Review: Permission Is Granted to Do Church Differently in the 21st Century

Permission Is Granted to Do Church Differently in the 21st Century by Graham Cooke
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Most reviewers who gave this book 5 stars probably would be of the same mindset as the Cooke and Goodell- one of an uninstituitional Frank Viola type of church. This book suffers from the same fatal flaw as its cousin Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore by Thom Schultz, Joani Schultz. The latter simply seems to adopt a highly critical and proof-texting approach to support their lifetree cafe model, and the former, third day church model.

While my background of growing up in a dysfunctional, legalistic and dogmatic church should incline me to agree with Cooke, Goodell and the Schultzs, I'm not convinced by the pages after pages of criticism against the church as we know it. I did agree with some of the criticisms, but I struggled to get past the weak hermeneutics and puzzling reconstructions that were utilised to explain why we have to do church exactly the same way as in the new testament. I could only bring myself to read until page 111 on my kindle before I gave up.

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