"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.

"Going Deep" by Gordon MacDonald

My hopes for this book were fairly high, even though this is the first Gordon MacDonald book that I've read. And, to be fair, it wasn't a bad book. It just wasn't a terribly good book, either. Before I get too far, here's the main plot: a pastor is praying for a "great idea" to train future leaders and to grow some influential Christians in the church. The end result is "CDP: Cultivating Deep People." A few people from the church are selected to be a part of the CDP group, and they spend a year of discipleship with the pastor and his wife (meeting every Monday night for 40 weeks). The book follows the formulating of the plan and the first CDP group's experience.
Let me start with my criticisms so we can end on a positive note. To begin with, there were times when the conversations in the book seemed a little shallow and.... well, "cheesy" is about the best way to say it. This is merely a personal opinion and reflects my assessment of the author's writing style, so others may disagree. My second criticism involves the time frame. The book covers two years in 383 pages. Obviously, there are some pretty big gaps and jumps in time.
Third, and I hate to say this, but the characters seemed a little wooden (except for the pastor and his wife, Gordon and Gail MacDonald!). The characters are what either makes or breaks a book for me. This book was lacking in the character department.
Fourth...it was just too good to be true. There were no major conflicts (there were a couple of weak crisis points, but they were resolved). It's very hard to remain interested in a book with no climax. If you aren't building up to something, then you have the feeling that it's downhill all the way.
Fifth - and this was the biggie for me - you will read the words "CDP", "great idea", "this thing", or "deep" on average about 5 times on each page FOR ALMOST THE WHOLE BOOK. It got pretty annoying. I guess it was a necessary thing to do, but it made the book very monotonous to me.
Okay, now I can say some good things about the book! Any pastor would love to have an experience like this in his own church. I truly pray that our church will have disciples that are on fire like these disciples were.
Probably the best thing about the book was the information about Jesus as a Rabbi (from a Jewish perspective). It really opened my eyes to what Jesus was trying to accomplish with the 12 disciples. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to research how ancient Jewish rabbis selected and trained their followers. It will change the way you look at Jesus.
The "great idea" that Pastor Mac had in the book isn't a NEW idea at all. It's what Christians should have been doing for 2,000 years. But I'm glad there are 21st century pastors putting new emphasis on the Great Commission: "Go and make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19) We need more disciples of Christ. In all, I'd probably give the book 2 out of 5 stars.
I received this book free from Thomas Nelson publishers as part of the BookSneeze bloggers program. I was not required to make a positive review, and the opinions expressed are my own.