Book #10 - Follow Me

In 2005, at the age of 26, David Platt became the lead pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, a megachurch in Birmingham. He was known as the youngest megachurch pastor in America. I imagine this has to be a pretty huge honor and responsibility.

It's probably a good thing God never called me to be the youngest megachurch pastor in America because I'd probably be too prideful.

That said, Platt wrote a book called Radical in 2009. I read it and then studied it a little bit with the Northeastern High School FCS group a couple of years ago. The subtitle of the book was "Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream."

Platt is telling us that something is wrong, then he sets out to fix it.

His latest book, Follow Me is about making disciples. He takes aim at the Sinner's Prayer and some of the cliche ways we've gone about furthering the kingdom. I even preached a sermon about this a couple weeks ago called, coincidentally "Follow Me."

Needless to say, the concepts really struck me. He's completely right that too often we preach for converts but not disciples. Because, the truth is, converts are easy to get, disciples are much harder to make. But the mission of Jesus is to make disciples. His call is to follow; his mission is to make disciples.

I was challenged by this book, and a quote from the book jumped out at me more than any other.
"We've taken the lifeblood out of Christianity and put Kool-Aid in its place so that it tastes better to the crowds, and the results are catastrophic."

With 9 and a half months to go before my birthday, I'm 1/3 of the way through my goal of 30 books!