Radical Together- Book Review

After reading Radical by David Platt, I was excited for the chance to review Radical Together as well.

   This book is a good book.  It has great content and a great heart behind it, but I feel it was severely rushed.  I wanted more meat, not a rehashing of things said in Radical, which I think happened a lot in this book.  Granted it is a companion to the first book and so overlap is clearly expected, but something struck me as disingenuous.  Look, I am a writer, so I am getting to know how the publishing world works.  David's first book was a skyrocket success, unexpectedly so. 

 I fear that he was pushed to write a companion soon so the sales could ride on the coat tails of the previous work.  Because, let's face it publishing is a business and in business you ride on the coat tails of your successes and leave the newbies (who may have a great thing or two to say) by the wayside.  It becomes more about the bottom line than not.

  With all of that said, I did enjoy this book.  David speaks with a raw authenticity rarely seen in Pastors of his status.  He is honest, forthright and very open about who he sees himself as, as well as how he sees the church he leads.  In this book, he takes the main thrust of Radical and puts it into a format the whole church can grasp and follow.  In Radical it was more of an individual call, here it is more of a corporate call.

  In my mind, if you have read Radical you don't really need this book, but if you haven't read Radical this book has great insights in it that will challenge and call you to a deeper community like way of living within your church body.  However, after you read it and you have not read Radical I strongly recommend reading Radical because it is even more profound and even more in depth on how to break the American Mold and be the Christian God has called you to be.

  In the front of the book Radical Together is a quick overview of the whole book, which I feel captures the ethos of the entire book.  Here it is.

1. Tyranny of the Good
      One of the worst enemies of Christians can be the good

2. The Gospel Misunderstood
      The gospel that saves us from work saves us to work

3. God is Saying Something
      The Word does the work

4. The Genius of Wrong
      Building the right church depends on using all the wrong people

5. Our Unmistakable Task
      We are living and longing for the end of the world

6. The God Who Exalts God
      We are selfless followers of a self-centered God


  That is the whole book summed up.  Good stuff, but there could have been more.  I hope the publisher didn't push for this before David was done gestating over it because if they did, we missed out on more.  If not, it is a good little book to spend a couple hours reading and wrestling with.