I like recommendations, sometimes. I especially like it when
people take the time to notice where I’ve enjoyed something and make recommendations
based on that. (Note of warning: on-line sites like Facebook and Amazon.com
don’t really take the time to note your preferences, they just make
recommendations based on volume activity.) Anyway, someone noticed that I gave
a positive (maybe even glowing) review of David Platt’s Radical, and so this book was recommended to me.
The author, lead pastor of Renovation Church in Atlanta, is
a former professional athlete who loves his town and his calling.
Like any book that approaches the norm from an angle, this
book is liable to challenge your traditions as well as get your feathers
ruffled because Crump forces us to ask the questions that no one wants to
ask—or be asked.
The book has some drawbacks. The author’s love for Atlanta
because of first a calling to that great city and followed by his intentional
planting of himself there is evident in the amount of time spent in the first half
of the book describing the history (good and bad) of the city of Atlanta. It is
laudable for the church planter whose calling is to plant in Atlanta to love
Atlanta. The take away for others is to fall in love with your place of
calling. However, the first chapters, in the guise of supporting a sense of
call to place, become an effort to convince all readers that Atlanta is the
place (and the only place to serve). With a bent toward overselling his city,
Crump almost loses his audience from his actual message—God not only calls to
vocation, he calls to place as well.
Another distraction in the book is the intermission included
in the middle of the manuscript. The record of the interview between the author
and several of his colleagues who are part of his church planting effort does
not flow with the rest of the book. If its inclusion was mandatory (on either
the part of the author, the editor, or the publisher) for the book to see the
printing press, it would be better served as an appendix located at the end of
the book. Perhaps the production team felt that (even though it distracted from
the message of the book) it might have missed a few readers’ eyes as an
appendix, and centrally placing this section would earn it more readers, it
still seemed to be less a part of the book and more a piece of the research for
the book, and draws a giant question mark as to its inclusion (especially as an
interruption).
I am disinclined to totally pan the book though. In a day
and a vocational path that trends toward itinerance, Crump calls for longevity.
He suggests that perhaps when the minister is answering the call from God to be
part of church leadership, that the minister should consider not only the what
but the where of that call. According to Thom Rainer, the average tenure of a
pastor in a local church still hovers at just under three years (up from when I
began my ministry when preachers were staying an average of 18 months). With
research also claiming that most effective ministry is done after the 5-year
mark, it would behoove ministers to actually plant themselves. The challenge is
for those called to vocational ministry to stop looking for their next position
the moment the moving truck drives away from the parsonage of their current
place of service. Instead, study your place and the people there. Learn how to
become one of them, and make your life about your place of calling. (Again this
is addressing a God-calling that is often short-circuited by short-sighted men
and women.)
The book reads a little slowly because of some of the
distractions included in it, but it does have value if only to challenge both
ministerial types and church members in general to start looking at their
church place as a place to be planted, a place to serve, and a place to become.
Christians are to be about the building up of the community—not necessarily
changing it to the American dream, but changing it from the heart outward with
the love of Christ. Therefore, I rate this book with three and one-half reading
glasses. Don’t rush out and buy a copy (unless you want to plant a church in
Atlanta), but go ahead and read it if a copy falls into your hands.
—Benjamin Potter, August 6, 2016
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