Unbinding Your Church -- Review



Martha Grace Reese. Unbinding Your Church: Pastor’s Guide. Foreword by George G. Hunter III. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008. xiv + 129 pp.

In early 2007 Martha Grace Reese (aka Gay Reese) saw the publication of her best-selling book Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism. It became a hit because it spoke to Mainline Protestants about an issue we Mainliners like to steer clear of – evangelism – in a way that we could understand and appreciate. It challenged us to see things differently. Gay makes this point clear when she speaks of God doing something different in our churches.
In some ways, mainline churches have operated like a minority political party, the "loyal opposition" for too long. We have critiqued, held back and said what's wrong with other parts of Christ's church. Many of the things we've said may have a lot of truth in them. But it's holding back that 's the problem. That's us planted in playground dust. Many of us haven't done as good a job of putting our beliefs and lives on the line to follow the Spirit. We don't have a lot of experience leading in new, positive directions. It is going to take vast divinely inspired imagination for us to shift if we want God to use us in powerful, creative ways for new things (p. 15).

Too often the evangelism resources we use are geared to Conservative Evangelicals and they simply don’t sit well and so nothing happens. Unbinding the Gospel, however, was just the first salvo, the first offering in a series of three books. It is an introduction to the issue and the process, written with church leaders in mind. At the heart of this series is the belief that our ability to share our stories of faith with others is rooted in a committed and living relationship with God. The series is intended to help stir the spirit within us and give us the courage to share those stories with others, that they might find God and perhaps find their way into our communities of faith.

Book 2 in what has become the Real Life Evangelism Series, is entitled Unbinding Your Church. It is designed for pastors and those leaders who will guide the process. Gay is assisted in this process by Dawn Darwin Weaks, a Disciple pastor who provides sample sermons (yes this process involves a bit of preaching) and worship suggestions, and Catherine Riddle Caffey, who designed the charts and forms available online for use in a six week intensive church wide study. The final book is a revision of the first book designed for use by congregation members that includes a forty day prayer guide. This final book is entitled Unbinding Your Heart.

My attention here, however, is on the book for pastors and key leaders of this event. What Gay has provided is a step by step process of planning and enacting what she calls an “E-vent” – an Evangelism Event. If you read this manual, at times you will find yourself overwhelmed – especially if you are like me and you’re a small church pastor. Fortunately Gay sprinkles through out the book a reminder that each church needs to adapt this process to their own situation. What is most telling in this guide, is the reminder that anything worth doing requires time and energy and planning. This isn’t a process that you undertake at short notice. You must spend time reading, praying, planning, praying, recruiting, praying, and on. Her goal: changing habits and not just minds.

I tend to be an optimist, full of hope, and as Gay suggests we have a tendency to get all fired up about something, but then let it slide away due to lack of planning and commitment. The realist on the other hand, sees the dangers and the difficulties, focuses on the details and never gets started. The key then is balancing our hopes and optimism with enough realism to stay the course once we get started.

The book is composed of two parts. Part 1 lays out the process of planning and carrying out the event. She suggests spending 8 to 24 weeks in step 1 – using in Unbinding the Gospel – to discern whether to move forward (that is where my congregation is currently at – our elders are reading the book, just starting the book). After or concurrently with Step 1, another 12 to 16 weeks is spent utilizing this book – Unbinding Your Church – as pastors, staff, music team, small group leaders, and prayer team, work to discern the way forward and to organize the event itself. Finally there is Step 2, the E-vent using Unbinding Your Heart (Chalice 2008) which lasts 6 weeks, followed up by evaluation and implementation.

This book is the key to the success. It is methodical, overwhelming, detailed, but ultimately the key to understanding the way forward. The books themselves are only part of the package. Other forms are available online (the password is in the book) for downloading.

If you want to get a better sense of the process and its foundations, check my review of Unbinding the Gospel here. Check too the website -- http://www.gracenet.info/ -- and see what is available to review. I do think this is an exciting opportunity for the Mainline churches to discover their voice. The key, however, is rediscovering the conversation with God called prayer, something I like many find difficult to attend to with any consistency and diligence.

I will be writing up a fuller review of the entire series, which will be published here and in Sharing the Practice.

You may order books online at Amazon.com for the low price of $13.59 (32% off). See below to order:





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