Unlearning Church

by Mike Slaughter, Leonard Sweet (Foreword)

How many things does your church do just because that's the way it's always been done? Does your congregation value tradition over passion and stability over creativity? If so, it's time to unLearn. Leading congregations into a dynamic and prophetic future requires unLearning what you thought you knew about the church, leadership, and life. Pastor Michael Slaughter casts a vision for innovative and authentic congregations, and for the kind of leadership that can bring congregations to greater vitality and impact in today's postmodern culture. Readers will be challenged to gaze boldly beyond franchised church models to a dynamic embodiment of God's unique vision for each leader and each congregation. UnLearning congregations embrace new media and cultural trends, value transformation over information, and create a safe space for the tough and unanswerable questions of life. These are churches that lovingly dare to shoulder spiritual and prophetic leadership in our rapidly changing culture, re-articulating God's ancient purposes to create high-tech, high-touch environments in which people can become radical followers of Jesus Christ. Informed by Slaughter's thirty years of leadership at the innovative and mission-driven Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, UnLearning Church offers readers guidance and insight into setting aside old identities, old expectations, and old ways of doing church, and inspires readers with examples of congregations already living out their mission to be creative and outwardly-focused communities of faith. Michael Slaughter is Lead Pastor and Chief Dreamer of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, Ohio. Appointed to the small country church in 1979, Mike saw the potential for a teaching church that would transform its community and the lives of people across the globe. Ginghamsburg has grown under his three decades of leadership from 90 worshippers a week to over 5,000. His other books include Spiritual Entrepreneurs, Out On the Edge, Real Followers, UnLearning Church, and Money Matters.

Genres: Leadership, Church, Nonfiction

142 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2001

About the author

Mike Slaughter is the lead pastor at Ginghamsburg Church in Tipp City, Ohio. Under his leadership, Ginghamsburg became known as an early innovator of small group ministry and a leader in global mission efforts. A frequently sought-after speaker, he is the author of many books, including Dare to Dream, Hijacked, Change the World, Christmas Is Not Your Birthday, and Upside Living in a Downside Economy.

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about church management that seems very dated. The "Unlearning"terminology seems unhelpful. The new edition is 12 years old and a lot of the concepts seem pretty obvious.

[Jay Miklovic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before even getting into the content of the book it should be noted that the publishers had to do quite a bit of work to stretch this thing to 130 pages. Faster readers could probably finish this book in a couple hours or less.

I serve in the same conference of the UMC as Mike Slaughter and I must say that his church is very impressive, and the work which that church does in the Dayton area and around the world is staggering. It should be noted that this is not the book of an armchair emergent spouting off about how things should be different in churches, at the very least we can say that the author of this book has indeed put his money where his mouth is so to speak.

Throughout the book Slaughter uses the term "unLearning Churches" to describe churches moving in the right direction. I like the term, and most of us could agree that there are a lot of practices, ideas, stigmas, etc that need to be unLearned. At the same time the book borders on affirming that we ought to unlearn our doctrine if our doctrine doesn't seem to fit within a current missional framework.

A quote which I liked went like this: "unLearning churches will focus more on church health than church growth." (pg. 29) The focus is in the right place. Yet what is the means of achieving church health? For the author it means getting everyone involved in doing something for the kingdom. That sounds great on the surface but leaves us with a problem. The problem with this book is that it is 100% about sending and doing, and 0% about who has already been sent, and what has already been done. In other words this book deems the Gospel to be Christ working though us as opposed to a past tense event that has happened for us. Luther would have destroyed this book because of it's constant confusion of Law (right actions by us for others and God) and Gospel (the work of God FOR US).

Jesus is treated in this book as exemplary, yet the "given for you" message of the Gospel is altogether missing. After reading this book I have received nothing but commands, tips, and things to do. Yet what I need, and what my congregation needs, and what this world needs, is to know the reality of what Christ has done for them, by living, dying, and resurrecting on their behalf. The message of this book is to go fix broken people, yet for the broken one who needs fixed this book offers little.

A two star rating means I believe this book was 'OK' and that's pretty much what I think. Not all bad, definitely some good nuggets in there, but not enough to merit recommending this book to others.

[Brian]

Required Reading

The church leadership was asked to read this before our leadership retreat. As we are in the process of moving and building a new worship space, so the first half of this book gives some good suggestions for us. The second half seemed mundane, since I feel without being a part of UnLearned leadership we never would have decided to move and build in order to serve our community better.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author posed some good thought provoking questions. But in all honesty the book could have been reduced in half and the content and meat of the book would not have suffered.

[Jt]

okay