The denominational (Roman) approach focuses on the institution; the Celtic approach focuses on the movement – a sort of ‘religion vs faith’ debate. Examples of this ‘Celtic’ approach today are the Alpha courses offered by so many churches, and the cell-driven church movement.

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Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples by Thom S. Rainer & Eric Geiger

Readability: 7

Insight: 8

Practicality: 8

An excellent book with excellent insight on simplifying church so that it can do what it’s supposed to do. I’ve written more extensively on the book here, so I’ll leave you to it. In contrast to Rainer’s later book, Essential Church, statistics are used much more clearly, and possibly because of that, more effectively.