This book is truly unique, I'm unaware of another book that polemically tackles the topic of multi-site and multi-service churches. Jonathan Leeman offers a helpful critique on what many churches perceive as acceptable, and the reason is because nothing in Scripture prescribes the idea of multi-site and multi-service congregations. In fact, Leeman argues that these forms of congregations goes against the exact idea of "church," because the word literally means assembly and these congregations are never assemble as a whole. This book is rather short, consisting of only three chapters; as well as, preface material and appendixes. My favorite feature of the book are the little, gray thought blurbs that address practical questions readers may have. All in all, this book is incredibly timely, especially as the COVID-19 outbreak has caused just about every church to move online. Hopefully this book will fly off the shelves, and christian leaders will use it to wrestle with what we've commonly accepted.

I am thankful to Crossway and Netgalley.com for an advance review copy of this book which has in no way influenced the review. We live in uncertain times, the Coronavirus Pandemic sweeping the world has left many churches floundering. What does a church that cant meet look like? Is it even a church anymore?

I think there is much in this book that is helpful in it Leeman has his sights set on the multi service, multi site evangelists who claim to be one church and yet those members at the different sites and different services never actually meet one another. Leemen spends some time defining what exactly a church is how the term is used in scripture and highlights very positively for us that it is almost impossible in Greek to have an ecclesia without actually meeting together.

He then in chapter three offers some helpful solutions to a church that is currently multi service or multi site what it might look like going forward, perhaps building a bigger building, perhaps planting another church and calling it such rather than just another service or another site of a present church. The most radical solution he offers is to partner with other good gospel churches in the area and help them out with the bigger resources that they have.

Whilst there is much in this book that is positive, I have to confess that for whatever reason i struggled to get into it. I dont know if it was the layout, the longish chapters or perhaps just the layout on my kindle but for whatever reason reading this book of 150 pages felt like a big of a slog at times. Perhaps another reader reading with a clearer fresher mind than mine would find it easier to get into.

There is much to commend this book, it wasn't disappointing in terms of content, and I enjoyed it if only for sharpening my own ecclesiology in these uncertain times.

From time to time, among all of the mediocre books that get published, I find a book that is amazing. This is that book. The author is trying to make the point that assembling physically together is part of the definition of Church, and as soon as you split up an assembly into separate gatherings, whether in space or in time, you are creating multiple local churches.

The author succeeds in his intention, doing some serious linguistic and exegetical work, I expect this book to transform many churches.