The Church of Irresistable Influence

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Bridge -Building Stories to Help Reach Your Community.
Author: Robert Lewis with Rob Wilkins
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2001

“The question was simple: what impact is the church having on the community?”

The authors use a novel metaphor comparing actual bridge-building projects across the country with the “bridge-building” between a local church and the community. Every chapter is introduced with a very interesting story about the building of some famous bridge. It is not a how-to book but a how-we-did-it book addressing the contemporary problems for churches trying to be authentic to a postmodern world which is largely “hostile to absolute claims from any source”. What a disconnect; we live in a world which is obviously thirsting for spiritual things and authentic relationships while the modern version of the traditional church is failing to connect. This is the indictment by the emerging church movement. But, this book is not part of that movement, perse. It is the story of Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas from 1989 to the present. Yes, Governor Huckabee is mentioned.

If you think the book is simply advocating a pure “social gospel”, the author/pastor suggests reading the last chapter first; where he refutes the idea that we can reach a world simply by the “social gospel of human compassion and good works”. It is God’s grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ which changes hearts in a lost world.

One of the driving forces for his vision for change was his perceived failure of “absolute truth claims” to convince a postmodern world which rejects truth. He says, “for half of my pastoral ministry, I believed my mission was to help the world understand its errors”. So his conclusion was that “they didn’t need to be more religious; they needed to be more connected”. (It is interesting that we are now seeing a successful resurgence of the truth claims of the Bible as compared to the shortcomings of science trying to answer ultimate questions and secular agendas and politics trying to improve culture.) He saw the need for a complete reconstruction of their church. Otherwise, “We would eventually function as a refuge from the world, a sort of Christian “club” that exhausted its self trying to keep its members happy”.

Another major conclusion, was the need to change how the church was “perceived” by the community, “the most important name is not the one we call ourselves, but the one by which we are called”. The book is about their process of building the “core values” and the leadership to engage the community in meaningful ministries.

I enjoyed reading this book. Although it is written about a large city church, I think some of the concepts and ideas may have relevance for smaller churches.

Dan Boliekdanb

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