moves a church makes to help people strengthen their personal relationship with Christ.

Movement 2: Helping people move from an intellectual acceptance of Christ to a relationship characterized by interaction and intimacy. (138)

Personally, the best part of this chapter was the focus on Fox River Christian Church and my old friend Guy Conn (and other good friends, like my old roommate, assistant pastor Rob Warnell). I was part of Pilgrim Baptist Church and watched my friends make a successful transition from an independent fundamental Baptist church into a vibrant, relevant church community. In the midst my excitement, though, I noticed that this where “reflecting on Scripture frequently” began to make an appearance as a primary catalyst (p. 120). The authors returned to this catalyst later, but I would agreereview went pretty long, so I divided it up into sections. Numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers from the second edition.

Between stage 4 (The Journey Inward) and stage 5 (The Journey Outward), Drs. Hagberg and Guelich describe a crisis time, that they call the wall. This “wall” frequently stops people from growing farther, but those who go through the wall come out completely changed.

The Wall

In 1999, we arrived in Poland. After a couple of years of language school, we partnered with the Baptist church, and a great Polish pastor, who became my close friend and mentor. In December 2006, he moved on to another church, and I “temporarily” became pastor of our church. While we worked together, we worked to plant other churches, usually with little success.