Book Reviews

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Written by: Paul Arnott

Created: 01 June 2023

Hire Right, First Time
Peter Corney and Ken Byrne
Publisher, 2023
Reviewed by Paul Arnott

Reading Hire Right, First Time I’m discovering how many things I could have done better when hiring staff. While I am among those who wrote a commendation for this book, I will do my best to review it fairly. Hiring staff is one of the most difficult things any organisation can do. There are many pitfalls, as Corney and Byrne point out, not the least of which is that you don’t know who you’ve got until you’ve had them for six months. By then the probationary period is over and if you’ve made a mistake, it’s too late, which is why it’s so important to do all you can to get it right in the first place. The book is A Practical Guide for Staffing Christian Organisations, which means the process is potentially even more fraught, because of the values of Christian organisations. Corney and Byrne suggest that Christian organisations are by their nature tolerant: “The wish to extend God’s grace in Word and Deed is a deeply held value of the Gospel that can overshadow a hiring agency’s obligations to their existing clients and staff. The desire to do good can lead us to be short-sighted in assessing the risk that goes with a poor hiring choice.” The first chapter of Hire Right, First Time unpacks the many pitfalls of hiring for a Christian organisation. Chapter 2 highlights the importance of writing a position description, which accurately spells out what the job is designed to achieve. Chapter three details how to create what it calls “a compelling attraction strategy.” It isn’t enough to write a great position description, but also an ad that attracts people to the role.

One of the book’s most valuable ideas is contained in chapter 4 – the importance of a structured selection system. The system is a well-thought-out, clearly defined process that all applicants must complete. Chapters 5 and 7 highlight the importance of the interview, especially the role of really listening. Chapter 6 explains how to discover the beliefs and values of the candidate. Chapter 8 details how to do reference checks well and suggests they are often done poorly. Chapter 9 highlights the crucial importance of intuition in the hiring process. Chapter 10 explains how to make the final decision. The next two chapters detail how to keep your best staff and how to dismiss staff. The final chapter reveals how to detect candidates that have a history of child abuse. The book lives up to its claim to be a guide for staffing, as each chapter concludes with extremely practical, commonsense checklists to ensure the ground has been fully covered. Another rich resource is a comprehensive, free, downloadable User Guide. Hire Right, First Time is a potential goldmine for Christian organisations when hiring staff, indeed for any organisation seeking to hire right the first time.

Paul Arnott is the Executive Director of CMA’s Q4: Rethinking Retirement.

Originally published in The Melbourne Anglican in March 2023.

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Written by: Graham Stanton

Created: 01 March 2023

SustainableYouth Ministry

MARK DEVRIES
IVP, 2008

Sustainable Children’s Ministry

MARK DEVRIES AND ANNETTE SAFSTROM
IVP, 2018

Reviewed by Graham Stanton

Good strategies for children’s and youth ministry often fail due to ineffective systems. Mark De Vries uses the metaphor of a dancefloor: it doesn’t matter how good a dancer is, if they have to dance on a rotten stage, their performance is going to end in disaster. In Sustainable Youth Ministry and Sustainable Children’s Ministry, DeVries (together with Annette Safstrom for the children’s ministry version) helps churches ‘attend to the dance floor . . . ensuring that the right systems, priorities and infrastructure are in place before beginning the dance’. Though written from a North American perspective and requiring some ‘transposing’ into an Australian context (and a small church context), there are valuable ideas in these books that will help churches think carefully about the systems that can enable children’s and youth ministries to thrive.

Graham Stanton is Director of the Ridley Centre for Children’s and Youth Ministry. He teaches Introduction to Children’s Ministry and Introduction to Youth Ministry in the Ridley Certificate program: (certificate.ridley.edu.au)

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Written by: Mark Simon

Created: 01 March 2023

by Bob Jackson
London: Church House Publishing, 2015

Reviewed by Mark Simon

I am including this book because (a) it is from the UK rather than America, and the majority of Australian Anglican churches are closer to British culture and church forms than to American culture and church forms, which are presupposed by most American church growth and renewal books; and (b) it provides an overview of the history of church growth and revitalisation trends, tools and themes seen in the UK over the last four decades, most of which have influenced Australian churches. It charts the church growth movement, the decade of evangelism, Alpha, Mission Action Planning, Mission- Shaped Church, Fresh expressions, missional church, messy church, Natural Church Development, church planting, amalgamations and ministry teams. It provides detailed discussion of what is working in the UK at the time of writing (2015) including families ministry, leadership-centred approaches, church planting, and shared ministry models. This is useful reading to set the scene for a church growth/ revitalisation project before diving into one particular consultation or product. Jackson provides numerous case studies and some solid data from UK about the effectiveness of various approaches.

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Written by: Mark Simon

Created: 01 March 2023

by Rachel Jones
Good Book Company, 2016

Reviewed by Mark Simon

Too often church revitalisation books, programs and processes focus so much on strategy and the human side of change, that God and the spiritual dimension to renewal is neglected. There are many good books to foster one’s personal prayer life and spiritual formation, but not as many that teach and model how to pray for our churches. Rachel Jones’ 5 Things to Pray for Your Church addresses this space in a simple and biblically-rich way. Each chapter provides a prayer focus, a Bible passage and prayer points/starters. The topics include: praying that my church would be devoted to one another/hold to the truth/give generously; praying that I would use my gifts well/ persevere; praying for my church leader/children in my church/not-yet-Christians; praying for the wider church. The Good Book Company’s 5 Things to Pray for… series is a treasure trove of prayer fodder, in an easy-to-use format suitable for leaders and all church members.

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Written by: Mark Simon

Created: 01 March 2023

by Will Mancini and Warren Bird
Nashville: B & H Publishing, 2016

Reviewed by Mark Simon

Many evangelical churches adopt a mission statement that is a variation on the theme of the Great Commission (go, preach, make disciples), or one that highlights discipleship and evangelism “growing in Christ and proclaiming Christ.” These mission statements are certainly true (they express why the local church exists) and are clear and memorable.

Many churches, however, come unstuck when crafting their vision statements. Revitalised churches will need a memorable, inspiring and measurable vision that creates synergy, enables distractions to be avoided and attracts buy-in. Will Mancini and Warren Bird aim to provide a process of discerning and refining a unique local church vision, that assists churches achieve their mission.

Mancini and Bird start with four broad categories of vision: advance, rescue, become and overflow. These convey, respectively: movement, rejuvenation/ renovation, wholeness/maturity, and a wave. The authors then refine three templates to make the categories more particular. The ‘advance’ vision category breaks down into 1. geographic saturation, 2. targeted transformation, or 3. people-group penetration. The ‘rescue’ category templates are: 4. institutional renovation, 5. crisis mobilisation, or 6. need adoption. The ‘become’ templates are: 7. obedient anticipation, 8. presence manifestation, or 9. spiritual formation. Finally, the ‘overflow’ templates are: 10. cultural replication, 11. anointing amplification, or 12. leadership multiplication. Mancini and Bird provide stories and examples for each of these vision templates, which church leadership groups are meant to read with a view to identifying which one resonates most strongly with their situation. The second half of the book elaborates on long-term to short-term time horizons and how to translate vision into strategy and actions in each situation. There are many helpful and practical ideas for vision-setting in the book. The diversity of templates is especially useful in encouraging thinking outside the inherited (and tired) categories that may have contributed to a church being in need of revitalisation.

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Written by: Chris Porter

Created: 01 December 2022

Zeal Without Burnout
Christopher Ash
The Good Book Company 2016

One infamous quote on burnout comes from the 19th century Scottish Presbyterian minister Robert Murray M’Cheyne—of the bible in a year reading plan—who wrote of his impending death from typhus: “God gave me a message to deliver and a horse to ride. Alas, I have killed the horse and now I cannot deliver the message.”

While M’Cheyne’s metaphorical aphorism may appear dated, the experience of burnout is far from past. Christopher Ash’s short book draws from a range of personal engagements and examples, including his own experiences of twice coming “to the edge of burnout” (15).

The book is punctuated throughout by interviews, vignettes, and personal stories of burnout experiences— including that of Peter Adam.

Ash helpfully starts the book by addressing the burnout elephant in the Christian ministry room: the mis-construal of burnout as a sacrifice for Jesus, hinted at in aphorisms such as George Whitefield’s “I would rather wear out than rust out” (24). In response he suggests that there is a “partial parallel between burnout and self-harm … [in that] each damages strength and life to no good effect.”

The aim then is not to flee from sacrifice—for we are called to costly sacrifice (Rom 12:1)—but rather to engage in what Ash describes as “sustainable sacrifice … the sort of self-giving living that God enables us to go on giving day after day” (26).

In response to the elephant Ash reminds the reader that we are but creatures of dust, embodied, finite, and limited beings in comparison to our creator. Yet our own human predilections tend to blind us to that reality, preferring— in our strength—to “believe that we are something other than dust” (37), contingent on the animation of God’s breath in us. Indeed, as it was this delusion that was shattered on a societal level by the sudden spread of COVID, should there be any surprise that we have such high levels of burnout in the post-COVID landscape?

Ash’s solution re-centres us as God’s creatures, dependent on Him, and importantly with our finitude and frailties known by Him.

From this basis Ash suggests seven “keys” of sustainable sacrifice. The first four come in the form of our own finitude, and form foils to God’s infinitude: Sleep, Sabbath, Friends (peers and fellow workers), and Food (renewal and sustenance). While each seems relatively straight forward, Ash deftly walks through each topic with a biblical guide to our own frailty, looking for God’s sustenance at each point. Suitably this focuses our attention on God’s love for us, rather than our own self-reliance.

Each chapter ends with some practical actions for the reader, and stories from those who have gone before us into burnout.

The final three keys are less attributes, as they are to do with temptations. The first addresses the celebrity culture of the modern church—of which there is no shortage of examples for how this has gone wrong. The second is a broad encouragement—and an encouragement to encourage others. Too often ministry can be seen as a competitive sport, and Ash defuses that mentality here.

The final key is a continual rejoicing in God’s grace, rather than gifts. Having joy in God’s grace as the motivator to ministry is the key here—drawing from J.C. Ryle. The book is rounded out by an extremely helpful appendix on a clinical approach to defining burnout from Dr Steve Midgley, a trained psychiatrist and Church of England minister. This chapter is worth the price of the book on its own and is invaluable at taking a self-assessment or giving to others.

Overall, the book is mercifully short for those who want

something to bite into quickly—and let’s face it, most people who are at risk of burnout will benefit from a shorter work—yet is deep enough to sustain. Highly recommended for anyone in Christian ministry— volunteer, lay, or ordained—and best read before any signs of burnout.

Chris Porter is the Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Theological School, Melbourne