Derek Thomas

This book chronicles the journey of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church from its birth to its present 4,000+ attenders. There are some phenomenal leadership lessons to be learned along the way, as Driscoll recalls the 7 or so most difficult size barriers they experienced.

One of the most beneficial aspects of this book for me was the discussions on structure, government, and eldership within the church. Those sections, along with Chapter Zero, is actually worth re-reading on a regular basis. Chapter Zero opens with “ten curious questions” which I’ll list below:

1. Will your Rev. require reformission? (Reformission = Gospel + Culture + Church)
2. Will your church be traditional and institutional, contemporary and evangelical, or emerging and missional?
3. Will your church be an emergent liberal church or an emerging evangelical church?
4. Will you proclaim a gospel of forgiveness, fulfillment, or freedom?
5. Will your church be attractional, missional, or both?
6. What size shoe will your church wear?
7. Will your church have a mission of community or be a community of mission?
8. Will your leaders work from guilt or conviction?
9. Do you have the guts to shoot your dogs?
10. Can you wield a sword and a trowel?

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As I was reading the John Maxwell book reviewed here a while back, one of the things I found myself thinking a lot about was student ministry,especially in relation to our church plant. That led me to this book, which is a more postmodern look at youth ministry.

To be honest, this book frustrated me in a lot of ways, sometimes seemingly contradicting itself, and other times just having what I saw as a “throw the baby out with the bath water” mentality. That aside, there were a few noteworthy thoughts that made the book worth reading.

• Too often our students’ faith sways when they leave our ministries because they’ve been connected to a passionate leader or a relevant community but not committed to a mission.
• Get a mentor!!!
• If you can’t or won’t “grow what you’ve been given”, why would God give you something different. (This thought wasn’t stated in the book directly, but something that was running through my mind the entire time.)

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This is a small book with a big punch:

God owns it all, and we are just managers of whatever resources He chooses to give us.

The ladder is a great illustration, with each “generosity rung” taking you one step closer from financial stress to financial peace.

This is certainly not the end-all-be-all resource for money management, but that is not the point of this book. The point is to inspire generosity, with generosity being the key to financial peace. I agree with this assessment, and The Generosity Ladder does a great job of outlining the steps it takes to get there along with the reasons why.

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While my reading from yesterday was in many ways frustrating, today’s reading was almost shockingly hopeful right from the start. It was jaw dropping how powerfully the first few words spoke to me, and how they did so at just the right time.

Do you ever feel like for every step forward you take two steps back?

I’ve felt that way for a while now in both my leadership development and overall personal life as well. Still struggling with the same sins. Not noticing any real, tangible spiritual growth.

Often times I would wonder if there were any real hope for change, or if I would just be stuck in this rut forever.

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