BOOK REVIEW:

If you are a fan of USA Today and/or Ross Perot, the massive amount of charts in this book will at minimum titillate your graphic senses. In a sentence, the book is a must read for Pastors and anyone curious of the direction of the church, but not because of its captivating arguments or fascinating theses. The book makes attempts at narrative, which is a little patronizing to the reader who actually desires hours of analysis on the mathematical state of the American church, and the converse would most likely be true for the narrative seekers disappointment in the monotony of the data.

There is a paradoxical comfort and distress with the books pigeon holing of the church at large and its millions of entities. David T. Olson takes even the most prestigious and prosperous of churches and denominations and objectively analyze them, which to the institutional skpetic is a warm blanket reminder that even the most dominant of forces is not above analysis and accountability. But it is also alarming to realize the church is so structured we are able to take the largest living, breathing thing God created, and pin it down with thumb tacks, numbers, charts, graphs, and trends.

Olson accomplishes with great success objectifying all churches and movements. He takes a tone, for the first half of the book at least, which is able to speak scientifically on denominations and trends, from emerging to evanglical to missional. He also does a great job of factually back dropping his thoughts with church history and global perspectives to make an argument which transcends time and culture. Unfortunately, he never really addresses the question of whether institutional church is something worthy of perpetuating. He simply assumes throughout the book all readers are interested in the church's future.

After the information is set before the reader, Olson begins to hit his stride as a writer during the evaluation section. He finally gives many Christian theorists verbage and facts, to oft proposed theories on mainlines and evangelicals. Many of his claims are not original, but few who have made them have done so much first hand research to support their claims. During the evaluation section, he establishes his thesis: birth rates, not death rates, cause extinction. Olson believes the decline of the church in the U.S. is a result of the same survival requisites necessary in the wild, namely new births with genetic variation to rid imperfections. He argues vitality in churches is growth based, which is true to the evangelical, but does not satisfy the questions of whether the church was ever designed to be a globally dominant force, or just a globally dangerous force.

The closing of the book accomplishes two very confident and well thought proposals, and his own supposition of an active solution. 1. Olson makes a sound argument, educated by his previous research of September 11th's seeming, but later disproven effect on church attendence, that even with the future yet to be seen, the church will continue to mathematically die regardless of culture, because of current blindspots. 2. He envelopes these claims with the soberiety to recognize the role of historians and analysts is to comment on the current history and information. He sees predictions of the future are impossible, even projections are dangerous. Olson avoids the tired argument and theoretical research done in churches and seminaries of the past ten years claiming the church needs simply to recognize post-modernism or change its communication style to survive, when in fact it is not the colors of the leopard that are causing its species' decline, not its habitat, but its own lifestyle. Olson sets up his arguments for action by making one of the most insightful claims of the book, "We arrived at this state of affairs because Christendom made it possible for the church to thrive while about Jesus in that secondhand manner." The truth resulting is the church is beyond the trivial attempts at analyzing culture, church models, or the sustaining of one's own denomination, but remember Jesus, the apostles, and Paul, whose evangelical success came as a result of what N.T. Wright describes and Olson quotes, "When you annouce Jesus as the crucified and risen Lord of the world, something happens: the new world which was born when Jesue died and rose again comes to fresh life in the hearts, minds, and lifestyles of the listeners."