Simple Church by Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger
Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger can be summarized with the book’s tagline: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples. The book’s main objective for the reader is to simplify the process of the church’s mission to making disciples. With cues from the surrounding culture, the authors contend that the church has made making disciples too complicated. In today’s culture, simple is effective. The iPod’s design (as well as the iPhone and the iPad) is sleek and innovative. The Google home page is clean and uncluttered. Just look at Southwest Airlines, Papa John’s Pizza, interior designers and marketing gurus. These companies and products are changing the world because they have made their design simple enough to make a difference.
According to Rainer and Geiger, the Simple Church process is a biblical idea. God designed the universe in a simple and orderly process. Jesus took a complex idea (The Law and the Prophets) and broke it down to a simple process: love God and love one another. In the same way, Jesus’ mission was a very simple one: make disciples.
The authors used case studies of four hundred churches in preparing Simple Church. These were mostly mega-churches with attendance of 1000 – which is not the normative church size in America. From this data, they identified four simple concepts and adapted them into a process:
Clarity > Movement > Alignment > Focus
Throughout the book, these four concepts are compared with a First Church (which uses a complicated process) and a Cross Church (which uses a simple process). The First Church uses programs for various ages, using different departments and ministries for different days of the week. Cross Church uses one simple process that moves the people forward in faith.
The best advice for any church from the authors was this: First Church view members vertically, which Cross Church views their members horizontally. For pastors, Simple Church can be very helpful in making the process of church management simpler. For the Christian, this book can help alleviate the pressure to do too much in church.
The book can be found on Amazon, Google Books, iTunes, and Barnes and Noble.
//
[mojoitem platform=’wordpress’ type=’plugins’ item=’popular’ quantity=’3′ seller=” aff=’http://mojomarketplace.com/?r=ozarksto-Zt3ATmztLQ’]
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In