In the last several weeks my friend and former partner in crime, Tim Stevens, had his most recent book released. I read through Pop Goes the Church before it was published. I just finished reading through it a second time with a group of teammates. We’ve been discussing several chapters at a time. That’s led to some fun conversations about our responsibility to engage people in our community.

I’m a little biased, but I really love this book. It captures Tim’s heart for reaching today’s culture for Jesus. This book will stretch your thinking about how we can leverage the pop culture to reach people where they’re living. Here are some highlights from my reading:

  • “Most Christians would never think of inviting an unchurched person to their church.”
  • “In truth, the culture is actually shaping the values and faith of most people around us.”
  • “It doesn’t matter how good your intentions are; if what you are saying is lost in translation, then your message isn’t going to get through.”
  • “It is very difficult for us to consider that there are people in our communities who never go to church–not even at Christmas and Easter–yet are deeply spiritual people.”
  • “Every church makes a choice in how to respond to the pop culture, and the choice it makes determines how much of an impact it will have on its community.”
  • “It made Jesus very angry when the religious leaders of his day made rules that were not in the Bible and imposed them on everyone else.”
  • “I think much of what is available in the Christian market is cheesy and lacks authenticity.”
  • “We truly do not care whether what we do is original or not–we just care if it works.”
  • “I want as big a crowd as possible. But our goal is to turn the crowd into a church. So we approach every service asking what we can do to help people take steps beyond the weekend experience.”

Anyone else read Pop Goes the Church yet? What are your thoughts?

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