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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good ideas but slow moving, October 5, 2011
This review is from: Going Deep: Becoming A Person of Influence (Paperback)
Going Deep re-visits Pastor Gordon MacDonald's fictional congregation in his book, Who Stole My Church. While I have not read that book, I felt this provocative statement from the book's description was intriguing: "The future of the Christian faith will not be determined by the number of people who fill the pews but by the spiritual depth of those people." I have also read a couple of other books by Gordon MacDonald that were helpful to me. MacDonald says early in the book, "We seem to know how to get unchurched people to visit our buildings. We even seem to know how to draw them across the line into a declaration of personal faith in Jesus. But what we do not seem to know is how to cultivate spiritually deep people. Tomorrow's church could be headed for trouble." Going Deep offers a detailed plan of helping churches cultivate people of depth--spiritually mature Christians that truly desire to make a difference for Christ with their lives, that will help grow the church. This book is full of great ideas and inspiration to help churches do just that. However, I found this book to be extremely slow-moving. Gordon MacDonald goes into great detail using the fictional church people in a sort of novelization of conversations to present his ideas. I am a detail-oriented person but this book was bogged down in details. I think if these concepts were presented a little differently, I would have been a more motivated reader. For me, this book plodded along like an extremely slow walk down a country lane. It was pleasant but I don't need to stop and examine every single rock in that kind of detail or I lose something of the whole experience. I do think this book could be helpful for pastors and church leaders but be prepared for a very detailed read. I want to be a deeper person and I did learn from Pastor MacDonald so it was worthwhile in that way. I received this book as a part of Thomas Nelson's Booksneeze program. I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for the book.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
No new ideas, but good launching pad for your own ideas, October 12, 2011
This review is from: Going Deep: Becoming A Person of Influence (Paperback)
Going Deep: Becoming a Person of Influence
by Gordon MacDonald Gordon MacDonald uses the fictional church and town he first introduced readers to in Who Stole My Church? to present an account of what it might look like if a church decided to intentionally cultivate "deep people," influential men and women who can lead a church forward in the future. If you do not normally read the Preface of a book, I'd highly recommend you alter that practice at least for this book so that you can get your arms around the writing style of Going Deep. This book is a work of fiction with only two characters being real: Gordon and Gail MacDonald. The rest is manufactured in, what I consider, a clever way to present material without being dry or academic. The gist of the narrative is a pastor who is drawing closer and closer to retirement being challenged to consider what his legacy will be at the church in terms of leaving the church healthy and in a position to experience long-term health and growth. Based on his interaction with several individuals, notably his next door neighbor, MacDonald, begins to develop what is known as the "big idea" at first and which later becomes known as CDP, Cultivating Deep People. What is the "big idea" or CDP? Put simply, it is a year-long small group mentoring program. I'll leave the rest for you to uncover. As a Pastor of Discipleship, this book caught my attention and I was very eager to read it to hopefully glean some insight into developing people. Did I walk away from this book with a great new insight or strategy? I can't say I did. The "big idea" really isn't something too far off the radar for most competent discipleship-oriented pastors. At the same time, I found this book to be quite helpful in refining some thinking and spurring tangential ideas. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book (and again the fictional style made it that much more readable) and would recommend it to others; in fact, I am loaning it to one of my ministry team members after this review is written. However, I must point out two weaknesses of the book. First, MacDonald seemed rather unbelievably naïve concerning discipleship in the book. Perhaps he presented himself in this light so he could flesh out the idea from the foundational level and not assume anything about the reader. I tend to think that's the case, but anyone who has served in ministry for longer than a few years will find himself rolling his eyes at times because of the unbelievable lack of understanding MacDonald demonstrates at times (e.g. the rabbinical interaction with his students). Second, the narrative is too perfect. As you read about the development of the "big idea" you will see that everything falls into place with everyone agreeing and being positive and supportive with one brief, rather insignificant, occurrence midway through the book, and one bigger issue near the end that is resolved perfectly, complete with a nice yellow bow! Again, anyone who has served in ministry for virtually any length of time knows this is not how real life in church works. There are always problems, naysayers, critics, saboteurs, etc., etc. I think this book would have been that much stronger had MacDonald included some realistic pushback to the idea and showed how it could be handled. Even with those two criticisms, I'd recommend Going Deep to pastors or church leaders who are looking to intentionally disciple people for God's glory. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing an unbiased, authentic review. I was not required to write a positive review. The ideas and thoughts are my own.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good concept, but..., October 7, 2011
This review is from: Going Deep: Becoming A Person of Influence (Paperback)
The goal of all Christians should be to pursue a closer relationship with God. We should seek to emulate Christ. I was looking forward to reading Going Deep, hoping it would help me "deepen" my own relationship with God. In Going Deep, Gordon MacDonald uses fictional characters and settings, along with himself and his wife Gail, to explain how his character was inspired to develop a program in his fictional church to grow young Christians into tomorrow's leaders. More than half the book is spent looking at the idea of growing these Christians. How were these Christians to be selected for the program? What would the program involve for these people? The balance of the book takes up the forty weeks of learning these characters went through to become deeper Christians. The book is quite lengthy, and at points seemed to drag on with information that really didn't seem necessary. Although I did become inspired to do further research because of some of Mr. MacDonald's very unique ideas of Christ and His followers, the book never stated exactly how to deepen your own personal walk with Christ, for which I was greatly disappointed. This was an easy to read book, although I kept looking to see how many pages were left. I will not be recommending or loaning out Going Deep to my friends and family. In order to comply with new Federal Trade Commission regulations, please note that this book was provided compliments of Booksneeze.
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