Rabbit and the Elephant: Releasing the Mega Impact of Micro Churches Book

Barna and the Dales from yet another Direction

Anyone familar with the revolution taking place in the local church scene is aware that George Barna has been writing and researching this phenomenon for the past several years. In addition to his own independent writing and research, Barna has been partnering with various proponents and leaders within the organic and simple church community to jointly write books on related themes.

In this joint effort with Tony and Felicity Dale, transplanted simple church planters from England now in the United States, Barna works with them to present a book that is both reinforcing of some of his past work and observations and yet also presents a more practical view of how simple churches are planted and grow.

Much of this book is a simple recounting of the Dale's experiences in planting small home based churches over the past 20 years in the US since their arrival in 1987. Prior to that, they recount the events surrounding similar churches in London connected within the medical community that they moved within at the time.

Parallels are drawn from Church history to reinforce many of the points made and the Dale's more charismatic evangelical perspective come through strongly too. From this is drawn one of the major premises of the book, namely that "A shift with the potential impact of the Reformation is happening in the Western church today. And this time it is occuring as the church - instead of the Bible - is being put back in the hands of ordinary people." (p. 23). Add to this an analysis of western culture which has traditionally valued program based large organizations as opposed to the smaller family like congregations of the growing simple/organic church movement and the introductory chapters of the book quickly move to a more practical recounting of what this movement looks like from the practical and demonstrable experience of the Dales.

A full scope of topics then ensues addressing issues such as leadership, discipleship, fellowship, finances, diversity, the absence of hierarchy and many of the other questions that would normally arise both from skeptics and those not familiar with the model presented.

All in all, this reviewer found the book to be very practical and a nice contrast and follow-up to some of the other works of Barna which have been more technical and statistics based or tied more into an ecclesiastical deconstruction of today's institutional churches.

Make no mistake however, many reading this book will be shaken to their core as they ask the fundamental questions about things that until recently have gone unquestioned by many. If any more evidence of the power of this message and model is needed, one need only be reminded that over 1,000,000 people will leave institutional churches this year. Many may well find themselves in the small, quickly spreading simple and organic type churches that this book outlines.

5 stars. A very timely and powerful book.

Bart Breen