An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind

Rating:
Summary: An Incredible Resource
Review: An Unstoppable Force is the best book I have read on the purpose of the church. I have read the book twice in only 3 months and plan to buy a copy for all of my friends. It is required reading for anyone planning to be a part of church leadership or anyone that has a call to start a church. Be warned that the traditional views of a comfortable form of non-active Christianity will be challenged. Thank you to Erwin for a challenging and thought provoking resource.

Rating:
Summary: An Incredible Resource
Review: An Unstoppable Force is the best book I have read on the purpose of the church. I have read the book twice in only 3 months and plan to buy a copy for all of my friends. It is required reading for anyone planning to be a part of church leadership or anyone that has a call to start a church. Be warned that the traditional views of a comfortable form of non-active Christianity will be challenged. Thank you to Erwin for a challenging and thought provoking resource.

Rating:
Summary: Revolutionary
Review: As soon as I knew that Erwin's first book was available I ordered it. Erwin McManus leads a church in Los Angeles that is unlike any church I have ever encountered. This book goes through much of the foundational patterns of the church, Mosaic, and Erwin's personal vision for church in the 21st Century. The work begins with some of the things that have gone wrong with church in the modern era. The author mentions that church is treated as an organization instead of a living organism. He argues that church must be treated as a living organism to awaken an apostolic ethos, which unleashed the movement of God. I can say with great certainty that not too many churches are thinking this way. Every church that I involved myself with, whether as a volunteer, or paid ministry professional, treated church as a business for God. Business systems are fine for the business world, but what the author argues for is that church be treated as a living organism, a species, that must adapt and change to remain culturally relevant. He argues that when church is a living organism, its members will reproduce new believers, small groups will reproduce communities of faith, and the church will unleash the apostolic movement of God.
The author next moves us towards how the church has become stagnant. He rails us to not be stuck in a safe theology, rather for us to move towards engaging what Christ envisioned as a dangerous faith. One of the more interesting pieces of this work is when the author notes that the only storm that can sink a church is the storm that rages from within. From my own experience, joining a church after it had split over a small issue, this rings completely true and close to home. How many times have churches split over issues ranging from what color the carpet will be to what to do with the missions' budget for the following year. It seems to me that God is looking down upon us and grabbing his hair in frustration.
This book became even more important to me personally in wake of the recent tragedies in New York City and Washington, D.C. The author informs us that Globalization and a mass urbanization is taking place all around us whether we like it or not, and churches need to do something to handle this new change, risk extinction. Time and time again I see churches near the city whose neighborhoods have changed, and they have done nothing about it. The so-called transitional communities, change, and become ethnically diverse, and the original church members move to the newer suburbs, and there is no shift in what the church looks like. The new people in the neighborhood have no place to attend worship; they simply are not going to attend a church where they are not represented in leadership. The author commands us to change, to be a living organism as a church, to move past being purpose driven, and being alive. Many church models over the past two decades focus on get the new people in, train them up, and send them out. This model was fine in a more ethnically stagnant climate which we dwelt in during the modern era. What the author commands us to do is to move back to the past, so we can see the future.
Other authors, such as Robert Webber, and Leonard Sweet echo what Erwin calls us to do, have a radical new vision for church in the postmodern era. To emulate the apostles and how 12 men and their followers changed the face of the world. The author challenges us to find, or to ourselves be catalytic leaders who are not afraid to move fast and move others quickly with us. While not everyone will be a catalytic movement leader, when the church or body of believers finds a catalytic movement leader, let us not snuff them out. To many times churches that refuse to change, whose feet are stuck in spiritual cement, refuse to identify, and then develop leaders who will awaken the church from the slumber of decline. This needs to change. While this author's work definitely does not provide a ten step plan to improve your church, he does more. Erwin McManus calls us to reexamine everything about how we do church. If we hope to survive and thrive in an era where Islam in the fastest growing religion in the United States, we all should take heed to what Erwin is saying to us in the important work.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on Today's Church
Review: Erwin has been a prophetic and inspirational church leader/visionary for some time and now we have the benefit of seeing his thought and praxis in print. Read and enjoy, read and learn, then take the leap and try some of the principles this book embodies.

Rating:
Summary: An Unstoppable Force
Review: Erwin is a great public speaker so I bought the book. Honestly, I got nothing out of it. I can't really put a finger on WHY, but he didn't connect with me at all.

Rating:
Summary: The hope of the 21st century church
Review: Erwin McManus' book is THE best there is on the role of the church in society - not just western society. He inspires us with the stories, prods us, challenges us, makes us uncomfortable; but most of all, shows us what God is doing through a church (i.e., Mosaic) and wants to do through the church everywhere. The church really can be an unstoppable force. It will take a lot of courage for church leaders to face the issues this book raises. The difference could be between the very life and death of your church. Caution: you will never be the same after reading this!

Rating:
Summary: A fresh vision from a true visionary
Review: Erwin McManus, one of the great communicators and visionaries of the contemporary church, has created a work that will encourage the heart and inspire the soul of any reader. This is not a "how-to" book. You will not find any sure-fire methods for church growth. What you will find is a challenge to lead your church into new territory and a call for the church to become the movement that God intended her to be. Whether your congregation consists of 30 or 3,000, you will be blessed by the story of Mosaic, and you'll be excited at the thought of God moving in such a mighty way in your community of faith. Take the book, find a comfortable chair, get your highlighter ready, and be prepared to hear a fresh word from God through the words of a true visionary.

Rating:
Summary: Leads the Way for the Emerging Church in 21C
Review: Finally Erwin has written! Honestly, few have the ministry location (don't read "geography") that enable this kind of breadth in one volume. Here is a guy with a sweep of cultural insight, passion for God's church, creative genius and the ability to put it in print as well. This volume is essentially about the church getting in the game. Erwin's challenge?.... the church needs to wake up, wise up and gear up to this new world into which we have been invited by God to speak fresh good news. In my ministry I have bought 100 copies of 2 different books in my life for my leadership team. This will be the third. It is the best thing written in this arena in a long time, maybe ever. Get it, buy it, read it and then go buy 100 copies and give them to every church leader you know.

Rating:
Summary: Leads the Way for the Emerging Church in 21C
Review: Finally Erwin has written! Honestly, few have the ministry location (don't read "geography") that enable this kind of breadth in one volume. Here is a guy with a sweep of cultural insight, passion for God's church, creative genius and the ability to put it in print as well. This volume is essentially about the church getting in the game. Erwin's challenge?.... the church needs to wake up, wise up and gear up to this new world into which we have been invited by God to speak fresh good news. In my ministry I have bought 100 copies of 2 different books in my life for my leadership team. This will be the third. It is the best thing written in this arena in a long time, maybe ever. Get it, buy it, read it and then go buy 100 copies and give them to every church leader you know.

Rating:
Summary: can understand the mixed ratings.
Review: I This book was hard to read. After reading his other two books, I could understand some of what he was saying. It is also hard to read because so few churches are using the power that God has given us.

Like all of his books, it is challenging. It is best read by church leaders, who have the authority to make the changes that he suggests.