Blind Spots: What You Don't See May Be Keeping Your Church ... - Hardcover

McCartney, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0842369988 ISBN 13: 9780842369985

Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

McCartney issues a clarion call for church leaders to check their spiritual vision and engage men in the quest to make great things happen in the church. Citing statistics showing that only one percent of churches are growing, McCartney argues that the ineffectiveness in many of today's churches is due to blind spots that hinder explosive evangelism. It is McCartney's passionate belief that if church leaders were to see and address the need for reconciliation throughout the body of Christ--inspiring and equipping men to work together with all believers--the church in America would see the biggest revival in its history. Along with ideas for overcoming blind spots, McCartney offers principles for reconciliation and success stories from actual churches.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

"Virtually every division in the church is a result of relational failure."

What we don’t see can hurt us. Just as we can break a bone by getting out of bed in a dark room and stumbling into a piece of furniture, issues we don’t see in our everyday experience can keep the church from being all God designed it to be. Problems we don’t even know we have can be blind spots that keep us apart when we need to come together. Unless we see problems clearly, we can’t work to correct them.

Bill McCartney shines the light on areas that need uncovering and cleaning up--areas that prevent the church from experiencing true reconciliation and unity. He points the way for Christian leaders from all cultural, racial, and social groups within the church--Messianic Jews, Gentiles, people of color, Anglo believers, inner-city congregations, and wealthy suburban believers--to begin the work of healing and reconciliation in the context of deeply committed relationships.

Reviews

McCartney, former head football coach at the University of Colorado, author of Ashes to Glory, and founder of Promise Keepers, believes that God wants greatness for the church and revival for its pastors. But what hampers the church and its male leadership (there is no other kind in McCartney's world) is blind spots: areas of spiritual ignorance or neglect that most pastors aren't even aware of. The most important of these, according to "Coach Mac," is "the growing divide between Christians of varying ethnic, theological and socioeconomic communities." In a folksy, half-time-pep-talk kind of way, the book's chapters spell out the importance of humility, justice, integrity, prayer, relationships and teamwork in the service of reconciliation. It spells it out, in some cases, literally: McCartney employs acrostics and other gimmicky tools, including apt aphorisms, quotable quotes (including many from the Bible) and illustrations from his own football days. For a powerful white Protestant evangelical leader to be shouting about economic justice and racism and unity in the body of Christ-this is bold and right. But the book has a few blind spots of its own. The self-declared emphasis on reconciliation between believing Jew and Gentile seems tacked on, not woven throughout the book. And the spiritual warfare language characteristic of right-wing evangelicalism is off-putting to many, as is its hyper-patriarchy. However, fans of Coach Mac and collectors of all things PK will appreciate this rather surprising book.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0842369988
• ISBN 13: 9780842369985
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208