I have to confess up front that I am not the target audience of this book. I’m not a church planter. I’ve never been a church planter. I have friends who are church planters. I only wear my church planting pants in the spring, when it’s nice and cool. However, as every other “take the world for Jesus” 20-something, coffee drinking, beer downing, Apple using, ESV reading, “I heart Piper/Carson/Grudem/Calvin/Owen/Mahaney/Spurgeon,” Reformed dude, minus the beard, I do think about church planting. So, along these lines I was excited to get a free copy of AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay kindly distributed by Zondervan to read.

AND consists of Halter and Smay looking at how and why a local church should be oriented. They enter into discussion on things I have largely little contact with – Should the church be attraction based? Should the church be service based? They want to get past this and say, “Yes!” to both, or rather, move past the model all together. The church needs to feel in its fiber the desire to reach out and be within a community. In fact, Halter and Smay define the Church as, “[what] happens when a group of people decide to go on mission with God together” (46). They want the church to be an “incarnational community” where missional people “intentionally integrate into the lives of the unchurched” (66). The majority of the book is giving examples of how they’ve done this, issues they worked through, and ideas on how to start this vision in your local church.

Given that there have been many reviews posted around the blogosphere, I felt that my contribution to reviewing the book would be better given to pointing out some general thoughts on the book. If you’re looking for a chapter by chapter break down, I’d recommend Larry Baxter’s review; and if you’re interested in more quotes from the book, Paul Steinbrueck’s review has several to chew on.

Here are seven thoughts I had from the book.

  1. These guys have a deep heart for the lost and are wired by God to be out-ward focused guys. They love Jesus and they love people who don’t know Jesus coming to know him. This is a general point, but you see this worked through in this book. They don’t just love willy-nilly, they think through how to love the lost. This point shouldn’t be disregarded. It’s one thing for a church to design an evangelism program, it’s another thing for a church to build its structure to have an outward focus. Even if one disagrees or has concerns about their approach, their thoughts shouldn’t be quickly disregarded.
  2. Stemming from this, these guys genuinely love their community. One way this book really served me was to see an “in the flesh” (incarnational?) example of how a local church can live in it’s local context in love for each other and for those around them. I think this sort of thing can only be done with Jesus, and they really set a compelling example.
  3. In response to the sins of the Western church, these guys have a strong zeal against consumerism. They’ve seen how it effects their church, and they’ve seen how it effect how their people think about church. You might feel a wee bit uncomfortable at times in how they analyze and target many models that are common practice in America (i.e. child care during “big people” church). Here, I think, they do over reach a bit and pull in things as being consumerism that I think are unfounded, namely preaching. They state, “our priority for pulpit-centered Christianity may actually be one of the most consumer-oriented aspects of evangelicalism today” (184). I think they are here responding to one type of “pulpit-centered Christianity” while brushing past a Biblical pulpit centered Christianity”. Nonetheless, I think this is a flawed step on their part.
  4. For a book on the mission of the church, there is a pronounced absence of a theology of the Gospel that fuels this vision of AND. They do engage with the Scriptures, which I am deeply grateful for. However, I never got a functional flavor of how the Gospel feeds this vision. Here, I think is where some of my concern comes in on how Halter and Smay define “Church” (“[what] happens when a group of people decide to go on mission with God together”). If we start with an understanding of the church as primarily about action, and not centrally about the cross of Christ, I fear an undertow will happen at some point and draw us away from primarily resting in the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ as the defining mark of “The Church”. I don’t think Halter and Smay intentionally undermine the centrality of the Gospel in their thoughts on the gathered and scattered church (they even admit that in some ways it’s assumed), but I think their book would be better if they made it of “first importance (1 Cor. 15:1) in their presentation.
  5. Their thoughts on Sunday worship and preaching concern me. In the book they describe how they wanted to fight a consumeristic mind-set in their congregation, and so decided to meet together every two weeks, and on the “off weeks” meet together in their local communities. My concern here is largely from the simple observation that the Bible upholds regular, weekly meetings of God’s people to enjoy fellowship, singing, and preaching as the norm. Moreover, drawing from my previous concern, one of the primary reasons for gathering together weekly is to hear the Gospel and have it applied weekly to our hearts. As the old story of Luther goes: When asked why he, a brilliant biblical scholar preached the Gospel week after week, Luther replied, “Well beloved, because week after week you forget it.” To me, the vision that these faithful brothers uphold is only achieved by faithful, regular preaching where the full scope of God’s revelation is put forth, and Christ himself addresses the congregation through the preaching. Here, I fear their approach undercuts the very source of life to what they seek to accomplish.
  6. A final thought is with regards to the use of the word “Incarnational.” This is a major word for them, which largely goes ill-defined. To the extent that I do understand it, I do not think it applies. The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation of the Son of God says that he took on human nature along with his divine nature (the hypostatic union) on his own free choice. I think what Halter and Smay hold up as “incarnation” the Bible would simply call faithfulness, love, hope, and sacrificial living. I understand the analogy that’s intended here, but I think it’s best to stick with Biblical words on the subject, especially when the analogy isn’t parallel to the intended use.
  7. The last chapter of the book is devoted to thinking about what you’ll leave behind when you die. I think this is a tremendously wise move by the authors. How often do church planters have a 50-100 year vision for their church? The best way to bring sobriety to our thoughts and sharpen our thinking is to think about death. This is one of the many things that I really appreciated about the book. There were many times in reading this chapter where I simply wrote “YES!” in the margin. If you want to be sold out for Christ and faithful in your present work, think about when you won’t have any more time to work. For an age devoted to immediate gratification and the minimizing of death, this is an important point to put in front of church planters (and all Christians for that matter).

All in all, I appreciate the book. I have felt it’s impact on my own soul even as I think about how I relate to the people around me, and seek to intentionally live for the kingdom of Jesus Christ and his Gospel in my little apartment complex. There aren’t that many books out there on this subject, so while I have reservations and concerns about the book, I still commend it to your reading.