I could have been a contender...

I've never seen that movie, but I love that line. Sometimes we willfully throw away an opportunity to make a mark on the world. Sometimes we don't even realize we've missed it. Sometimes still we have been great and let it all slide away while we think about that past glory.

Comeback Churches is a book for pastors who front up a church each Sunday and see a little less each week. Less people. Less enthusiasm. Less life and vitality.

Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson provide a vital analysis of 324 American churches who have had pastors in the pulpit that have said "Enough!" it's time to turn this around, it's time not keep glorifying the past, it's time to glorify God with his church. These 324 churches have turned from steady decline (often over decades) into steady growth of healthy churches.

The book isn't prescriptive. I picked it up looking for some pointers on how to address a specific church in decline (they are reaching out to me to take a pastoral role) but it's not an ABC of turning your church around in 30 days kind of book.

What you will get out of it is a little carrot and stick. The carrot is the success stories and a great deal of motivation to be a better, more tuned in pastor. The stick is giving you a big whack to stand up and be the leader of the church God has called you to be.

There is practical advice from the ho-hum of moving from "traditional" to contemorary and blended worship, to how to journey people into recognizing that they need to change and setting the vision for a comeback.

Complaints? There is way too much prefacing to anything the authors might think is slightly controversial. I know why they do it but I wish they wouldn't. It's just annoying. Apart from that, it would have been good if they published the raw data in an appendix. Some of us are nerds and like to dig into the numbers even if it isn't really all that important.

Density

I worked through it in about a week of train travel to work. The writing is relate-able. The only thing that slows you down is the constant reflection on what your reading and the excitement you get over a new concept or idea that you know will boost your ministry.

Who should read it?

Anyone in church leadership that is experiencing decline. No, make that everyone not anyone. Although not all of it is relevant to non-pastors, it will kick you in the pants to do the work of Jesus in your community.

What impact did it have on me?

No other book has energized my thinking so much in the last 3 years. I kept reading it, getting excited, and texting my ministry team about an exciting idea that will help us love people better and slow the amount of people who might slip through the cracks.

Buy it :)

Summary

The book begins: "It is indeed unfortunate that of all the New Testament writings, the words and sayings of Jesus himself are the most difficult to understand." This difficultly, the author contents stems from the willful and deliberate de-judification of Jesus from his historical context and a great lack of understanding of Hebrew culture and idioms.

The authors make this point quite well arguing that the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) make greater sense when looking for the original Hebrew language that would have underpinned them and not the Greek texts that we have surviving today. This follows a growing minority of scholars who consider the present Greek gospels are translations and in some cases poor transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic originals.

A serious amount of research and scholarship underpin this assertion and fully fills the first half of the book. However unless you have a hard time with the concept that Jesus was in fact Jewish and thought like a Jew, or are engaging with some serious textual analysis for research you might as well rip the book in twain along the spine and skip straight to the "Appendix" which absorbs the second part of the book. The foundational chapters do become quite repetitive like micro-essays with start with a proposition, detail the proposition then conclude by restating the original proposition, all of this builds to an anti-climax of technical analysis which is both important state but simply boring to read.

The appendix addresses the implications of misunderstanding Jesus in two cases. The first, the times we think we understand Jesus but screw it up and the second, the times we just plain don't get what he was on about.

To the former the book examines topics such as: Jesus was not a pacifist despite "turn the other cheek" and Jesus was not an advocate indiscriminate charity despite "give to him who asks of you."
To the latter the book examines topics such as: what did Jesus mean by 'I came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it?' Christians aren't required to follw the Law, are they? If that doesn't 'abolish' it, then what would?

Density

As I said, the first portion of the book is often dense scholarship. You wont miss anything by skipping over it but will find some gems for preaching and expanding your critical thinking.

Who should read it?

This one isn't just for the pastors bookshelf! It provides an thought provoking examination of the world in which Jesus lived and ministered and is challenging to the both your thoughts and actions providing at times ideas and angles on Scripture that are completely orthogonal to Western thinking.

What impact did it have on me?

At not much over 160 pages this book really wets your appetite to dive into the Hebrew culture and challenge you to 'get' what Jesus was really saying. It has certainly had this affect on me.

Woah! It's been over a two months since I've posted anything. I don't want to be another blogging drop out statistic so lets kick-start this puppy :)

I've been focusing a lot recently on my company Vine Media. We have been building the company slowly and have added around 30 websites in the past two months. It's a bit cliche', but it feels great to help God's church grow by providing some low cost options to support ministries.

Church work has been great. We are building the ministry to young adults in the area slowly and surely. I feel that we are at a tipping point where the ministry is either going to grow or falter and I am praying for grow. I will concentrate the blog on this soon, about the steps we are taking towards growth and commitment in the ministry.

What I thought I would do in the mean time however is something a bit different. The thought popped into my head "30 book reviews in 30 days" but I dont think I have enough free time or stamina to commit to that, so instead I am going to do 30 book reviews in 10 weeks, that is 3 a week for the next 2 1/2 months. Sounds like a good plan right?

I'm just going to stack up the last 30 books I've read on the topic of faith/theology and evaluate them on the following criteria:

• Summary. What was it about, all the usual book review stuff.
• How dense was it? Was it a struggle to pick up and read each day.
• Who should read it. It it for everyone or a pretty narrow audience.

And most importantly...

• What impact did it have on me? Did it change my thinking or my actions?

There will be some clusters of books from the same author, Arch Hart comes to mind as somebody I read a lot of in a small space of time, but overall I think there will be quite a variety of books and topics. And hopefully a lot of fun to do.

Here's what I'm reading at the moment, they will make it onto the review pile soon I hope :)