Radically Unchurched by Alvin Reid

Radically Unchurched by Alvin Reid

The first thing the reader needs to bear in mind when paging through Alvin Reid's Radically Unchurched is his intended audience. Frequent visitors to Next-Wave, The Ooze or even Youth Specialties will find that the book lags far behind the curve of what has been called the Emergent conversation. However, for churches which have barely recovered from making the transition from the Ozzie and Harriet 1950's to the All In The Family 1970's, this book is so far out ahead of their curve that it brands Reid as the radical rather than the “unchurched.” (Reid, 2004)

Reid's heart and passion are evident. He cares deeply about the cause of evangelism and its demise in evangelical churches, particularly among his own Southern Baptist contingent. He has taken on the unenviable task of attempting to infuse a generation of paralytic pew-potatoes with a proselytizing zeal to reach our current culture with the message of the gospel. Even worse, he is trying to awaken those who are thoroughly immersed in the evangelical sub-culture to the needs of the “radically unchurched” - people he describes who “have no clear personal understanding of the message of the gospel, and who have had little or no contact with a Bible-teaching, Christ-honoring church.” (p. 21) This book provides an effective litmus test for determining how conversant we are with current cultural conditions. (Reid, 2004)

The first part of his book attempts to describe who these people are, how they live and the need for reaching them. While the descriptions are fairly shallow and represent mere cardboard cutouts of real people, he is correct in stating that our churches today are not reaching them. Much of Reid's appeal for evangelistic excellence echoes the message that most of us raised in the church have heard all our lives. The message may be urgent, but it sounds like the same tired appeals pulpit-pounders have been advocating since the days of Billy Sunday. Most troubling about this section is that so much of Reid's overview seems to come second hand instead of from personal experience. One would expect that the Bailey Smith Chair of Evangelism at Southeastern Seminary would have many more personal experiences to share. In fairness to the author, the primary purpose of this section of the book may be to create an awareness that the radically unchurched exist, rather than providing a thorough demographic or sociological description of who they are. (Reid, 2004)

Part two provides a catalog of ministry methods for reaching the radically unchurched. This is the book's greatest strength and also its most glaring weakness. Like a catalog, it provides a nice “product mix” of ideas from which to choose. What it fails to provide is a cohesive strategy for building a sustainable outreach ministry for reaching the radically unchurched. (Reid, 2004)

It gives us a nice selection of “what to do” but barely any discussion of how to maintain long-term evangelistic effectiveness to overcome the dual obstacles of inertia within ...