"Not a Fan" by Kyle Idleman

The message of "Not a Fan" is extremely important, and it is also terrifyingly relevant for today's church. The independent fundamental Baptists that I have listened to for the past couple of decades have been saying for years that there are "imposters" in the church - those who are not truly followers of Christ. This epidemic has been around since, well, Jesus' days. But the danger for the 21st-century church is that we are not only tolerating fans (or hypocrites, or false converts, or whatever you wish to call them), we are PRODUCING them at an alarming pace. Our discipleship success rate is almost nonexistent. We have dressed up Christianity as an attractive consumer package, and we are reaping the consequences of  an "easy-believe-ism" without the commitment of the heart that should accompany salvation. (For the record, I believe salvation is as simple as "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved..."  I'm not trying to add to the Gospel. Please understand the context of what I'm saying.)

That being said, this book is one of the must-reads I have reviewed so far on my blog. However, that does not mean there weren't a few minor pitfalls with the book. (I know, I know... I'm so picky)

The main thing is that I felt like the message could have been conveyed just as effectively in a 50-page booklet, whereas we are presented with a semi-redundant 200+ page book. There comes a time when I am reading books like these where the main point has been clearly made, but I feel obligated to finish the book - even though I doubt the author will present anything really fresh in the last 50-75 pages.  (This book could have been a lot shorter, BUT I will say that the last three chapters were the most powerful in my opinion)

By the way, the book is written on a very accessible level for readers. As one of our church men who read the book said to me recently, it is written on about a 7th grade level - all in all, not a bad thing. It just means that there are no deep Greek expositions, complex thought progressions, or logical syllogisms (which I actually happen to love).

The other thing that bothered me was the author's use of humor and jokes. He (graciously) relegated most of his cheesy-ness to footnotes at the bottom of the page; so for a better reading of the book, I recommend skipping the footnotes altogether.... Seriously... Don't even look down there at them.  Here the author has this incredible message that is as serious as Heaven and Hell (literally, if he's right about the fans being unsaved), and he sprinkles in some lame wisecracks every now and then. To me, that severely disrupted his momentum and decreased his effectiveness in communicating his message.

I hope this book (among others) will help foster a desire for true discipleship in our churches.

The message is a definite 5 star, but I can't rate the book itself any more than 4 out of 5.