Book Review: Simple Church
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
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I think this book has a lot of value to it for church leaders. Why do we make church so complex?
Simple Church is about streamlining the pathway for discipleship, it is about cutting through the clutter we create that in the end dilutes our efforts. I think the book, interestingly enough, fits well with the Purpose Driven model (Pastor Rick is even mentioned a few times) and also fits well with principles from The Big Idea and Made to Stick.
The healthiest thing you could probably do for your ministry right now is to cut 60% of your programs and clearly identify/advertise your pathway for discipleship. I'm not sure I'm ready to jump fully into this model and cut everything except the main service, small groups and ministry opportunities - but I definitely see the value in doing less better and making the pathway plain. A good read, challenging what a church "has to offer." B+
JG
posted by Unknown @ 11:01 AM |
SimplyJosh.com has now moved to MoreThanDodgeball.com - follow this link to visit the new site with new posts everyday!
4 Comments:
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At 10/10/2007,
.justin said...
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our church staff is reading simple church right now too. i have my thoughts, but mostly, i'm wanting to let you know that i'm digging the blog look. very clean. simple, you might say.
i also am really liking the quote marks in the left indent area when you do a blockquote.
how are you doing that? is it a special code? can you pass it along? is it a blogger feature?
i like it and i'm jealous.
so schnazzy! -
At 10/10/2007,
Unknown said...
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The quotes are automatically inserted when the blockquote command is used. It's in the template. Nice, eh?
JG -
At 10/10/2007,
Rob Cunningham said...
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i'm in the middle of reading it, and i'm getting a lot from it. probably one of the top books i've read this year so far.
i think it's a good way to enhance the efforts of churches that have adopted a PD model or some other approach. it's very easy to walk away from big conferences and try to implement ideas back home without a real sense of WHY you're making changes. you can adopt all 5 purposes and yet struggle as a church if you forget/ignore things like clarity, alignment, movement and focus.
i think andy stanley (one of the examples in the book) is on to something when he talks about the whole list of things his church doesn't do! complexity creates stress for the whole church, in my experience. -
At 10/10/2007,
Ken Leslie said...
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Our staff has read it and used it to launch into our next phase of what the church is all about. We are actually currently introducing it to our people now!
We have done some cool things with it, such as give our people a 25 day (5 days for 5 weeks) devo book made up from our people on "What is a Disciple."
Also, we made T-Shirts for everyone in our church with our "Simple" phrase on it. Very camp-like!
Check it out at www.lakesidechurch.net
I will have to say, about half the book i "yadda-yadda"'ed as it was statistics and graphes...ech! (My personal opinio, of course!)
