Book Review: Going Deep: Becoming a Person of Influence by Gordon MacDonald



Going Deep re-visits Pastor Gordon MacDonald's fictional congregation in his book, Who Stole My Church. While I have not read that book, I felt this provocative statement from the book's description was intriguing: "The future of the Christian faith will not be determined by the number of people who fill the pews but by the spiritual depth of those people." I have also read a couple of other books by Gordon MacDonald that were helpful to me.

MacDonald says early in the book, "We seem to know how to get unchurched people to visit our buildings. We even seem to know how to draw them across the line into a declaration of personal faith in Jesus. But what we do not seem to know is how to cultivate spiritually deep people. Tomorrow's church could be headed for trouble."

Going Deep offers a detailed plan of helping churches cultivate people of depth--spiritually mature Christians that truly desire to make a difference for Christ with their lives, that will help grow the church. This book is full of great ideas and inspiration to help churches do just that. However, I found this book to be extremely slow-moving. Gordon MacDonald goes into great detail using the fictional church people in a sort of novelization of conversations to present his ideas. I am a detail-oriented person but this book was bogged down in details. I think if these concepts were presented a little differently, I would have been a more motivated reader. For me, this book plodded along like an extremely slow walk down a country lane. It was pleasant but I don't need to stop and examine every single rock in that kind of detail or I lose something of the whole experience.

I do think this book could be helpful for pastors and church leaders but be prepared for a very detailed read. I want to be a deeper person and there were several things I did learn from Pastor MacDonald so it was worthwhile in that way. It would be great to be in a church like the one he envisions in this book.

I received this book as a part of Thomas Nelson's Booksneeze program. I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for the book.