An estimated 4,000 churches are planted every year. An estimated 3,700
churches close every year. It’s not easy starting or sustaining a vital
Christian witness of any kind. It’s even harder when there’s no
structure to support the good work you’re doing. Guardrails offers structure to your good impulse to follow the great commission to go and make disciples right where you are.
Guardrails
provides six principles that allow for sustainable growth in a church’s
mission, for the health of God’s people and the sake of the world.
Table of Contents
Part One: Foundations
1 . Chaos in Search of Order
2 . The Kingdom
3 . The Great Commission
4 . The Apprentice
Part Two: Principles
5 . Discipleship Must Be Simple
6 . Discipleship Must Be Holistic
7 . Discipleship Must Be Adaptable
8 . Discipleship Must Be Regular
9 . Discipleship Must Be Reproducible
10. Discipleship Must Be Positive
11. Applying Movement Principles
12. Roadblocks and Missing Ingredients
Endorsements
It’s easy to get caught up in the “stuff ” of church and forget our primary call to be disciple-makers. This book is a foundational and profound reminder that the effectiveness of the gospel in our time hinges on our capacity to disciple the nations.
---ALAN HIRSCH, Award-winning author on missional Christianity and founder of Forge Mission Training Network
Central to movement is the grassroots work of making disciples. In Guardrails, Alan Briggs calls believers to move from being couch potatoes who accumulate information to being movement makers who intentionally focus on multiplying Kingdom-oriented apprentices of Jesus in the local church. The strength of the book is that he gives us a sticky and SHARRP (Simple,Holistic, Adaptable, Regular, Reproducible, and Positive) way to do this. The most beautiful thing about this book is that Alan embodies the message he shares.
---J. R. WOODWARD, National Director of V3 Church Planting Movement and coauthor of The Church as Movement
Maybe you, like me, can feel stuck and tired at times (on the ministry treadmill, as Alan calls it), and yet there is a longing, a desire, to be part of a movement, a movement of the Kingdom of God. I was hungry and eager for a book like this. I needed to read this book, as it met me in all those places of longing and called me into more.
---KATIE FOWLER, Associate pastor for Missional Strategies, First Presbyterian Church, Colorado Springs