Customer Reviews

Renovation of the Church: What Happens When a Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation

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Hey...okay, so I have known these guys for a while.

And they are the real deal - their story is one that will give you hope in the midst of the big pile of books out there today suggesting what might grow "your" church - so this book is not another "how to" but a faithful witness to what happens when a church team asks Jesus, not current religious culture, to be their teacher. And that same renovation can happen to your church too.

I first heard their story as part of a small group of church leadership teams that had been directly influenced by Dallas Willard and his teaching. Along with Kent and Mike's team, we were privileged to have Dallas with us in these meetings over several years and the story in this book is a invitation for your team to embark on that same journey. Although their journey is from a "Seeker" church beginning, our group of churches came from many different beginnings: "Recovery" church, "Traditional mainline", "Inner city-Justice", "Emergent" and "Bible" church types...and as this book will attest - without Jesus as teacher, and our church's "brand" as the attraction - church becomes more an extension of our egos and not so much Christ's Kingdom.

So no matter what kind of church you have, Mike and Kent's story is a map that leads any church from any background to the ONE CENTER of transformation in Jesus and life together in the Kingdom.

This book's account is important because it shows that there is a cost to intentional corporate discipleship and it is not about reading a few books by Dallas Willard or a formation sermon series or hiring a staff member to "do spiritual formation" for the church in a boutique program for a few. This book will show you what such a endeavor involves - a repentance or change of mind about everything the church is supposed to be about - God's Kingdom, not ours. But you will also find helpful examples of how God led them to invite their people into the life God was calling them to live together in their programs too - from how they did worship to sermons to small groups and even their leadership roles.

Mike and Kent's account is essential reading for any church or staff that would attempt such a renovation...which means you need to be willing to "lose one kind of corporate life together for another one" and be ready to admit your failures along the way and thank God for what succeeds. And that losing... of one corporate life for another, may and most likely will mean... 1) losing some people (this seems to happen and did to John the Baptist and Jesus, when people finally realize what such a life will cost) and 2) making some mistakes that reflect your own stumbling towards formation. But Kent and Mike's story and that of Oak Hills as well as other churches crazy enough to trust God and follow Him into his Kingdom dream for the church and the world is not so crazy once you live it.

It is life as God meant it to be and once you start on this journey, you can't go back. Thanks Mike and Kent for taking the trouble and time to write up what God has done in you and through you and your church.

This review was unsolicited by IVP or the authors,
Keith Meyer

(for more help in what it looks like for Jesus to be your church's teacher, see two books: The Kingdom Life: A Practical Theology of Discipleship and Spiritual Formation and Whole Life Transformation: Becoming the Change Your Church Needs)

This book showed up on my radar a few weeks back with an advanced reading copy (bound transcript form) from InterVarsity Press. At the time I had quite a few books that were on my "to read" least that preceded Renovation of the Church, so I skimmed it, made a few notes, and put it aside for later reading.

One of the reasons that I have "quite a few books" on my reading list is the season of my spiritual journey. The past couple of years have been rather intense with the direction that I have sensed God leading me, and my quest for answers and guidance has resulted in much reading, listening, and prayerful contemplation. Skimming through Renovation gave me the impression that I had already gleaned the information that it offered to me. That was presumptuous of me.

A couple days ago I saw a brief review on a popular blogsite I frequent of Carlson and Lueken's book and was reminded of my transcript copy. I went to my bookshelf and retrieved the book with the intentions of reading the highlighted chapters noted in the review. Coincidentally, a few hours later this same day, a fully edited copy of Renovation of the Church arrived on my doorstep for review. I thought; "Maybe I should read the whole book." I sat down this morning and read Renovation from cover to cover.
To say that this book was a timely read for me would be an understatement. As I mentioned earlier, I have been on a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts for the past couple of years (I am a pastor) trying to redefine the ministry of helping to "make disciples" as Jesus has instructed us. I resigned from my pastoral position almost a year ago because of a sense of disconnect over issues of spiritual formation in my local church setting; the subtitle of Renovation of the Church is "What happens when a seeker church discovers spiritual formation." It was with this frame of mind that I sat down read the book.

The first few chapters of the book provide some needed back-story, but transitions quickly to the meat of the story and the mission shift of Oak Hills Church. I found my own journey intersecting with the journeys of the authors repeatedly and received affirmation and encouragement in the direction and path I have taken in the past year or so. I needed this book.

I was also very encouraged with the transparency of the retelling of the Oak Hills transformation. The impression I got of the authors was one of humility and genuine love for the Church. I appreciated the honesty in the stories shared. Significant challenges were discussed and reviewed from a "real-time" perspective as well as reflective assessment. These challenges were the transition process itself, rethinking the gospel, and some of the logistical and organizational difficulties encountered in the existing structures and programs. Chapters nine through eleven discussed and shared some of the implementation and tangible practices the Oak Hills community experienced in pursuing their transformation from an attractional model church to a formational-missional community. These experiences were very insightful to me and will prove themselves to be invaluable I am sure. The final chapter, twelve, was a reflection of mistakes and "what we might have done better" review. This might be one of the most beneficial and humble expressions in the book. I found myself becoming convicted and exposed for making some of the same mistakes in dealing with people and transitional situations. I am hopeful that my heart might be healed and humbled to the same degree that I sense has occurred with the authors, Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken. I am thankful for the Oak Hills Church and their pastors for sharing this story. I am also thankful for the providence of being offered this book for review from the publicity department of IVP. This is an important book for the church in America at this moment. I am hopeful she will have ears to hear. My recommendation: a must read.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Intervarsity Press to read and post a review on my site. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Kent Carlson is the pastor of a very successful church. It was based on the Willow Creek model of creating Seeker Sensitive services. They had an attendance of 1,700 and ministry was taking place.

Then Carlson hired Mike Lueken, took his leadership team on a retreat and everything changed.

In Renovation of the Church, these pastors explain how they felt convicted to change the way they did church from focusing on seekers to growing in Christian Formation.

This change has come at a cost. Their attendance has dropped to 700. That's 1,000 people who have left. They have also lost staff members who weren't comfortable with the change.

All this and they still feel that God is moving them in the right direction.

Inside this book you will learn their mistakes, feel their heart's desire to pursue Christlikeness and God's kingdom.

With 12 chapters, you'll discover the hard years of the transition, the mistakes they made during the transition, you'll learn about their hatred for consumerism and how it has practically destroyed the Church. These pastor's talk about what it means to be the true church and then they dive into the areas of outreach and worship.

I particularly enjoyed reading their views on worship and how it needs to focus on the story of God and not on the specific style (think songs) that makes us "feel" good.

This is a book critiquing a model of doing mega-church that many in America are comfortable with. It may even challenge you.

This book was provided for review, at no cost, by IVP Publishing.

Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken desire to lead a church where people are becoming like Jesus. As co-pastors of Oak Hills Church in Folsom, California, Mr. Lueken and Mr. Carlson have been on a journey. After founding Oak Hills in 1984, Mr. Carlson adopted many of the principles of Willow Creek in leading his church to become a growing, seeker-sensitive congregation. But over time, Mr. Carlson and his staff began to become uncomfortable with the witness, methodology, and philosophy of ministry that prevailed at their church. A change was needed. Rather than being consumer driven and seeker oriented, the leadership felt called to be Kingdom driven and discipleship oriented, and as a result of this new vision, everything changed. The authors describe this as a transition to making "spiritual formation", rather than numerical growth, their primary orientation.

And while this may sound inspiring, this reshaping of vision came with a cost. Mr. Carlson and Mr. Lueken recast worship, abandoned the "show", and watched the church dwindle numerically. After being held up as a beacon of success as a Willow Creek style congregation, the bright perception that came with high numbers began to dim. Mr. Lueken and Mr. Carlson tell their story in this book of making a radical shift in philosophy of ministry--one that they believe in--and invite other leaders to reconsider their models, their language, their discourse, and their method for making disciples of Jesus Christ.

As a leadership tale, this sounds good.

But then why three stars? This may strike some as odd. Why would you assign a book a three star rating if the book is confusing, at best?

Simple. This book contains very high highs and very low lows. And as both take root, the ensuing result is a mudding of the waters. Christianity, being a deep well, contains a rich, nourishing tradition that delivers salvation, nurtures the soul, and fosters union with God. The church is called to present the water contained within that deep well, the Water of Life, Jesus Christ himself, in a manner that is compelling and clear and faithful to the biblical witness. I contend that Mr. Carlson and Mr. Lueken, while well intentioned, do not describe a church that accomplishes this aim. The gospel of the Kingdom, which they strive to announce, is muddled and unclear. The switch from consumer, seeker sensitive church to contemplative, spiritual formation church is strange. And the tale of their move from a numerically thriving church to a church with dwindling attendance and paring back to establish a culture that better forms people to actually follow Jesus is puzzling--in many aspects I found it to be more tragic than heroic--and this is not because I do not agree with the aim of helping people to follow Jesus, it is because of the method employed to get there. I found myself wondering if there was any other way to move the church from here to there without crushing the spirit of so many people, without altering worship so radically as to drive so many people away, and without having to rail against the congregation for their consumer mentality in such forthright and grating ways. Is slowness not an aspect of spiritual formation and growth? Is patience not a primary Christian virtue?

I offer two additional critiques.

First, in this book Mr. Lueken and Mr. Carlson fail to make clear distinctions between "the church" and "the staff and elders" when they tell their tale of change. In describing their reorientation of the church around notions of Kingdom and spiritual formation, they should be saying, "the staff and elders". If the church was truly moving that direction, then they would not have lost so many members upon making their shift. This is a top down change, not a bottom up change, and should be read as such.

Secondly, it is disturbing to read Mr. Carlson and Mr. Lueken describe the loss of clarity that "spiritual formation" brought to the church concerning how to invite others to participate in the life of the church, and to come a saving faith in Jesus Christ. In critiquing consumer driven gospel proclamations, they offer no alternative that can be grasped and taught to others. In my view, they have no gospel. They have Jesus as moral example, as spiritual teacher, and giver of life, but they do not have a concise and transmittable piece of "good news".

I am passionate about spiritual formation. I am passionate about the Kingdom of God. I am also passionate about seeing persons who do not believe Christianity is true discover that it is reasonable, compelling, and persuasive, and that the gospel announcement of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection contains the power to awaken the soul to a converting and transformative faith. The gospel--the announcement of the present Kingdom as evidenced in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ--itself is spiritually forming. It is the beginning of a new work. And the church is the crucible wherein the transformative results of that news are brought to bear on the life of the disciple, who is then commissioned both to go forth and serve as one changed, as well as to announce that same news that radically altered their own life.

This book is important and valuable. But I do not think Mr. Carlson and Mr. Lueken have provided a model to follow. I do believe they have given us a conversation piece. They have given us an example of a church that has attempted to be serious about discipleship and thoughtful regarding our cultural situation, rooted as we are in consumer America.

Read it, debate it, and learn from it. Just don't treat it as a gospel of the definite new way of being church. Otherwise, you will have swung the pendulum too far.

This is a book I have been waiting for someone to write for a very long time. When I was preparing for my senior year of college, I was required to spend a summer doing a ministry internship. Although I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to do that as part of a good ministry in a good church, that summer left me disillusioned with ministry. I returned to my senior year at Asbury hungry for a way of doing ministry that led to something more, and that hunger, along with relationships I was fortunate to have with great people at Asbury, guided me into the beginning of my interest in spiritual formation. It was during that year that I first read Dallas Willard, and from then on, my understanding of Christianity and ministry was dramatically changed.

The authors of Renovation of the Church had very similar experiences, only theirs occurred more than a decade into a very successful attempt at planting a church.

They had a rapidly growing suburban church with a new facility, and had around 1,700 people attending worship every weekend. Then they realized that the way they did ministry was actually working against the likelihood that their followers would ever have their characters become significantly like that of Jesus. They state, "It slowly began to dawn on us that our method of attracting people was forming them in ways contrary to the way of Christ" (35).

The book tells the story of their church, Oak Hills Church of Folsom, CA, from the time that it was planted, through their entry into the seeker church movement and rapid growth, then through the decision to change and the mistakes, consequences, and rewards that have followed. It is very honest, respectful, and obviously took a great deal of courage to publish. (Congratulations to both the authors and InterVarsity Press for doing so.) I've read the stories of other pastors or churches who have gone through similar journeys, but this is by far the best written.

Dallas Willard's foreword is worth the price of the book. He opens the book with a question (also repeated in a later chapter) which the rest of the book tries to unpack and Willard says is "the single most important question in the church culture of North America today": "How do we present the radical message of Christ in a church that has catered to the religious demands of the nominally committed?" (9) Or, as it played out in the story of Oak Hills, the question might be: How can we expect people whom we have attracted with a `come have all of your preferences and desires met at church' style of ministry to respond well to Jesus' `deny yourself and give up your life to follow me' gospel? The authors concluded that those two were incompatible.

Personally, one of the greatest strengths of the book was in making connections I had not been able to make before between our consumeristic habits that are so deeply ingrained in us in North American culture and churches' general lack of effectiveness at helping people grow in the character of Christ. As the authors point out, cultural consumerism isn't so much the problem, as is how churches have adopted the consumerism of the culture around us and decided we have to harness it as a strategy for church growth. Ministry becomes an endless cycle of creating attractive ministries to get people to come to our churches, then trying to keep them happy and engaged enough to continue coming rather than dropping out or finding another church. When people come to us on these terms, we cannot be surprised when we discover that they may actually have very little interest in learning to do the things that Jesus taught and arranging their lives as any of his serious students would naturally do.

Along with tackling the "insidious monster" of consumerism, the book also addresses personal ambition in pastors and how it feeds this destructive cycle. We can cover and excuse our selfish ambition in language of wanting to accomplish great things for God's kingdom, but ambition often leads us into ways of living that are destructive to our souls and those of the people following us. As Carlson states,

"The desire to be better than others, the odious nature of comparison, and the lack of contentment with our actual state, is the problem formationally. This whole personal ambition thing is a very messy area... Perhaps ambition is needed more than ever. But it must be ambition directed toward something other than personal and organizational success. We must be ambitious to decrease so that Christ may increase. This is truly something worth giving our lives to " (76, 87).

Amen. Our churches will certainly benefit if this book can launch honest conversations among our leaders.

P.S.: If you're not a pastor, this is still an important book to read, but... If you come away from reading it ticked off at your pastor or your church for not doing things this way, you've entirely misread the book. The authors themselves strongly urge against thinking that would lead to such a reaction, as they state that the best possible result is for you to encounter God in the church where you already are, rather than going looking for another church or pastor who does things the way you like. As I've stated it before personally, the biggest hurdle to great ministry in my church is my own unlikeness to Jesus, not that anyone else has gotten things wrong. In almost every case pastors and church leaders are working very hard and doing the very best they can in an incredibly difficult job. Take it easy on them, and use this book to help you become more like Jesus for them.

Every so often a book comes along that is of a different order and kind - this is such a book! In a church culture where there is a deep-seeded obsession with seeing numerical growth as a vital mark of success, Carlson and Lueken in their book, Renovation of the Church, forge an alternative and subversive way forward. Their story of, "what happens when a seeker church discovers spiritual formation" resulted in their congregation going from around 1700 to 750. They share with such refreshing honesty - willingly revealing their blunders and mistakes in the journey towards being a church that is, more and more, oriented and calibrated around the kingdom agenda of spiritual formation. It is an inspiring and hopeful story of one church daring to face the monsters of consumerism and ambition in their life and ministry - values they have truly and deeply discovered as antithetical to the way of Jesus. Here is a great quote from their book on this issue: "Gradually, we began to get some clarity on a troubling truth: attracting people to church based on their consumer demands is in direct and irredeemable conflict with inviting people, in Jesus' words, to lose their lives in order to find them. It slowly began to dawn on us that our method of attracting people was forming them in ways contrary to the way of Christ ... We began to realize that our current church structure was actually working against the invitation of Christ to experience his authentic transformation. In order to help people follow Christ more fully, we would have to work against the very methods we were using to attract people to our church."
In their story they also share how this journey has reshaped (and is reshaping) their understanding and practice of worship, outreach, discipleship and leadership. If you are looking for a resource to help you and your team recalibrate ministry around the course of spiritual formation, then I strongly encourage you to get this book!

I found this book to communicate a refreshingly authentic approach to being the church in today's culture. When I say today's culture I mean the prevailing culture of dismissing the historical contributions of past generations and beleiving that anything that isn't in step with prevailing fads is to be ignored. The authors are very honest and transparent in their writing. Anyone who thinks that the church has to increase in numbers or it is dead will not like this book. Anyone who is interested in authenticity will like this book.

Near the close of the millennium, leaders of an up-and-coming evangelical church nestled in the middle of Folsom, California, realized they had created a monster. Fueled by an entertaining seeker-targeted format, Oak Hills Church grew dramatically in the 1990's. Unrelenting pressure to present weekend services comprised of music, drama, testimonies, and sermons was akin to feeding an insatiable monster.

//Renovation of the Church: What Happens When A Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation// is an honest and bold recounting by Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken (co-pastors of Oak Hills Church) of the upheaval following their abandonment of the attractional or seeker church model to pursue the gospel of the kingdom. The greater part of the book is an exploration of themes that emerged during a decade of transition: consumerism, ambition, spiritual formation, authenticity--to name a few. Both men, seasoned public speakers, articulate their ideas well and with refreshing candor. Carlson warns: "This attractional model, we believe, is fundamentally flawed and will not be able to produce in any significant way the kind of Christ followers church leaders want to produce." This is a significant book for leaders of churches of all sizes as well as their congregations.

Reviewed by Diana Irvine

As a long time fan of Dallas WIllard and a working pastor, I was interested to read the story of this church and how they had made this change. I found the honesty that both authors displayed refreshing and poignant at times. It was nice to read a book that was not being used as a device to market some new program or system. This seems to dominate the church book market these days. That said, I do wish there was more information contained about the One Thing Groups that they mention being used at their church. The idea of that sort of small group growth that focuses directly on particular sins in a person's life is interesting and I would like to know more about their process. I hope to see more forthcoming on how the teaching of Willard, Foster and their contemporaries are affecting churches today. This would be a fresh wind indeed as opposed to same old wind we seem to get on how to grow leaders and grow your church numbers.

Are you kidding me? Wow! This story is all about pastoral humility, deep complete repentance, and the transformation that occurs with sincere Discipleship...starting with the pastoral leadership. It looks straight in the eyes of the church that utilizes the world's strategy of consumerism to attract people to attend their church, delivering a surface-level religiosity and spirituality that allows the church to focus on planning programs rather than seriously tending to the hearts, minds, and souls of their followers. Carlson and Lueken don't hide and don't apologize. May this story compel pastoral leadership teams to discuss this serious matter ("the monster") and allow the holy spirit to counsel their thoughts and feelings about what the Church is and is not.