The Trellis and the Vine

On vacation last week, one of the books I read was The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and David Payne. I have to admit, I went into this book with some pretty high expectations. Not only from what I heard from friends and in the blogosphere, but what the authors said in the first two chapters. By the end of the book, I had pulled out a few nuggets, but found myself wanting more. While they said they would not give any groundbreaking ideas, it tended to be more a look at what is wrong in most churches and not enough about how to change that.

I think what probably set up my thinking for something groundbreaking is the subtitle is “The ministry mind-shift that changes everything.” Now, depending on your background and the type of church you are a pastor of, this might be a mind-shift that changes everything. But as I talked about it with Katie on the ride home from Colorado and shared what the authors discussed, her response was, “That’s what we do and are trying to raise the bar on.” So, it wasn’t quite the mind-shift for me. That doesn’t make it a bad book or not worth your time. It will stretch your thinking and cause you to look at how you can get better at some areas of leadership and discipleship (which is never bad).

The premise of the book is the visual of the trellis and the vine. Churches either build great systems and programs (trellis) or they are great at discipling, building into people (the vine). According to the authors, rarely do they do both well. I was excited because one of the things we are working on at Revolution is how we raise the bar on discipleship and do that better, how we develop more and more leaders to fulfill the vision God has given us. At the end of the book, it seemed like most other leadership development books. Nothing groundbreaking.

What the authors point out is that in many churches, trellis work gets in the way of vine work and actually hinders vine work because churches become so engrossed with systems, teams, etc. This can easily happen. At the same time, what they don’t point out is that without a trellis, a vine doesn’t have anywhere to grow. Like all things, it is a balance. That is definitely a criticism of this book, they seemed to emphasize the vine too much.

Now, if you are new to the conversation on how to be missional and attractional, this would be a good book to read. If you are struggling with leadership development and are a church that has a bunch of programs and events that aren’t working, this a good book to read. I’d recommend reading Simple Church first, but this is good for that as well.

The strength of this book is its emphasis on doing life on life leadership development. While leadership and discipleship can be taught in a classroom, to a point, it must also be done in real life. That is where this book tries to reside, and it does a good job in that regard.

There were some things that challenged my thinking or got me thinking in some areas that need improvement in my leadership and at Revolution. Here are some of them:

• Disciple-making is the normal agenda and priority of every church and every Christian disciple.
• The call to discipleship is thus a call to confess our allegiance to Jesus in the face of a hostile world; to serve him and his mission, whatever the cost.
• Simply by virtue of being a disciple of Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit of the new covenant, all Christians have the privilege, joy and responsibility of being involved in the work of God is doing in our world.
• The Christian without a missionary heart is an anomaly.
• The gospel by its very natures produces growth.
• A commitment to the growth of the gospel will mean that we train people towards maturity not for the benefit of our own churches or fellowships but for the benefit of Christ’s kingdom.

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