About the Author
Dr. James E. White holds a B.S. degree in public relation and business from Appalachian State University and M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has also done advanced graduate study in American religious history at Vanderbilt University. White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
About the Book
Dr White’s book of 142 pages published in 1997 by Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI., argues critically that the idea of church needs to be rethought. He invites the reader to rethink – how the church engages in evangelism; how the church disciples people; how ministry is done; how worship is conducted; the structure of the church; and even how the church relates to it internal and external communities.
White begins by addressing the foundational questions of what it means to be a church. This he does by using the Acts paradigm of the early church. His aim all through the book is to help church leaders and members who are frustrated at the current way church is done and to lead them to rethink and aim for higher goals for the church. White asserts that the church does not need repairing, what it needs is rethinking. For him, the problem of the church is not a task problem but a process problem.
This book is for everyone who is concerned about the inability of the church to fulfill its divinely appointed mission. You may not agree completely with the illustrations used by White, but one thing you cannot deny is that in these pages, he spurs everyone to think differently and creatively of the gospel commission in these changing times.
Reviewed by John Okpechi