Book Review: “SHIFT”

First of all, let me say I liked this book.

The whole premise of the book is to talk about what it means to actually develop a strategy for ministry that puts families at the centre.  At first I wasn’t too sure as the introduction was kind of over the top a bit, most of it was said in the title so it made the intro seem a little repetitive.  However, once you get past that and into the actual meat of the book the ideas and concepts start to shine.

Brian Haynes spends time discussing the Shema, the request in Deuteronomy for parents to put God’s Word into their hearts and to teach it to their children.  He then goes on to describe the type of “SHIFT” necessary to make families and the home a priority.  I really liked the way he laid out the specific milestones and talked about the different roles and points in each of the milestones where actions happen.  It got me thinking a lot about how we hire staff.  Many times we hire staff to fill a programming need instead of hiring people who can help manage steps or stages in a person’s life.  In SHIFT Haynes talks about the importance of life stages and tailoring ministry and training around those instead of around specific programs.

It reminded me a lot of two books, Andy Stanley’s 7 Practices of Effective Ministry and Spirited Leadership by Tom Bandy.  Andy talks a lot about thinking in steps not programs.  He talks about how ministry is all about helping people move from one point in their lives to the next.  Tom takes it a step further by really describing some of the systems and governance architecture needed to help make a cool idea a neat reality.  The milestones are simple and common sense and seemed really attainable which was nice.

One thing I really liked was the milestone on helping students graduate from teen to adult.  We don’t have coming of age traditions in our society and I am a huge fan of returning to some form of celebration of that because I think we’ve forgotten how to healthily and helpfully transition our young people from child to adult.  So there are some cool ideas about that.

All in all it was a short and easy read with some solid content.  There’s definitely the tone of American evangelicalism to it which I’m not sure I fully support any more but there’s lots to glean from this book and I would highly recommend it to anyone who works with students or kids or who has some of their own.