Review: Power of Together

Power of Together by Jim Putman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Growing up as a Christian, I had never considered the church to be a place whereby it was a family. Leaders who were once upon a time, the most wonderful of spiritual parents or elder siblings, would disappear from life once they were reassigned to other locations or who left for other churches. Yes we were all taught (what I regarded to be spiritual gibberish) about weekly commitment to youth service, morning and evening sunday service and cell group. Because the church lacked a formal membership structure, and yet exercised discipline over extra-biblical matters (issues which do not have a Scriptural basis), I did not see a good reason to want to belong to such a dysfunctional family. Even when I had moved onto another church, I often debated fiercely with the pastoral team about how unconvinced I was of the value of church community. I thus had read this book with relatively sceptical lenses.

I was pleasantly surprised that I had enjoyed the read. I found myself cheering multiple times when Putman would candidly point out what was wrong with the church, but was happily disappointed that he did not share the same hatred and suspicion for the church and its leaders that I used to have. As I read through the book, I was relived to not have read allegorical assertions based on hermeneutically violent twisting of Scripture. Putman masterfully explains Scripture and sprinkles real-life stories from his church community in between the chapters. The accounts were gripping and authentic - not only providing just the heartwarming fairy tale endings, but also the pain and brokenness of the failed attempts to journey with certain individuals in Christian community and in his own family.

I regard myself to be a highly intelligent young thinker, and it is not too often that I would be brought to a position to consider that my theology is faulty. In reflecting about what I had read, I was compelled to reevaluate my attitude of "if I find that something about this church sucks, I'll just leave and go to another, or not to go to any at all." I think that I caught a bit of Putman's deep passion and love for the church. I hated (probably still vehemently dislike) legalism and dogmatic leadership, but I saw how his church community was based on sacrificial love and rock-solid commitment. Because it was not something imposed upon, but an invitation to enter into, it weirdly makes me want to be part of such a family! The follow up action I would take probably would be to read up on other books that talk about church membership to better understand the reason for such a practice.

I heartily recommend this book to all Christians, even those who (like me) are deeply suspicious of and/or have been hurt by Christian institutions and leaders.

I received this book from Baker Publishing Group's Blogger Review Program for the purposes of providing an unbiased review. All views are my own.

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