Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World [Hardcover]

Bob Roberts Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 2007

If you want to know where and how the church is going to grow, think local and global. Think glocal. Glocal is Bob Roberts' term for the seamless connectedness between the local and global. That connection is affecting the church in ways that never could have been imagined in the first-century church, or even the twentieth-century church. And it's creating unprecedented opportunities for individuals and churches---for you and your church---to live out their faith in real time across the world. Glocalization offers a vision of the unprecedented changes of our times and how they are impacting the church. Discover how these changes will transform the way churches define their mission and how Christians relate to one another and to the world. This provocative book turns the traditional mission-agency model upside down and shows how transformed people and churches can make a glocal (global and local) impact. Glocalization offers an exciting vision for churches and individuals who want to reach this changing world for Christ.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'In Glocalization, Roberts...outlines six practices the church should adopt to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves in the glocal world. All six are excellent, and by confronting some well-established missionary habits, a few have the potential to be revolutionary....Roberts' inspiring stories from Communist and Islamic nations reinforce his claim that no country is closed to the gospel, just to our usual methods of bringing it....Many pastors have learned ministry techniques by mimicking corporate strategies and good management. In the new flat earth, the entire church must learn to be missionaries, and this will once again require all of the Holy Spirit's gifts, comfort, counsel, power, and fruit....After reading the book, I'm inspired to take the gospel into all the world, starting in my own cul-de-sac.' -- Leadership journal <br><br> (Leadership journal )

Review

Bob is a wild and thoroughly compelling apostle-prophet to this generation. His words and actions remind us that the Kingdom of God transcends locality, tribe, and nationality, and that the local church can fulfill its real purpose only if it has the whole world in view and the Kingdom of God as its driving agenda. This book will go a long way to help the 21st Century church to comprehend what it really means to think global but act local as well as to act global and think local. -- Alan Hirsch, Founder and Director, Forge Mission Training Network; Author, The Shaping of Things to Come and The Forgotten Ways <br><br>

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (January 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310267188
• ISBN-13: 978-0310267188
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #440,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bob Roberts Jr. is the founding pastor of NorthWood Church in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and has been involved in the planting of a hundred congregations in the United States. Bob also works in Australia, Asia, Afghanistan, Mexico, and Nepal helping with church planting and development and global engagement. Bob is a graduate of Baylor University (BA), Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Mdiv), and Fuller Seminary (D.Min.) with an emphasis in church planting. He and his wife have two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Church Which You Must Understand, June 8, 2007

By 

Samuel Carmack "Ph.D." (Colleyville, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World (Hardcover)

There is only a handful of people whose life demands a read and careful study. Bob Roberts is one of those persons. What his church has done is unique. It is one of the few churches in the United States that has taken cultural transformation global while maintaining an Evangelical message. This book reveals the heart of such a pastor and presents many practical points of application.

I'm puzzled by the critical review of Isaiah. He's disappointed by a local church only adopting a few locations? Bob teaches that churches need to learn to specialize, pick a city or country and develop a relationship-better, a friendship, and encourage another church to do the same thing. To try to everything is to do nothing.

Isaiah's opening line, "If you believe you can just tell people about Jesus without caring for their physical needs, you may want to read this book." suggests he hasn't read the book very well. The book is all about cultural impact which is completely about ministry to the whole person.

It is especially disappointing to see a reviewer use pejorative terms--"self indulgent" does not describe this book or Bob Roberts.

Obviously there is a vital issue at stake. Read the book.

I rate the book with 4 stars, because I would like for it to be a little more systematic in its approach. While not being a systematic treatise, it is the heartfelt cry of a pastor who is doing something very significant and inviting many others to go along on the journey. As I think about it, perhaps the lack of system is a plus in a post-modern world. I guess my professorial habits have found me out.

5.0 out of 5 stars How a local church can become truly global, December 8, 2009

By 

John Gibbs (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World (Hardcover)

The best way for a local church to conduct missions today is to send the whole church, according to Bob Roberts in this remarkable book. Ordinary church members with skills in agriculture, water treatment, medicine, small business, law and other areas need to become involved and connect internationally. We need to go and live out the kingdom, and lives will be transformed, leading to the establishment of churches, rather than the other way round.

We also need to re-think missions trips. The current purpose of most missions trips is to make the team members feel good, not to maximise the value to the recipients. Instead of going and constructing houses, we should be using the funds as seed money for new businesses which enable employees to afford to purchase houses by monthly payments over a period of time. This creates sustainable economic improvement in the community, rather than inadvertently increasing dependence.

The author advocates a policy of "knocking on the front door"; that is, approaching the leadership of a country and offering to serve, rather than going into the country as "secret missionaries". He writes extensively about his experience in Afghanistan, Vietnam and other countries which are typically regarded as "closed" to mission work. The book is filled with fresh and challenging ideas. I highly recommend it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Cutting edge missiology, August 27, 2007

By 

Gordon W. Marchant (McLean, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World (Hardcover)

I truly enjoyed this book. It is not a typical "how to" missions book that merely confirms what probably you are already doing in your church. Bob Roberts pushes the boundaries. His perspective and approach to short-term missions is different from anything that I have ever read. From cover to cover, I felt as if my missiological practises and leadership as a pastor were being tested and refined.