The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies

I am so torn over this book. As another reviewer mentioned, there are a number of things that I found myself in violent agreement with; there are other things - generally the intellectual buttresses supporting the conclusions - that I thought unsound and contradictory.I did not know anything about Fitch one way or another going into the book; I am no sycophant or axe-grinder here.As simply as I can understand it, Fitch's concern is over a Church that is increasingly irrelevant as it unwittingly became bound to certain methods (and method itself) that resonated during the era of "modernity." As, according to him, we are in a transition period between modern and postmodern, the modernists with their emphases on method are no longer relevant to the postmodernists, with their emphasis on... uh... feelings? impressions? beauty? and other such 'state-of-mind,-man' intangibles. The Church needs to learn that it's a brave new day with new sorts of people who think completely differently than the old sorts of people. The answer is not a new method, but to not really have a method, but learn to communicate and reach postmoderns, and do so without a method, but, well, by following suggestions contained in the book which sound an awful lot like methods, but they aren't methods, they're how the Church always was supposed to be, but everyone has forgotten it, and it's taken postmodern thought to show us.If that sounds confusing, well, you are probably just too much of a modernist.Anyway, gentle ribbing aside, let me get right to some brief reactions.The Good: Fitch condemns a lot of stuff that needs condemning. The lazy, self-indulgent, hyper-individualist tendencies of large swathes of the modern Church are called out. Absolutely fair. Fitch is probably the only modern author I'm aware of who makes a compelling case against "parachurch" organizations and the complacency they breed in local churches. He points out the fact that in many churches, 1 Timothy standards for elders strangely seem to give way to the monied and studied (by secular standards).The Annoying: Toot toot! All aboard the broad-brush express. Fitch often gathers all of evangelicalism up in the word "we," and it really got me thinking - what churches has he been spending time in? Evangelicalism is a huge, huge tent - it is so big that it simply can't be handled as one entity. There are huge, Christianity-lite sorts of megachurches on one end, and small simple groups like Orthodox Presbyterian Church on the other. The "we need to" started wearing on me after a while.Also Annoying: Fitch constantly was citing a small bevy of postmodern philosophers who have clearly captured his imagination. This actually led to:The Dangerous: "Expository preaching reinforces the idea that meaning can be distributed as one more of the many goods and services available." Okay, no. Chapter 5 was really where this book fell on its face in terms of contradictions. Fitch proposes against propositions, exposits against exposition, overthrowing his own position. The bottom line here is that Fitch is more postmodern than historically Christian in his analysis, because the Scriptures are themselves propositional in nature. Perhaps Fitch would like to inform the Almighty that He really should have *demonstrated* His Word rather than wrote it in stuffy, dry propositions that are so difficult for postmodern people to relate to.All that is not to say the Church should not demonstrate love and charity in its ranks - of course it should! But preaching of propositional truth from Scripture is paramount because it is the primary means God uses to change individual minds. Like it or not, community is comprised of individual minds and individual minds must be changed individually. If Fitch simply said that expository preaching is the beginning of the Church's "sermon" - it is more than that, but certainly not less - then all would be well and good. Certainly there is such a thing as a dry repetition of facts. But really, what is dry? The facts, or the hearers? I'd say the latter. Both hearing the preached Word in its context AND an emphasis on taking those principles and manifesting them into charity in the community is needed.All in all, I still give the book 3 stars because it calls out a lot of things that I do believe need calling-out. I think Fitch is a guy who clearly loves the Lord and loves His Church. I think he's wrong on a lot, and right on a lot. I was left feeling like I just read Ayn Rand at the end of it - a lot of tiresome philosophy that maybe 9 people care about who write in each others' books, and some good conclusions, but with indefensible premises to support them.

I came to the book by way of an online recommendation concerning the Christian Churches Ministry of Mercy, i was unfamiliar with either the author or the emergent church movement before i started this book. I had a terrible time getting through the book. Not because it is difficult reading, it's not- addressed at intelligent layman, not technical. Not because i violently disagree with the author at every point and would rather throw the book away then finish it, for there were many times that i said "hey, that's the same thing as i think". But rather the problem stems from a use of vocabulary and phrasing that really sets my theologically error feelers wiggling. It is his use of the terms "post modern" "modernist" and a really set of ideas that has me either baffled, deeply confused, mislabelled, irritated, or just too old and out of the loop of moden thinking, i'm not sure which or which combination it is. In any case, i set the book down, put it underneath others to read first, yelled at it, and generally provoked a response of denial and puzzlement.I don't know what to make of this post-modern versus modernist divide he speaks of, i got to the point that i had heard it in so many different ways that there was an enforced familiarity with his ideas without really understanding them, a quieting of the yelling on my part so that i could pay better attention to his ideas. But even with this, i don't really have the desire to pursue the division, nor to read his quoted works to find out where his ideas came from, for me a sign that the book was interesting but not very motivating or persuasive. Often i drop somethings to follow up a good book, a good author or an interesting set of arguments, i didn't in this case. His arguments about being in a postmodern age with a very different kind of people then us old fashioned modernists bore me more than inspire, big deal.But that cavet aside, the more than a week it took to read, it isn't a bad book. Much of what he says, especially in a descriptive way appears to me to be right and proper criticism of the modern church. His prescriptions are less persuasive, more nebulous, often unobtainable even within his church and his committed circle of likeminded people. This is not an argument not to persue the ideas, but rather one of cautiousness about trying to change things too much, too fast. (can't believe i said that, i must really be getting old and set in my ways, my dad called it realism, i'm not sure what i call it).Because of the specialized vocabulary, which struck me like reading orthodox Marxists-boy their language is really different than mine, even though we use the same terms they mean almost the opposite to us-i don't recommend just picking up the book and reading anywhere. It looks as if this is a front to back reader, start for flavor in the introduction, if your a fossil modernist like i apparently am, you can at least see what he wants to accomplish with the book and decide if you can read it all without throwing it at the nearest wall.I have great affinity for the underlying ideas, however. The church has sold or given away it's birthright for a mess of porridge, he is right on the topics he zeroes in on. These are the big ways that the church has compromised with the culture. He is best in the middle chapters "The Production of Experience" and the "Preaching of the Word", the first i find persuasive the second downright wrong, but he has well documented his arguments and has a point, even when i think it wrong, it is worth hearing his side. That in itself is a valuable thing to gain from the book- a wider experience of what people think good and proper ways to do things in the church. In his later two chapters on "Moral Education" and "Spiritual Formation", on child education and psychology respectively are preaching to the choir, even with his prescriptions, despite the problems i have with his great divide-modernism and postmodernism. The big point of catechesis and rites of passage are properly substantially right, it is problems with implementation that i would look at next. But the book is mostly persuasive to description not prescription, although he is careful to present either what he had done with the church, what he has experienced as corrective to the problems he outlines. But the emphasises is on convincing people that there is a problem, more than convincing people to accept his solutions to the problems.I'm not sure who is going to read this book, even more unsure of who is going to stick it out and finish it. Maybe it is written to these postmodernists and they will find it the best thing since sliced bread, i don't know. I won't recommend it to my friends at church for i think they'd have the same problem as did i. That there are other books with the same descriptions of the problems. His accent on the believing community of the church working through the issues as a living breathing community engaged with the issues is a common enough idea, especially from the Mennonite or Historic Peace churches that this is not so unique of a voice that you must read this one book to here it. So i guess the natural audience is people like him, who have passed through or been born after the great modernist-post modern divide and see him as Moses leading into the promised land of the emergent church. I guess i was just born too early for this journey.

I hope that "The Great Giveaway" will become required reading for anyone who is interested in helping the church regain its role in transforming lives. In this text, Dr. Fitch provides many well researched and hope filled suggestions on how the church can play a vital role in helping us become faithful to Jesus Christ in life and mission. Much of the text emphasizes how the church can be made relevant for persons with a postmodern worldview, however, this book is much more then a guide to setting up a postmodern church. This book helped provide answers to one of my most vexing questions; Why do many lifestyle statistics show very little difference between the churched and the unchurched?Dr. Fitch provides convincing evidence that American culture has increasingly supplanted the relevance of the evangelical church. The church reflects this culture in so many ways that its ability to do its part to transform lives is diminished and increasingly suspect.Dr. Fitch didn't just point out the problems; he blessed me with a renewed desire for community and for doing my part to help the church regain its relevance in the world.

The content is great.The print quality is awful.