Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing: How Leaders Can Overcome Costly Mistakes by Geoff Surratt









Published in 2009 by Zondervan

Geoff Surratt's Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches From Growing is an entertaining and informative read. Like I noted in the title, I am not a pastor (but I have been an active church member nearly all of my life), but I still found the book quite enjoyable.


Surratt's 10 things are:

* Trying to do it all
* Establishing the Wrong Role for the Pastor's Family
* Providing a Second-Rate Worship Experience
* Settling for Low Quality Children's Ministry
* Promoting Talent over Integrity
* Clinging to a Bad Location
* Copying Another Successful Church
* Favoring Discipline over Reconciliation
* Mixing Ministry and Business
* Letting Committees Steer the Ship

Surratt does come at things from a non-denominational perspective so some of these items were not particularly applicable to my Missouri Synod Lutheran church, but most were. I was able to note that our church does most of these things well, including just moving out of a bad location (too small) and not letting the pastors do it all.

Surratt fills his chapter with real-life examples of what not to do, including lots of his own (self-described) stupid mistakes. At the end of every chapter he interviews another successful pastor about the issues he just wrote about and gets a slightly different perspective. Surratt's humor carries the book and saves this from being a drudge of a to-do list and makes it a joy. For example where he is commenting on his lack of ability to counsel parishioners with their personal problems: "My natural response when people tell me their personal problems is, 'Wow, what are you going to do about that?' You'd be surprised at how few people find solace or direction in that kind of advice."

It's not all fun and games though. Surratt has some especially profound thoughts on seeing church as a family (kind of choked me up as I was listening to it using the Kindle text-to-speech mode while walking the dog - enough so that I read it to my wife when I got back from the walk).

Good, informative read. Deceptively light-hearted - you'll laugh and you'll think at the same time.

This book can be found on Amazon here: 
Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing: How Leaders Can Overcome Costly Mistakes

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on March 19, 2010.

Comments

Popular posts over the last 30 days

NIGHTSHADE (a Catalina novel book one)(audiobook) by Michael Connelly

OUR SUBWAY BABY (audiobook) by Peter Mercurio

SUPERMAN / WONDER WOMAN, Volume 1: Power Couple (graphic novel) by Charles Soule

IN the PRESENCE of MINE ENEMIES: SEVEN YEARS as a POW in NORTH VIETNAM by Howard and Phyllis Rutledge

SONGS of AMERICA: PATRIOTISM, PROTEST, and the MUSIC THAT MADE a NATION (audiobook) by Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw

BATMAN: ONE BAD DAY - MR. FREEZE (graphic novel) by Gerry Duggan

SLAPSTICK or LONESOME NO MORE! by Kurt Vonnegut

DOWN ALONG with THAT DEVIL'S BONES: A RECKONING with MONUMENTS, MEMORY, and the LEGACY of WHITE SUPREMACY (audiobook) by Connor Towne O'Neill

LIVE LONG and...WHAT I LEARNED ALONG the WAY (audiobook) by William Shatner and David Fisher

COMRADES in ARMS (kindle)(short story) by Kevin J. Anderson