On April 30th I responded here to the sample chapter of David Platt’s Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream, all the while not expecting to be given a copy of the complete book. On Friday that changed. I started reading around 3:00 PM Sunday and by 11:00 Monday morning had finished all 216 pages.
Radical truly is.
In the meantime, I thought I had included another mention of David Platt in the link list, but I see instead I e-mailed it to several pastor friends:
At an average of 55 minutes, David Platt’s Sunday morning sermons at the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, are already far longer than those of most pastors. But to Platt, they seem awfully short. He has been struck in his travels by underground Asian house churches that study the Bible together, under the threat of persecution, for as long as 12 hours in one sitting.
He has imported this practice into a biennial event that Brook Hills calls Secret Church. Starting at 6 p.m., Platt preaches for six hours on a single topic, such as a survey of the Old Testament. About 1,000 people, mostly college students and young singles, turned out for the first Secret Church. Since then, other Secret Church topics have included the Atonement and spiritual warfare. It is now so popular the church requires tickets.
“It’s one of my favorite sights as a pastor to look out at 12:30 a.m. and see a room full of 2,500 people, their Bibles open, soaking it in,” Platt says.
Platt believes churches have lowered the bar for biblical and theological literacy by treating it as something for professionals. Equating serious biblical engagement with seminaries rather than the local church has impoverished both institutions, he says. So Brook Hills has launched its own training center for lay leaders and is preparing a one-year training program for church planters, with separate tracks for full-time pastors and bi-vocational ministers. Platt recognizes that smaller churches lack the human and financial resources to offer these programs, but he thinks the principles transfer to churches with only 50 members.
continue reading at Christianity Today
Radical is a book about the state of the American church. But while it comes close, it isn’t too American to miss out on a larger audience. Radical is a book about missions. But it is engaging enough to eclipse the negative stereotypes which cause books of that genre to escape our interest. Platt keeps it pertinent by including examples of people in his church who have allowed their lives to intersect with the lives of people in the much broader world. Examples of people not too different from people like us.
Mostly, Radical is about you and me and all that we could be doing that we’re not doing. He ends with a one-year challenge called “The Radical Experiment.” Not content to simply write a book review, I decided to check out the sermon where he introduced the experiment in his home church, The Church at Brook Hills, in Birmingham, Alabama.
Platt has a quiet, gentle preaching style and a laid-back southern accent that belies the degree of challenge he is presenting to his hearers. The website Baptist 21 says, “He is a phenomenal preacher of God’s Word, we would probably label him as one of the best and certainly one of the young up and coming preachers in the Southern Baptist Convention. God is blessing his ministry as Brook Hills is growing and sees weekly attendance of over 4,000 people.”
Reading the book however, it is very clear that Platt is not entirely comfortable being the pastor of a ‘megachurch’ of 4,000 people and all its attendant accoutrements. His frequent and intensive visits overseas mean that he is somewhat of a ‘fish out of water’ in the affluence of his home church. I am sure there are Sundays where his heart is in another place. Consequently, he is a liaison between the affluent North American Church, and the persecuted church overseas.
…Every few months, a book is released with a message and significance “for such a time as this.” Books like this capture the spiritual imagination and present us with new possibilities. Radical is that book for the summer of 2010.
I want to end this with an endorsement the book received from Russell D. Moore, whose blog is often linked here:
“Sometimes people will commend a book by saying, ‘You won’t want to put it down.’ I can’t say that about this book. You’ll want to put it down, many times. If you’re like me, as you read David Platt’s Radical, you’ll find yourself uncomfortably targeted by the Holy Spirit. You’ll see just how acclimated you are to the American dream. But you’ll find here another Way, one you know to be true, because you’ve heard it before in the words of the Lord Jesus, perhaps most forcefully in the simple call ‘Follow me.’
Read this book. Put it away for a time, if you need to, while your conscience is invaded by the Spirit driving you to repentance. And then pick it up again. After you’re done reading, I think you’ll know better how to pick up your cross and follow Christ for the advancement of the kingdom and the destruction of false dreams.”
A copy of Radical was provided by Augsburg-Fortress Canada, the Canadian distributor for Waterbrook/Multnomah. (Thanks, Norm!) The related booklet, The Radical Question is available for giveaway purposes in packages of ten.
Currently listening to: A Ton of Worship. A collection of church worship from the UK, but check out the stats: 5-CDs. 20 songs per CD. That’s 100 songs for only $12.99 US/$15.99 CDN. Also a kids version for $9.99 US/$12.99 CDN. From Kingsway Music.
Thinking Out Loud 