I’ll say this right up front, while I am calling this a book review, it is more of a reflection on the book in light of my church planting experience so far, and an attempt to digest what I learned to aid in looking forward to how we will do things differently.

I picked this book up from the Trinity Western Library a month or two ago, then I got on Amazon because there were a couple of books that I had encountered that were not available at the library.  I wound up ordering it from there too (because I didn’t realize it was in my bag of borrowed books), but it will prove useful to me long-term as we look to planting our own church.

Nelson and Searcy I understand used to work on staff at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren, which explains his glowing reviews of this book.  The book is quite an easy read, and designed overtly as a step-by-step type of book, with not a lot of theologizing about what they are doing. The parts about calling were riveting, probably because one of the critical elements I am pursuing is a confirmation that this is what God wants from us.  This chapter helped considerably.

I was surprised at how much their material tracks with what we did to launch Community of Hope.  From early team formation to the launch, many things seemed similar.  There were several differences between approaches though.

Firstly, they highly recommend between 3 and 6 months of monthly “pre-services” which give you a chance to build buzz and prepare your team for going weekly.  It occurred to me as I read this that perhaps this was what we were missing last summer.  We had two well staffed pushes with volunteers from the USA to reach out into the community, and a major source of frustration for us was that while we did make some solid contacts with people who might have come to church, because we had no church to bring them to, we lost contact with them and dropped the ball completely.  Had we used these two short term missions trips to prepare people for a pre-service, then utilized them to staff the pre-services, then this could have greatly aided out ability to retain and move forward with those contacts that were made.

As an aside, I am a great believer in short term missions for their benefit to those who go on them – I mean it was instrumental in actuating my wife and I into taking more seriously our role in the Kingdom of God.  Also, looking around at the team we travelled with, many of us took huge steps forward in our walks with God as a result of that trip.

Another area of difference which I wasn’t as excited about was small group philosophy. The authors maintained it was a bad idea to start with small groups immediately.  In fact, they recommended that the plant wait at least 6 months before trying to initiate a small group structure in the church.  Their main objection to small groups seemed to be that it would turn the core team’s focus inwards and they would cease to be as outward focused on new people.  We didn’t experience this – we launched with a full battery of small groups.  The instruction pre-launch was so clear that we must stay completely outward focused that it never became an issue.  Then again, maybe this was because we were launching with a relatively mature group of Christians rather than brand new Christians or even seekers.

But I tend to agree more with Phil, our pastor.  Given our church’s philosophy of small groups, and given the reality that small groups are absolutely critical to integrate and make part of your church’s DNA, waiting and letting people get used to life without them could make much more trouble than it helps.  It needs to be programmed into the base-level of expectation – you go to this church, you are in a small group.

One other comment I will make about the book – it seems that launching a successful and rapidly growing church somehow made them instant experts in this field.  It is a good book, and I appreciated the reinforcement of a number of concepts, but they overlooked one critical component that I think largely led to their successful launch.  Right up front, they make clear that within 6 months of arriving in New York, 9/11 happened.  They try to downplay the effect this had on their church’s growth, but I think it had a much larger role than they seem to think.  That disaster had a massive impact on the psyche of the residents of New York and left them much more spiritually open than they would have otherwise have been.  I don’t doubt God was in their church’s timing, and that God was using, through them, a disaster for good by bringing people to him.  But that kind of element is not replicable for other church planters.

Some other reviews of this book:

  • Lou Canchicola (who’s got some great quotes from the book highlighted)

Where was this book four and a half years ago?  I could have certainly used it and saved myself from tons of mistakes.

…it’s VERY practical and is going to stay on my shelf as a long-term resource as we continue in the process.

  • Scott Himes (Good bullet points and summarizes better than I have)

…is a very practical guide for anyone that is planning to start a church or is in the first few years of a church plant.

If you are looking for practical, down to earth, applicable principles for launching a church then this is the TEXT BOOK to get you on your way.