The third book I decided to read this year is Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend by Andy Stanley.

This is a book I admittedly put off reading for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s kind of long. Being new to books I’ve been content with a 200-page book but Deep & Wide extends past 300. Another thing is that I had heard others talk about this book and what it discusses. There were many topics spoken of that resonated with my thoughts on the church as a minister and I bought the book with enthusiasm, about a year ago. I wanted to be endowed with the knowledge to help the church I was serving in to develop into the church I thought it should be. Before I cracked the book I started to see through my naivety and considered how little I’d actually be able to change on my own and as a youth minister. I was fearful that Andy would nail us with the obvious changes we needed to make as a church and that I’d be powerless to do anything with that knowledge. I have since recanted and decided that putting off reading this book based on those fears was foolish. So I read it and I’m glad I did.

In case you don’t know, the title “Deep & Wide” refers to the fact that Andy believes the church is a place that contains deep truths for transforming and restoring lives (“deep”) and that they’d also be places where truly anyone feels welcome to attend (“wide”). Andy begins his book by recounting his own story. He tells of his upbringing in the church, being the son of a preacher at a large church in Atlanta, growing up to be a minister at that same church, the conflict between his father and him, and the eventual planting of the North Pointe Community Church. In fact, he dedicates his book to those 708 charter members of that church. While I think all of this storytelling eventually pays off in providing context for his perspective on the church in the rest of the book, it did seem to take up an inordinate amount of space and was tough to get through at times.

Once he gets to the establishing of North Pointe Community Church, he speaks on how from the very beginning the goal was not to create a carbon copy of the church he was familiar with but instead wanted to ensure that their church would be one that would unapologetically be geared towards unchurched people. How can you argue with that? I will say that part of that basic premise upsets me on some level because I’ve always thought of the church as the communing, edifying, educating, worshipping, safe place for believers. It’s not that I believed that non-believers weren’t invited, I just didn’t view evangelism as one of the main focuses of what takes place on Sunday mornings. I kinda thought that’s what the members of the church were supposed to be doing on every day of the week. I don’t want to start pulling out scriptures or anything but I do think it’s worth considering what the Biblical purpose of the church (as in the assembled community of believers) is compared to the purpose given to the individual Christ-followers who make up the church. Are they the same? I think there are probably some important differences.

Andy goes on to talk about the plethora of tactics his church uses to be guest friendly. Many of them I thought were just genius. Of course our buildings should have good signage that helps those who have never been before. Of course we should look at our classrooms and meeting spaces the way a guest would. What are we communicating by the way we decorate, clean, organize, and take care of our facilities? Does each room communicate it’s purpose by how it’s arranged? It should. Of course it’s important to consider your order of worship and accomplish what is important in the best possible fashion for your church. Of course the church website should be updated more than once a leap year. There were so many things like this that Andy mentions that I think honor our members, our guests, and most importantly, honor God. Andy offers so many helpful guidelines for how we should put serious thought into how we do Sunday church that I do find myself wishing every minister, elder, ministry leader, small group leader, really any kind of church leader would pick up this book, if only to give thought to the intentionality we put into what occurs when we meet.

All that being said, I also believe that there are some dangers going too far down the “Deep & Wide” line of thinking. It seems obvious, but I don’t want to attend a church that focuses solely on “the show” and is empty in the content on Sunday mornings. Andy covers this concern at times in his book. But I can’t help feeling that authenticity will always trump what looks shiny. Andy doesn’t downplay authenticity at all, I’m just fearful that’d be tricky to make sure authenticity doesn’t get left behind.

Deep & Wide is a good book to keep on the shelf. As a youth minister I do have some control over the environments I create for our youth group and that fact alone has made this book a great benefit to me. I highly recommend that if you lead in any capacity at your church that you read this book and digest it with others at your church.

Have you read Deep & Wide? What did you think? Next time I’ll be reviewing the fourth book I read this year, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul by John Eldredge.