[vimeo 120493423 w=500 h=264]
The Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto against the Status Quo from Crossway on Vimeo.
The Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto Against the Status Quo is my newest book and the culmination of my thoughts on and practice of ministry over the last twenty years. It is also my most vulnerable book, and the only place where I tell my story of gospel wakefulness in fullest detail.
There are lots of rants out there against the so-called “attractional church.” I know I have engaged in my fair share. But I think the stakes are too high to simply preach to the Amen corner in the “young, restless, and Reformed” movement. My hope for this book is that it may challenge the status quo outside my own tribe, or at the very least, help men and women in the kinds of churches addressed in the book think through and even articulate some of their internal concerns and questions.
We have a great God who loves his church dearly. We have nothing to fear — any of us — in questioning our own assumptions about ministry and holding them up to the light of Scripture. But I also feature in the book research on the last three decades of the modern church movement’s effectiveness.
In The Prodigal Church, I simply want to thoughtfully and gently help brothers and sisters evaluate the way they do church. Because you don’t have to be a legalistic, traditionalist church to be stuck in the mindset of “this is the way we’ve always done it.”
