McManus, Erwin Raphael. An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had In Mind. Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2001.

Erwin McManus is the Lead Pastor of Mosaic, a growing and innovating church in Los Angeles. When he came as Pastor to the church, it was known as “The Church on Brady” and, while it had been growing for a time, it had plateaued and begun to decline (6). In the midst of revitalizing the church over the last several years, McManus has developed extensive ideas on modern ministry, the role of the church and its spiritual leaders, and how to engage the culture around it (60-61). These are the ideas captured in An Unstoppable Force, which he has written in an effort to help churches and their leaders to create an “apostolic ethos” – his phrase for a church that captures the spirit of the early apostolic church in its mission and mindset (20).

McManus divides his ideas on church growth into three “movements” – stages or aspects of church growth, including orienting the church for change, the importance of the atmosphere and internal culture of a church, and the basis for the spiritual condition of the church. Before he deals with how to change a church, however, he starts with “Zero Movement”, not actually a state of movement but instead an examination of the atrophy of the church (21-22). He attributes the current decline of the church to several factors, and primarily to an unwillingness of the church to boldly lead rather than cower in the safety of tradition (25-26). In losing the power to transform culture, the church accommodated to the culture and eventually lost its distinctiveness and conviction (28). As the church attenuated to the secular culture, it lost its appeal to modern seekers, who find no spiritual value to the modern church, but rather another lifeless organization (29).

In his First Movement, McManus begins by more closely examining the church’s obstacles in engaging the culture, recognizing its failed attempts and reticence to keep re-engaging (41). He breaks down the obstacles churches face in culture into elements of high mobility, ethnic mixing, urbanization, population growth, technology advances, information explosion, spiritual pluralism, and “hypermodernism” – McManus’ term for a postmodern outlook that has abandoned the need for or trust of truth altogether (44-58). He argues that instead of defending modernism, the church should embrace the aspects of postmodernism and hypermodernism that bring people to a search for spirituality and community (60). McManus then examines the speed of change in culture, noting that while cultures continue to shift more rapidly, the church has grown more established and stable, unwilling and unable to adjust (64). Instead, he calls the church to “genuine apostolic momentum” (66). In the same way that the first century church transformed the culture around it, the modern church is to be a driving force changing the culture rather than trying to catch up to it (66). As momentum requires mass and velocity, McManus instructs that for the church to have momentum it must have “catalysts” as leaders, natural leaders who are able to move quickly to gather larger groups of people and direct them immediately as God leads (68,72, 75). To be ready to move and change, the church must learn “change theology”, the scriptural and spiritual impetus for personal and corporate change (79-81). They must learn to resist living stagnantly in the past, and to be voices of change and revolution (84-85).

McManus’ Second Movement frames the church’s internal culture. Just as individuals have emotions that motivate, communities share “ethos”, a common worldview and value system that drive their motion together (96-97). Ethos is fueled and formed by the interrelationships within the community, and it frames the expectations and habits within the community, relieving the need for legalism and rules to form behavior (98-99, 101). Both the church and the nation have moved from a community of ethos with values to a state or institution of legality with rules, and McManus contends that Christians must reject the institution and traditions of Christianity in favor of regaining an apostolic ethos, a value-shared community of revolution (102-104, 106-108). The correct ethos for a church should nurture a healthy environment for believers, for the empowering of the Holy Spirit, for the building of spiritual health, and for the realization of their potential in every way (108-110). The task of the Pastor is to awaken this apostolic ethos, and McManus outlines several components to that task. He expounds the importance of the Christian metaphors of the cross, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper as sacrifice and conquest (114). There are more metaphors to build as well – such as the church’s name promoting its key values, the stories the church leaders tell to build vision and purpose

, and the stories of the people of the church that drive home great examples (115-119). The language, ideas, and environment of a church reveal its ethos, and a wise pastor plans and uses them appropriately (123-127).

The Third Movement begins building the spiritual life of the church. McManus begins by addressing the pastor’s role as “spiritual architect” – a leader skilled in both the designing of structures that create ethos, and the casting of vision that drives it (134-138). The characteristics of effective spiritual leadership consist of a distinguishing primary influence on the church, effective personal stories and experiences as metaphors, wise choices in what they value and reward, and choosing the right battles (140-143). Next is the importance of building a congregation in faith, hope, and love (147-148). Faith is the courage for the pastor, and a congregation, to believe and obey God’s leading despite the risk to their institution (150). Love is the willingness of the congregation to sacrificially serve each other, the community, and the world (154-158), and hope is found in the saving plan of God, and His continuing work in the church and in the world (160-161). Finally, a spiritually healthy church is formed in a multi-layered “environment” – which McManus wraps in five elemental metaphors (166). Commission, or evangelism, is symbolized by wind, as we are sent by the Spirit of God (166-168). Community, or fellowship, is symbolized by water, as we are baptized with Christ into his body, and thus into brotherhood with one another (169-170). Connection, or ministry, is symbolized by wood, as we are connected to the vine, Jesus, and gifted by the spirit to serve a designed part in the community (171-173). Communion, or worship, is symbolized by fire, representative of the consuming and irreversible presence of God (176-177). Finally, Character, or discipleship, is symbolized by earth, as we are formed to be good soil by God to produce godly fruit (179-180).

McManus concludes An Unstoppable Force with two chapters – one to recognize the challenges of a constant change for the church, and one calling the church to meet and exceed this challenge as it confronts the high “radical minimum standard” of Christ (187, 201-202). In order for pastors to effectively lead their church in change, they must be prepared to first root the call “in the fundamental essence of the church and God’s calling to her” (189). They must also proceed to develop this purpose for the church and confront both the obvious and the “camouflaged” problems that arise directly (190-192). A big part of God’s call to the church is in living up to Christ’s calling, “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (202, Philippians 1:21). McManus promotes that the Christian’s great challenge is not merely to live according to the Ten Commandments – to avoid sin – but is instead to live according to the call and commission of Christ, just as the apostles did (205-206). Teaching and expecting that radical standard of the church results in greater commitment, service, giving, and faithfulness (208-222).

An Unstoppable Force is a great resource for evaluating the church’s interaction with culture and its appeal to the culture around it. Erwin McManus accurately captures some of the difficulties the modern church has in consistently lagging decades behind modern culture, failing to attract and be relevant to the newer generations. His response, however, falls short of his book’s byline, “daring to become the church GOD had in mind,” though it is evident throughout the book that he regards his model as the church God had in mind. Perhaps a better byline would be “a church model for reaching the postmodern creative community,” or even “a church model for relevancy with the latest changing cultural trends.” His book balanced between interacting with the current postmodern culture through stories and metaphors, appealing to the creative community through maximizing “untapped potential and creativity” (182), and extolling the need to constantly innovate and change the internal church culture. He fails to acknowledge that many of his recommendations are themselves culturally based on the postmodern urban West Coast creative community, and instead purports that this model is THE model that will serve the church best in any and every situation. However, any reader would do well to mine the text for its valuable insights into that culture, which is the leading edge of that culture throughout the nation, and prepare their church for relevancy to a new generation that is mostly unreached and largely unreachable by the traditional church.