How Did We Get Here? Looking Back to Look Forward by Todd Wilson chronicles the 70-year evolution of the American Church Growth Movement from Donald McGavran’s 1955 missionary insights to today’s fractured evangelical landscape. This diagnostic narrative explains how well-intentioned leaders gradually “co-opted” McGavran’s original evangelistic vision, transforming it into a “consumer-driven operating system” that now powers most of America’s 320,000 churches.
This book is not intended to be an exhaustive academic or scientific account of the past seventy years. For perspective, hundreds of books, papers, and dissertations have been written on the subject. Instead, it provides you with a higher-level overview of the Church Growth Movement’s evolution and phases. This book aims to answer the question thousands of leaders are now asking: “How did we get here?”
This flyover of the Church Growth Movement, from Donald McGavran, who is widely identified as its founder, to the seeker-sensitive era, the purpose-driven era, the megachurch era, the outwardly focused era, and landing at what I believe is our current disruption era. This is a comprehensive, history-rich, personal narrative account of a movement that shaped American Christianity for seventy years. It helps explain the compound fracturing of evangelicalism that we now find ourselves trying to maneuver. Instead of predicting the future, the final chapter “looks forward” through the lens of the four generations currently shaping the church’s future and encourages a posture for each, and two revolutionary roles for the emerging generations to assume.
A free PDF version of How Did We Get Here? Looking Back to Look Forward by Todd Wilson can be downloaded here. The book can also be purchased on Amazon.com.
This review originally appeared at Amazon.com.
