Radical
Taking Back your Faith From The American Dream
By David Platt
Published in 2010 by Multnomah Books
Reviewed by David Collins
Contents
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1.Someone Worth Losing Everything For
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2.Too Hungry for Words
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3.Beginning at the End of Ourselves
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4.The Great Why of God
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5.The Multiplying Community
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6.How Much is Enough?
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7.There is No Plan B
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8.Living When Dying is Gain
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9.The Radical Experiment
David Platt is lead pastor of the Church at Brook Hills, a four-thousand-member congregation in Birmingham, Alabama, that describes itself as “a faith family full of world-impacting disciples who really believe that as a church we can shake nations for his glory.” RADICAL is his first book.
The arrival of this book, along with others like it (e.g. Crazy Love, by Francis Chan), comes after a few years of global financial crisis – a world-wide wake up call, which has prompted many to reconsider their life values, and organizations, churches included, think again about their corporate values and practices.
David Platt’s book comes right on time to confront us again with the values and practices of the founder of our faith, and of his Church, Jesus Christ.
In nine short and very readable chapters, he makes the case for a radical Christian faith – which should be the norm. He shows the shameful poverty of our faith amid the affluence of our lifestyles. He advocates a Great Commission mindset far beyond the tidy routines of our comfortable Christianity. He says, for example,
If Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus.
If people are dying and going to hell without ever even knowing there is a gospel, then we clearly have no time to waste our lives on an American dream.
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources?
After eight chapters filled with writing like the above, Radical concludes with ‘The Radical Experiment’, a clarion call to "One year to a life lived upside down," in which the reader is urged to commit to:
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1.Pray for the entire world
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2.Read through the entire Word
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3.Sacrifice your money for a specific purpose
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4.Spend your time in another context
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5.Commit your life to multiplying community
To me, these five commitments appear normal rather than radical or “upside down”. That they should be presented as radical perhaps shows the state of the “Church” the author is looking at in America. Of course, stereotypes must not be made – we all know of churches in the USA, as well as in New Zealand, where great experiments with the radical are taking place.
To help you decide if ‘Radical’ is for you, read the following extract for the first chapter.
“The youngest megachurch pastor in history.”
While I would dispute that claim, it was nonetheless the label given to me when I went to pastor a large, thriving church in the Deep South – the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama. From the first day I was immersed in strategies for making the church bigger and better. Authors I respect greatly would make statements such as, “Decide how big you want your church to be, and go for ut, whether that’s five, ten, or twenty thousand members.” Soon my name was near the top of the list of pastors of the fastest-growing U.S. churches. There I was . . . living out the American church dream.
But I found myself becoming uneasy. For on thing, my model in ministry is a guy who spent the majority of his ministry time with twelve men. A gut who, when he left this earth, had only about 120 people who were actually sticking around and doing when he told them to do. More like a minichurch, really. Jesus Christ – the youngest minichurch pastor in history.
Soon I realised I was on a collision course with an American church culture where success is defined by bigger crowds, bigger budgets, and bigger buildings. I was now confronted with a startling reality: Jesus actually spurned the things that my church culture said were most important. So what was I to do? I found myself faced with two big questions.
The first was simple. Was I going to believe Jesus? Was I going to embrace Jesus even though he said radical things that drove the crowds away?
My second question was more challenging. Was I going to obey Jesus? My biggest fear, even now, is that I will hear Jesus’ words and walk away, content to settle for less than radical obedience to him. In other words, my biggest fear is that I will do exactly what most people did when they encountered Jesus in the first century.
That’s why I’ve written this book. I am on a journey. But I am convinced it is not just a journey for pastors. I am convinced these questions are critical for the larger community of faith in our country today. I am convinced that we as Christ followers in American churches have embraced values and ideals that are not only unbiblical but that actually contradict the gospel we claim to believe. And I am convinced we have a choice.
You and I can choose to continue with business as usual in the Christian life and in the church as a whole, enjoying success based on the standards defined by the culture around us. Or we can take an honest look at the Jesus of the Bible and dare to ask what the consequences might be if we really believed him and really obeyed him.
