Simple Church

I cannot begin to tell you what a help the book Simple Church by Thom Rainer has been to me in the last year. I began with an audio version of the book, because I heard it had been a help to several of my friends in ministry. Right from the start, I could tell that this book had some answers to some of the problems that our church was facing. Simple Church allows a pastor to see his church with a fresh perspective, which is what I needed after six years of ministry.

I looked back at the past six years and also looked ahead to the next few years. I saw that our church was not becoming more simple in its focus and purpose, but rather more complex with various activities and extracurricular events. Our calendar had become cluttered and our people exhausted. Rainer calls the church to simplify its purpose and once again return to the biblical principles that Jesus Christ commanded—reaching people with the Gospel, baptizing them, and discipling them according to the Scriptures.

This book allowed me the opportunity of reevaluating the church’s purpose, its mission statement, its calendar, its budget, and its weekly schedule. Although Rainer goes in a different direction than I as an independent Baptist would, and draws some conclusions that I would not consider to be biblical, I do believe that the book is still worth the time of any minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I recommend this book to all church planters and senior pastors.