Review: Growing God's Church: How People Are Actually Coming to Faith Today

Growing God's Church: How People Are Actually Coming to Faith Today by Gary L. McIntosh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am quite a fan of McIntosh's books, having thoroughly enjoyed "Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...) and "There's Hope for Your Church"(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...), both of which I regard to be 5 star titles.

Short review: Skip Part 1 and go straight to Part 2 & 3 and Appendix. You can thank me later. The latter parts of the book are worth the retail price many times over. If you have decision making influence in your church's leadership, buy the book, read it and use it as a tool to engage in some serious reflection. I doubt you will regret the decision.

Long review: I appreciated his sharing of his faith journey, which he used to lead into his proposition that churches have now lost the focus on evangelism, and instead have focused on missional acts of service. But somehow he seemed to have taken on a fondness in extremely lengthy retellings of biblical narratives, which takes up far too many pages (Matthew's account of following Jesus in Chapter 1, Jesus' reading of the scroll of Isaiah in Chapter 3, Jesus casting out an unclean spirit in Chapter 4, going to Jesus' tomb in Chapter 5, choosing of Matthias in Chapter 6). I dreaded every start of the chapter because of the monotonous and unimaginative paraphrasing of the gospel accounts that would have to be endured. I do not sense that McIntosh's strength is in theology or exegetical teaching/preaching, so perhaps if he had stuck to his areas of expertise (eg. Ecclesiology and ministry), the book could have been more effective in communicating a thesis. I felt like that I had just went on an very painful eisegetical journey by the end of the book; too much ground was covered far too thinly. This is a huge pity, because I recognise the value and importance of utilising research methods and data analysis to validate and explain the observance of a trend in churches today (the loss of focus on evangelism).

If Part 1 shows McIntosh at his worst, Part 2 and 3 is when he is at his best! Meshing statistics and data with practical recommendations (after having explained what the data means) is something I have not since before (in an ecclesiological context). Take time to slowly read through and consider how for example, people come to Christ, why people stay in church, how important is the pastor's preaching etc. While the study was done with ~1000 respondents in America, I would imagine that the findings would not stray too far when reapplied to another First World Country.

5 Stars for the latter part of the book and 0 stars for Part 1, so an overall 3 stars.

I received this book from Baker Books through Netgalley.com in exchange for this review.

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