THE GOSPEL-DRIVEN CHURCH
By Ian Stackhouse
Paternoster. 284 pages. £12.99
ISBN 1 84227 290 X
This is an infuriating book! There is so much that is good and helpful, insightful and challenging.
The author is able, erudite, passionate and persuasive. He writes out of a charismatic context and into a charismatic context. One of the back-cover commendations describes the book as ‘A must for all serious charismatic leaders’. Stackhouse is critical of the preoccupation within his tradition of revival, or at least of the revivalism into which it has degenerated. The book promises much and delivers a considerable amount. Although I do not belong to the grouping ad-dressed by the author, much of what he says was tremendously helpful in causing me to ask uncomfortable questions about my practice and assumptions. Yet in the end, somewhat reluctantly (such is the force of his argument), I am not persuaded that I want to go where Stackhouse is trying to lead me.
