Review: The Trellis and the Vine

The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First: a confession... I haven't read the appendices. I might go back eventually but I've had enough for now.

It took me a long time to finish this book, not, I hasten to add, because it was a bad book. It was an interesting read but I found it a bit repetitive and slow. The central idea is simple and powerful: the primary goal of the church is to make disciples, i.e. allow the vine to grow and flourish. All to often though, the church gets caught up in organising meetings and committees, i.e. tending to the trellis. The trellis is a means to an end but, in the church, looking after the metaphorical trellis can end up taking all our time and effort. That simple idea is at the heart of the book's message. It is easy to grasp but the implications are challenging. My problem was that the book plodded very slowly through all the angles when I just wanted to cut the chase: I get the idea but what does it look like in practice?

The authors work hard to relate their ideas to Biblical principles, especially in the early chapters, but towards the end of the book it begins to feel a bit like a sales pitch for the Matthias Media training materials. This also highlights the tension inherent in their idea as, towards the end of the book, there is a greater concentration on training programmes and structures. The focus should be on the vine but the trellis is important too and finding the balance is more than a little tricky!

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