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Killing Cockroaches Book Review

Tony Morgan's new book, Killing Cockroaches, is a must have for any church leader.  Most of the book is a collection of Tony's blog posts and articles.  I've followed Tony's blog longer than almost any blog I do follow and I remembered some of the posts.  Yet, even though I know I've read most of it before it all seemed fresh.  Probably because I was in different places in life and ministry when I first read them compared to now.  Here are some of my thoughts about the book:

• It's a ton of wise insights spread throughout the book in no specific order or grouping.  That was great for reading (well, if you're A.D.D. like me).   

• I think this book would be a great reference book.  Because I have a PDF version, it will be easy for me to search for the topics I want.  For those of you without the PDF version, maybe you could come up with a different method.  It seemed like there were great thoughts on every aspect of leadership you can imagine. 

• I loved the sarcasm Tony had in some writings, especially the ones directed towards people who are anti-megachurch. 

• Tony likes lists.  I can't stand them.  I mean, who would post with bullet points? :) 

• A good idea would be to read one or two entries in the book each day, so you can process it and apply some of the insights.  I started off like that, got sidetracked due to a crazy couple of weeks of work and school, and then read right through the rest.  That wasn't as helpful.   

• Tony's interviews with well known leaders were spread throughout the book and some of them were very interesting.     

• Andy Stanley wrote the forward and had a great line about comfort and faith - "The only problem is safety breeds contentment, which ultimately limits the need for faith."  

Killing Cockroaches was a phrase Tony used to reference how leaders often times spend too much time on urgent things and not enough time on important things.  I have a tough time fighting against the tyranny of the urgent as I'm sure any leader does.  I'm not sure if the book helps you fight against what is urgent, but it definitely helps you think about what is important.  

If you're looking for more information on the book, check Tony's page out:

http://tonymorganlive.com/book/

You can buy it on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805447857/tonymorgan-20

Breakout Churches

Our staff recently read Breakout Churches by Thom Rainer.  The book was very similar to what Good to Great was for the business world.  That was done on purpose.  Thom and his research team set out to find some churches that broke out of mediocrity and had great success under certain conditions:

• They had to have a period of decline
• They had to break out with the same pastor leading the church the entire time
• They had to have at least 26 conversions/year after breakout
• They had to have no higher than a 20:1 conversion ratio (20 christians for every 1 conversion per year)

Here are some points that hit me:

• It's a sin to be good if God has called us to be great (my favorite!)
• When pastors grew in their leadership, the growth of the church was directly affected in a positive way
• The breakout churches consistently had a vision that was outwardly focused
• Breakout churches faced the brutal facts about their ineffectiveness and changed.  Churches that didn't break out were either in denial of those problems, or didn't have the courage to do something about it.
• Almost all of the breakout churches were influenced by conferences, books, consultations or other similar outside influences.
• Breakout churches had a culture of serious fun

As I read through the book I thought of the countless churches that are declining.  That's probably 95% of the churches in America.  At the Drive Conference Andy Stanley talked about the fact that their are tons of churches that have resources & people, but aren't effective, that are declining and aren't making an impact on their communities.  He said that somebody will figure out how to get those churches to take their resources and marry them with new ideas to actually make an impact. 

I've mentioned a couple times that my BIG prayer is for God to help Baltimore become known for strong, healthy churches, for His glory.  I believe a huge part of making that happen is church planting.  But, I also believe it will take a lot of churches breaking out.  Hopefully somebody can figure out how to do what Andy talked about, here in Baltimore.