CHURCH UNCORKED:
Leadership that releases our potential.
By Catherine Cowell and Sean Kennedy
Instant Apostle. 292 pages. £12.99
ISBN 978 1 909 728 288
Do you need a blood supply or a skeleton? Precisely. This book fall into the same trap of setting up a strong ‘either/or’ when it should be discussing a ‘both/and’. The authors argue the church needs to release people’s potential by being person-centred; to achieve this it must reject ‘institutional and leadership’ views. We all can describe poor examples of the latter, as they do, but the regular use of ‘straw men’ to make their case fails to persuade.
Sloppy historical analysis, poor handling of Biblical teaching on church and leadership, and inadequate doctrinal awareness, do not help either. The case studies they use hardly prove the authors’ thesis that the church should exist, and will thrive, if leadership and authority structures are pretty much dispensed with. Acts 6 says otherwise. There we find the church getting better organised, with leaders helping to take it all forward. Acts 15 also shows leaders in action, authoritatively dealing with a crucial gospel issue. These, and other important leadership passages, just don’t get mentioned.
Which is a shame, as the main point they are trying to make about people, given the New Testament understanding of leadership, is crucial. Ephesians 4.17ff makes it crystal clear that Christ gives such gifts to ‘prepare God’s people for works of service’. If leaders aren’t encouraging and enabling people, something is wrong!
Helpful in parts
There are some good insights into motivating and empowering people towards the end, in Part 2, but a lot has to be worked through to get to there. Chapter 24 on ‘Powerful Conversations’ is particularly helpful, and the ‘GROW model’ found in Appendix 3 is also very useful.
In my opinion, empowering Christians to serve the Lord in the totality of their lives is better argued for in material produced by Mark Greene and his colleagues at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC), than in this book.
