From the subtitle to the research methods, this is a book-length,
church-focused homage to Jim Collins's business bestseller Good to Great: Why
Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't. Rainer, a dean at the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and president of a church consulting
firm, sent a Collins-inspired team of researchers to pore through previously
collected data on "effective evangelistic churches." The team was looking for
churches that had gone through a period of stagnation before experiencing a
"breakout" period of vitality, measured largely through membership
growth-while keeping the same pastoral leadership. These criteria excluded
both churches that had grown consistently or churches that grew after changing
pastors. Of the 50,000 churches in the seminary's database, only 13 qualified.
Rainer seeks to identify the secret of those churches' success and draws some
telling comparisons with similar churches that were in gradual decline (and
persistent denial). But his conclusions are consistently tainted by what
statisticians call "post hoc bias"-there is no way to prove that the factors
he identifies, which track closely with Collins's conclusions, were
responsible for these churches' growth. The real value of this book is the
hope Rainer instills that even churches that appear moribund can see
remarkable change-if their leaders are willing, in Rainer's words, to
"confront reality." (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.