Customer Reviews

Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is for you only if in you fit into one of the domains of society (i.e. government, art, education, business, etc.). If you are a pastor, you cannot help but be motivated at your revised job description, namely, "to get the people sitting in our pews to use their vocations in a natural way to connect locally and internationally". Your new gauge of effectiveness is "How many laypeople am I mobilizing?"

If you are a Westerner, then you will be pointedly asked if you can "see and submit to what God is doing and be a servant to the East instead of a leader".

If you are a Western professional, you will be challenged to go engage emerging nations and seek the stability of those around it. You will get a crash course in being glocal, and seeing this not as a clever church program/strategy/platform, but a legitimate mindset for the integration of your faith in God and practice of your trade.

Finally, Bob is a student of Friedman, Zakaria, Jones, Ghandi, Bono and Capra. This atypical pastor is providing leadership into an atypical, but extraordinary, societal/global transformation. Take your leaders through this book, whoever you are.

If you believe you can just tell people about Jesus without caring for their physical needs, you may want to read this book. If you have always believed that you have to address a culture, society, and the whole person instead of just telling someone about Jesus, you may want to skip this book.

The first quarter of the book is reiterating Friedman's assertions that the world has gone global. (This seems to be a surprise for people over the age of forty.) He jumps from this idea of globalization to his word "glocalization" as the response of the church. He uses the words "glocal" and "glocalization" like it's going out of style. (Or maybe more appropriately, trying to move it into style.) It seems a bit pretentious and self indulgent.

The thrust of this book is centered around what he and his church is doing in a couple of places over seas. It's about the social development that is taking place in closed areas. These are all very commendable things.

The high point of the book is in discussing interfaith dialog and respect. He has some good things to say about interacting with other faiths by walking in the "front door." Some circles should take note of this method.

There's one chapter where something like 22 of 24 quotes are from Stanley Jones. It would be easier if you just skipped the chapter and read Jones rather than read the filtered version. If you've read Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century), Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God), and Stanley Jones (Mahatma Ghandi. An Interpretation.)--then you've read this book and you'll want to pass. And if you haven't read those authors, you may want to read them instead.

The book is vital because it brings personal experience of a man that has put a side his old mental models and traditions in order to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. The book is not written in systematic style, but rather in a pragmatic way.

The author does a good job of engaging his readers. He develops a framework to describe the importance of focusing on a particular "people group" for the purpose of establishing true relationship, which in turn will produce transformation from the inside out.

Glocalization offers an exciting opportunity for those churches and individuals who are seeking a different approach in touching others people's life through relationship, respect and acceptance to impact this changing world for Christ.

Written to assist the church in responding to the realities demonstrated in Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat," Roberts does an exceptional job in casting vision and demonstrating some nuts and bolts things that churches can do to impact the nations of the world. Taking a service approach to the nations, Roberts asserts that Christians can and must take advantage of the "flat world" in partnering with countries to provide infrastructure, educational systems, hospitals, etc. This is a great book--one that any pastor or leader should read.

Glocalization opened my eyes to the world of the new millennium. The barriers and boundries that once existed have been erased. Whether you are a business leader or in ministry, this book is a must read. This book gives us the tools to successfully engage this new era. Roberts also wrote Transformation. That book was great too.

If you are a reader, and haven't read this one, and then you are encouraged to read it, once you read it, it will be stuff you have read before. I liked the book, and I love what pastor Bob is doing on a glocal level. However, wish I would have read it when it first came out.

If the church would follow these principles we would effectivelly reach the world for Christ.