Early in my book a week challenge for the year, I read Radical, a challenging book by David Platt (you can read the review here).  Admittedly, that book seems to have ruined the B99 and me, and so as we stand on the edge of launching a brand new body of believers here in Stanly County, we thought there would be no better way to do it than by ruining as many others as we can by reading Platt’s follow-up, Radical Together, as a group.  First, of course, we needed to read through it to get a feel for what we’re about to navigate.  Warning: life bombs ahead.

Honestly, I picked it up and assumed that I’d be ready for anything Platt might throw in this one, simply because I assumed it would be just a group application to the truths in Radical.  If reading his first book challenged us to consider how big (or small) a house we really need as a family, then I was prepared to find in the second book obvious parallels to churches and the sizes of their buildings.

That would have been a lot easier to digest.  Instead, Platt took the opportunity in Radical Together to pick up right where the intensity of Radical left off and, instead of just focusing on easy issues like trimming a little fat off the church budget, he kept plowing into the deeper heart work that he is developing a reputation for.

From honest examples of how the Church at Brook Hills (where Platt is the pastor) has taken major initiatives in becoming a radical community of believers to probing questions about how the reader’s community of faith can do the same, Radical Together seems to alternate between gripping the heart and the throat.  I found myself in tears and then breathless at the thought of what could happen in my area if a band of believers took to heart the call to lift up the Word of God and the God Who speaks it.  Story after story brought me closer to the place where I can feel the ground ending beneath my feet, and as scary as jumping from the cliffs of comfort may be, it is impossible to read this book and not feel a deep desire to leap.