In 1997, my wife and I had just arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area for me to attend Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. We moved onto campus in Mill Valley (North Bay) and I quickly got a job and started attending classes. I was pretty busy, but knew that I wanted to do ministry in the City during my time in seminary. In March, I was invited to a church planting party at a home near Golden Gate Park. It was a really interesting night where Erika and I met people that would challenge us and shape us for the years to come. One of those people was Andrew Jones (TallSkinnyKiwi) whose storefront church on Haight Street we would start attending a few months later. But, the party was hosted by Linda Bergquist and her husband Eric. Linda was the church planter strategist for Baptists in the Bay Area and Eric ran the Page Street Baptist Center near the Haight-Ashbury District. This couple would eventually have a profound influence on the way that I thought about church and people who were far away from God.
I worked with Linda and Eric on many different occasions while I was in SF and have continued to keep in touch with them over the years. My daughter, Ashtyn, and I even stayed in their home for 5 days this past March while we enjoyed a Daddy-Daughter visit to the city of her birth. They are wonderful people. So, I am really excited to begin reviewing Linda's first book that she has co-authored with Allan Karr, the associate professor of missional/church planting at Golden Gate. The book is entitled The Church Turned Inside Out. I am still reading it and plan to start reviewing it in full next week, but until then, here is the description from the back cover to get started:
There are no sacred models of church, no specific molds into which God pours blessings, and no special leadership styles that are holier than others. Too often, though, church leaders attempt to pattern their ministries after either tradition or the successes of a few prominent trendsetting congregations.
In Church Turned Inside Out, Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr push back on the one-size-fits-all approach. They invite leaders of all kinds of churches—new and existing, megachurches and microchurches—to walk through an inside-out design process. Instead of starting with models and methods, they insist that every sphere of church life resonates with and communicates what you really believe.
As the book unfolds, it moves from abstract concepts toward concrete suggestions. It considers the uniqueness of individual leaders, their teams, and their particular communities, cultures, and contexts while taking seriously both spiritual and practical dimensions. This process results in more potent and effectively organized churches. Perhaps more important, it helps church leaders discover ways to live and work more wholly and faithfully, according to how God created them. It really is possible for a church to be so beautifully designed that every structure, program, and relationship reflects what it intends. Sometimes this requires a whole new design, and other times it only takes re-aligning or refining what already exists. This thoughtful and systemic approach opens a wider array of possible church paradigms than most people ever imagine, but the real goal is not innovation but transformation.
Using a blend of theology, biblical imagery, and metaphors from culture and creation, Church Turned Inside Out provides respectful ways to consider adaptation and change. It offers a hopeful vision of what the church can and must become. It not only positions the church for its future mission to the twenty-first century but offers timeless principles for the church of today.
Linda is absolutely brilliant, by the way, and thinks on more levels than I can keep up with. One of my favorite parts about my trip to SF back in the Spring was sitting at Linda and Eric's kitchen table at night and talking with them until we could not keep our eyes open anymore. Like a fascinating kitchen table conversation, this book is opening me up to her (and Allan's) experiences and insight. It is especially helpful for church leaders in the South who have not yet experienced the full weight of the cultural change that is coming, but will very soon. More on that later . . .
Full review coming next week.
Comments