I finished Breakout Churches

Let me just say off the bat that if you are a youth, you will probably think this is one of my boring posts. Sorry. I'll undertand if you don't wanna read my post. Just skip to the last paragraph...

So I finished Breakout Churches last night. I handed it off to Brad today. I think it would be a great book for our leadership team (elders, deacons and staff) to read together. We'll see.

I enjoyed the book, although it wasn't exactly what I expected. It is a "scientific" study that researched over 50,000 churches and found 13 that would be considered "breakout" churches. (A "breakout" church is one that started off pretty strong...went through a period of decline/plateau, and then somehow broke out of that decline to grow enormously...all under the same leadership.) I think there were a some conclusions that the team was expecting to find (and not find)...and lo and behold, they found them! So, I woudn't say that it is as "scientific" as it claims to be. In fact, they are unashamed to admit that almost every conclusion they make just happens to be the extremely similar to conclusions that Jim Collins' makes in a similar book studying businesses instead of churches.

That being said, it is still a good read. Good principles...good stories. I probably took away 5-6 really good lessons from the book. I think, though, you must read it with a grain of salt. I really appreciate the efforts they went to in order to avoid making it sound like there is some magic formula that will help churches. I'm definitely not into magic formulas. They don't exist.

I think that there are a lot of lessons here for Berean and similar churches.

So, what am I gonna read next? I think I want to start the Chronicles of Narnia books. I never read them as a kid...and I need to get pumped for the movies. Speaking of the movies, did you know that the first full trailer for Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe is coming out soon?