Suckerpunched…

I was bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed at the ref­er­ence sec­tion at Bere­an Chris­t­ian Store in San Jose. I had gone in with a coupon fig­ur­ing I’d pick up a sweet and expen­sive com­men­tary at reduced rate. After scour­ing the com­men­tary sec­tion I con­clud­ed that there was not one sin­gle com­men­tary in the store worth own­ing.

It made me very, very sad. I hate to be one of those min­is­ters who is always whin­ing about how Chris­t­ian book stores are dumb­ing down the faith, but I was almost sick inside at the low qual­i­ty of the books on offer.

As I was on my way out, I noticed Break­ing The Mis­sion­al Code was for sale. Since I had a coupon and the book had been rec­om­mend­ed to me by sev­er­al friends and I did­n’t want to leave bit­ter at the store, I picked it up.

It’s an easy read and I was gen­er­al­ly appre­cia­tive of their thoughts (espe­cial­ly their warn­ing to the rapid­ly swelling mis­sion­al net­works to not neglect tra­di­tion­al mis­sions in favor of church plant­i­ng), and I was almost done with it when I got suck­er­punched at the end.

A recent devel­op­ment in church plant­i­ng is that of plant­i­ng church­es on or near col­lege cam­pus­es. Lead­ers are dis­cov­er­ing that when church­es are plant­ed on cam­pus they are more strate­gic at reach­ing unreached and dis­con­nect­ed peo­ple on the col­lege cam­pus. They rep­re­sent a shift from col­lege and cam­pus min­istries that focus on those who already embrace the faith to that of plant­i­ng the gospel among those who have nev­er or sel­dom heard.
Break­ing The Mis­sion­al Code, Ed Stet­zer & David Put­man p. 232
empha­sis added

I feel vague­ly slan­dered…

I think per­haps the authors mis­un­der­stand what cam­pus min­istries do. And they also over­es­ti­mate the abil­i­ty of church­es to thrive on the col­lege cam­pus — some cam­pus­es are very reach­able that way and oth­ers are not. It’s a tool in our tool­box for reach­ing col­le­gians, not a replace­ment tool­box.

Over­all, it’s a good book if you haven’t read any­thing about lead­ing your church to engage the cul­ture before. Oth­er­wise you might find it rep­e­ti­tious. And libelous. 🙂