Back to Zero: The Search to Rediscover the Methodist Movement (Adaptive Leadership Series)

I decided that I have not been entirely fair to Rendle, and I have rewritten some of this review (8/20/12), but I strongly urge people interested in this work to read the print version, which I hope, although I don't know, isn't as garbled as the Kindle. The publishers should be ashamed of themselves for putting out such a badly formatted version of the book.I was raised as a Methodist and became an atheist as a result. I do have some lingering interest in the body, and when a friend who is a pillar of the church I left told me that the Methodists are in a ferment of reinvention, I decided to read up on it. Methodism, like most of the "mainline" Protestant churches has been declining ever since the 1960's.The first part of the report puts me in mind of consulting by Dogbert in the Dilbert cartoon series. There are some insights, such as the fact that supervision should be a conversation, not an adversarial relationship, but I found it repetitive and full of observations that may be true enough, but don't really offer a specific solution. It's a lot easier to point out what is wrong than to propose solutions. Methodists should become disciples (whatever that means, exactly) and focus on the mission (changing the world.) To be fair, perhaps active Methodists know to what he refers. The second half of the report was much better. He discusses managerial changes, which might be improvements over current practices, but he fails to grapple with the most important change - attracting new members. If the church can't do this, it is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Rendle's concerns about membership focus on creating a better class of congregants (disciples rather than consumers), but this seems to be getting a bit ahead of things for a church that has trouble attracting any members. Perhaps, on later reflection, congregants who were disciples would attract more members from the people that they minister to.I am going to revise what I said a little since rereading this book. I liked it a little better the second time, and I realized that some of the places where I felt he didn't really say anything were garbled, a little more subtlely than the places that I note below. Sometimes I could not guess what the wording was supposed to be. I can't guarantee that the print version is any better than the Kindle version, but the editors certainly didn't do the author any favors.It is all very well to talk about acceptance of various points of view, but what is to be the core of Methodism that causes people to congregate there and not somewhere else? I asked my minister to explain what being a Methodist means just before leaving the church. There was an embarrassed silence, until I took pity on the man and introduced another subject. And accepting variations of belief among adults is one thing, raising a new generation is another. Are Methodists going to continue to offer the negligible spiritual training that I was offered? We see how that turned out for at least some of us, maybe most of us.My feelings can perhaps be best summed up by A. N. Wilson in  God's Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization :The liberal Protestant way had its charms. It involved minimalism in doctrinal observance, vagueness in theological definition, and cloudiness of expression when anything so dangerous as a definition was required. Its difficulty was one of historical plausibility. [...] And the other trouble with the liberal Protestant approach, whether we conduct it in English or in German, is that it leaves the religious believer on his or her own; whereas, if this book has established anything, it is that religious experience is not merely individual, but collective. (p.338)There are in addition, in the Kindle version at least, a number of garbled passages that can generally be figured out, but speak very ill of the care taken in publishing. Here are three examples."The teacher's classroom is his or her personal domain, and when the principal steps in to do the required supervision, the visit is treated as an intrusion. A similar observation *required supervision, the visit is treated as an intrusion.* can be made about clergy who perform their leadership in the discrete setting of their local churches.""A paradigm is a set of assumptions, norms, and practices *of Thomas Kuhn.* that determine what we do and how we understand the world we live in."In these two cases, I presume that the words and punctuation between the asterisks that I have added should be dropped."Return to Quinn's observation that, over time, established institutions develop both a public mission (which they announce to the world) and a private mission (in which they quietly pursue the satisfaction of the strongest constituent. *The private mission of serving the internal constituents voices in the institution).* of the institution is the silent but more powerful of the two missions."In this case, I presume that the words between the asterisks are intended to follow the second closed parentheses.While I am not normally an enemy of verbing nouns, which sometimes fill in a real gap in vocabulary, I wonder why Rendle felt it necessary to invent the awkward "to public" when there are already the verb forms publish, make public, go public, and publicize. I don't think it even makes as much sense as the average verbed noun, which generally means to do what the noun does. Presumably, to public would be to do as the public does.

This should be required reading if you are a United Methodist and want help in discerning what God is calling our church to be and do. This more than a treatise on the state and status of a venerable mainline denomination. It is a resource for framing adaptive thinking and conversations within the church. Gil Rendle, like John Wesley, amalgamates the work of others into an understandable and useful tool to which he adds his own unique insights and experience. What makes this resource particularly meaningful for me is the fact that Rendle is not some outside hired gun telling us what we should do, but one of us - a United Methodist clergy person - who has first-hand knowledge and experience.

This is a very poorly edited book for Kindle. Sentences are misplaced and half a sentence will appear several lines down the page. Hard to follow the content when this occurs. Mr Rendle has written a very insightful book but to study it, you need a hard copy of the book. I am surprised Mr Rendle has not complained about the editing!

This book was most helpful and right on target. The Methodist church I attend is in the midst of reinventing itself. I've passed on this book to several of the leaders because it spells out, in helpful ways, many of the things we as a church need to do. And it speaks eloquently to what the entire denomination needs to do to stop the slide of members. In that respect, I think is offers helpful advice to other Protestant denominations, not just Methodism.

This was a fascinating book about how the church needs to change. I found the ideas in it very thought provoking. Everyone knows something must change. Not everyone agrees on how.

While the prescriptions the author suggests could be very helpful to the Methodist movement, he was writing the book in anticipation of the Methodist General Conference of 2008. Time and events have superseded the action items, although the thoughts are still relevant.

very nice book.in good shape. we use it for our reading club at church.we try to get as many books as we can so they have alot to choose from.

Compelling reasons and explanation for why we should change and how we can accomplish that change. I was pleased that it left me inspired instead of depressed.