Review: Five Ministry Killers and How to Defeat Them: Help for Frustrated Pastors--Including New Research from the Barna Group

Five Ministry Killers and How to Defeat Them: Help for Frustrated Pastors--Including New Research from the Barna Group by Charles Austin Stone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While the thesis of this book is not one I am necessarily drawn to (I'd prefer meaty biblical theology and a macro picture of seeing how our work is all for the glory of God), I did find that I quite like this book. For the purposes of research for a paper on church growth, I sped through about 25 books, many of which grieved me so very much because they actually were written by authors who hated the church (and wanted to justify their own version of church by quoting Scripture out of context).

I felt that Stone genuinely cared for his fellow pastors but what I really appreciated was the amount of research he did in preparation for this book. Not only does he routinely refer to large surveys and studies conducted by the Barna Group and Lifeway, he repeatedly references the most salient points from veterans in the field. And boy were many of these so very really impactful - they made me feel like actually going to look up these secondary sources in future.

In a world with too many opinioned authors who are very happy to give their two cents worth on how to run God's church, Stone's masterpiece of a meta-analysis was a very welcome breath of fresh air. His passion, personal brokenness and rigour research have come together to create this encouraging read.

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