Uncertainty principle?

CHURCH NEXT:
Quantum changes in Christian ministry
By Eddie Gibbs & Ian Coffey. IVP. 254 pages. £7.99
ISBN 0 85111 544 6

This book about the church's mission is a goldmine: that is, there are some nuggets of insight that have to be mined out of a bedrock of questionable assumptions.

I found myself arguing with the authors' reliance on business management and marketing surveys to assess both the spirit of the age and the direction for the church and was astounded to find a description of worship as 'divine love-making' and can only hope this was a mistake by the author and an oversight by IVP. Despite these frustrations I did find the book genuinely helpful as it raised some important questions for British evangelicals for example:

≠ Have we confused seeking a crowd with seeking the lost?

≠ Has the seeker-friendly service approach stopped us from actually leading people to worshipping the Almighty God and is this actually counter productive in our evangelistic services?

≠ Have the US mega-churches (e.g. Saddleback and Willow Creek) become the implicit models of a successful church when they are in a very different cultural setting to the majority of British churches?

There are some great quotations in this book, for example: 'a lone pastor all too easily becomes a lonely pastor' (p.108); 'traditional seminary education is designed to train research theologians who are to be-come parish practitioners. Probably they are adequately equipped for neither' (p.100).

This is an American book slightly adapted for a British readership, and there is too much space given to examination of sociological trends in the US that are not descriptive of the UK. This is a great book to read if you want an argument and your church's ministry challenged, but the title 'quantum changes in Christian ministry' may be more accurate than the authors intended as, in scientific terms, a change at the quantum level is one of the smallest possible.

Krish Kandiah, North Harrow