church planting

At the end of this post there will be instructions on how to enter the book giveaway. Now that you’ve skipped ahead and already entered your name, I hope you enjoy the book review!

The church planting varsity league of the 21^st century, Acts 29, has finally released their first book on church planting: Church Planter by Darrin Patrick. In particular, Patrick’s work is about raising the bar for ban’s (boy+man=ban) to stop merely being humans with male plumbing, but men who are defined by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The subtitle of the book gives away its three sections: The Man, The Message, The Mission. Under “The Man” Patrick spends a chapter on each the seven characteristics of what a man should be: Rescued, Called, Qualified, Dependent, Skilled, Shepherding, Determined. Under “The Message” he says that a man’s message should be The Historical, Salvation-Accomplishing, Christ-Centered, Sin-Exposing, Idol-Shattering Message, with a chapter on each aspect. In section three, he talks about how the heart of a man’s mission is compassion, the house of the mission is the church, the how of his mission is contextualization, the hands of his mission are care, and the hope of his mission is city transformation. Needless to say, Patrick covers a wide range of material in this book that lands at a mere 238 pages.

Main Review
At the center of this book beats a heat centered on Jesus Christ and him crucified. This got me excited about the book. At no point does Patrick slip into the all to easy vein of moralistic guilting. Darrin Patrick is a pastor, a pastor who loves Jesus, and you get the sense through the book that Patrick wants us to know the power of King Jesus as it relates to the call of some to plant churches. He wants what God wants, what the Bible clearly calls men to (if they should so choose to let the Bible speak for itself): men who know the power of Christ to rescue them from sin and call them into a life with God. He makes appeals to men being men of God simply because they are fundamentally rescued men.

Eric Simmons has noted that page 25 of the book where he talks about “What does it mean to be rescued?” is worth the entire price of the book. I couldn’t agree more. But let me add a couple more places that the book is worth its weight in gold.  In chapter three, Patrick gives a fresh and helpful exposition of 1 Timothy 3’s qualifications of a pastor. Seriously rich and illuminating stuff here. Further, on page 124 in chapter 9 on “Salvation-Accomplishing” I have a huge star for personal reference where Patrick goes through and gives an extensive Scripture listing of “The blessings that Christ has procured or us through his death and resurrection [that are] immeasurable”. I know I will be continually referring back to this helpful listing (along with a section a few pages over on the imputed righteousness of Christ).

A further helpful aspect of the book that I would note is Patrick’s pastoral care for us through the material. He likes to ask you lots of questions to help you think through things. These tend to be at the end of chapters. He also wants to keep you from going off on bad roads from various things he presents. So very often he presents biblical truth, applies it to your life, and then gives observations (typically two or three) on how people can avoid this truth, supress it, take it the wrong way, etc. His wise insight will be helpful in guiding many men on a godly path of pursuing a church planting calling.

These two things, I think, make the book unique in the literature being published these days that is aimed at church planters and church planting. Many books strike a completely pragmatic approach where they describe techniques of leadership and church models. Here, Patrick exemplifies that which is greatly needed and for which Acts 29 is to be deeply thanked: He sticks to the Gospel and let’s the power of Jesus Christ be the engine by which church planting runs. In this respect, I think this book will prove to be invaluable to any church planter.

In some ways I feel this book is mistitled. It should be something along the lines of “Being A Christian”. The book centers around what the Gospel of God (the message) does to a person rescued by Jesus (the man) and what it sends them to do (the mission). Certainly the book is applied to those called to be pastors and church planters, but the sense I kept getting through the book was simply that, as all commentators have noted, the call of godliness on the pastor is the call of every Christian. Very little of this book is relegated to only church planters.

Critique
The strength of the book lies primarily in the first two sections: The Man and The Message. Certainly the third section has it’s strengths, but I think along the lines of Paul’s instructions in 1 Timothy 3 and 1 Corinthians 15, Patrick’s instructions about who the man is, and what he’s about are primary.

The two concerns I would have about the content of the book have already been noted by others (ironically one was Mark Dever’s recommendation printed in the book!). I’d simply say that I think Patrick should have given more discussion to the qualification of a man’s love and care for his wife, especially given the fairly stark picture he paints of the modern man in his preface.

Secondly, I am not sure I fully agree with some of the applications Patrick makes for mission of church planting in section three. Patrick opens the last chapter in presenting the statistics of modern population grouping to show that a vast majority of people live in the city today. He then proceeds in two steps to make the case that we should aim to plant in cities and then aim to see the transformation of those cities by the power of the Gospel.

My concern here is that quiet simply the people who are moving to the city are young, 20-30 somethings, who have the ability to up and move, which means that the unintended effect of setting to minister in cities is that we end up aiming to plant to people who are like us, 20-30 somethings. Additionally, the people who live in rural or suburban areas might not be the targets in mind with this “plant in the cities” approach and largely (though unintentionally) be over looked. I think this application and appeal for church planting to the cities is helpful, but I merely sit back and wonder how helpful it is. Will people, in say, rural Michigan be the targets of church planters inspired by this book? I’m not a wise man, nor a wise cookie, so take my concern for what it’s worth.

Overall
I think all Christians who want a simple, packed, and “go to” manual in getting clarity and insight into who they are as a Christian, what they’re called to, what their message is, and where they should be thinking about going will benefit from this book. If I were on a church planting team (or by some absolutely bazaar twist of providence leading a team) I would want every person with me to have a copy of this book. The strength of the book lies its ease of accessibility and helpful insight. While I have my disagreements, they’re relatively small on the scale of the vast stores of Gospel glory that this book brings to the table. I’m certain that this book will become a standard in the years to come for men thinking about or in the process of church planting.

May God be so kind as to use this book to raise up more men to be church planters that the Gospel of Jesus Christ would go to the ends of the earth.

You can purchase the book at WTS Books.

Book Giveaway
The folks at Crossway have graciously provided a free book for a giveaway. Thanks guys! Here are the rules for the giveaway:

1. How to enter: Leave a comment on this post.
2. Include one reason why you want the book!
3. You can only enter once.
4. The giveaway will end on Wednesday, September 152010 at 10pm Eastern Standard Time with the winner being announced Thursday, September 16, 2010.
5. I cannot be bought off, but I do like candy corn.