5 star = It was great!
4 star = It was good
3 star = It's okay
2 star = It was bad!
1 star = It was terrible!
I wanted to give this book 4.5 stars but there were two big problems with it and semi-ruined the book for me. The book has some great points and is worth the read if you have the time. One main issue other reviewers mentioned, this book is missing the gospel and this is terrible because all the way on page 27, the author tells readers to put down the book "and place your faith in [Christ]" "if you have never trusted Christ like this." But the book is missing the gospel! So how can an one place their faith in something they don't really understand? To his credit, Platt is writing for believers and states this in the beginning of the book, but then still this call to "place your faith" in Jesus is odd without a deeper explaination of the TRUE gospel of repentance vs the false gospel of "read the paragraph and make a decision".
The biggest issue I had with this book were pages 80-104... these pages made me want to throw my book out. All the great ideas and theology and the "focus on God's will for the church instead of our comfortable cush lives and desires" nearly went out the window, when I reached these pages. Platt takes "preaching the gospel to all nations" to an extreme compared to most Christians. Now, some of you will agree with Platt and if so, I recommend you read the book. But for the rest of us, this teaching adds more false legalism to scripture than the Bible truly says. Platt believes and teaches readers that "Jesus Christ will NOT return until Christians have taken the gospel to ALL tribes of peoples" - all nationalities or races - of which he claims there are "about 6,000 tribes who have not received the gospel and this amounts to 2 billion people". Platt tells us that the world must be Christianized in order for Jesus to return. So Platt's entire focus is on preaching to these 6,000 tribes RATHER than preaching to the 4,000 tribes who have "heard" the gospel. Platt does say the lines on "who has heard the gospel" and "who hasn't heard" are drawn up by people, so they aren't perfect, but Platt still emphasizes that our main missions and evangelism duties are to focused on those 6,000 tribes - RATHER than your own home down, another state, or one of the 4,000 tribes. I strongly disagree with Platt's interpretation of Matthew 24:14. Although at one point, he tries to say that he is not discouraging people from preaching to the people in their own cities, he contradicts himself when he writes, "Satan, in a sense, is just fine with missional churches in the West spending the overwhelming majority of our time, energy, and money on trying to reach people right around us. Satan may actually delight in this, for while we spend our lives on the people we see in front of us, more than 6,000 people groups for generations have never even heard the gospel and remain in the dark."
If you read carefully, you can see the "good intentions" of the author, but he gets lost in man-made thinking, weak arguments, bad motivations for evangelizing, and poor unclear writing at times. Platt seriously does touch on some great things and some of his writing is clear. Platt does an excellent job telling Christians to stop being so self-centered and be more god-centered. He challenges us to have our priorities straight and to make sure we are spending our money where it counts. For that part of his book, I give him 4.5 stars. It's very good, but not quite "outstanding/out of this world."
This book review was done for Thomas Nelson publisher in exchange for the book.
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