This is the foremost consumer behavior text in the world.

I would highly recommend this book for all students and professionals interested in marketing and the study of what makes consumers buy.

This is the bible of Consumer Behavior Every Marketing student should read it !

First, this bok is not for those who are thoroughly opposed to any sort of evangelizing/proselytizing. If you don't believe that Christians should obey the Great Commission, then this book has little to offer you.

However, for the rest of us, this is particularly applicable. I can't address others' comments about this book being out of date, since the authors have been writing since before I was born, but it was a great read for me in helping think through my own involvement with missions, and working through my understanding of what the Gospel is supposed to be.

it definitely challenges some ideas about para-church organizations, while trying to give some solid action points. Although some may claim this is outdated, I would also argue there are many many churches who are still behind in working/thinking through some of these ideas to see what they can and should implement for the greater glory of God.

If you're interested in missions, and understanding what role various communities of Christians can and should play, this book will be great for you.

As a retired medical doctor living, and working informally, here in Honduras, I find this to be a fairly accurate account of the futility of the activities of American churches, with their expensive spiritually blessed "mission trips." I am very actively involved with 4 - 5 different indiginous churches' social action projects here. Thankfully, I am non-traditional enought to be learning FROM them how to help them help each other. (In fact my attention was directed to the book by a local Honduran priest who has been here for more than 26 years.)

Very few Americans are intellectually or spiritually, capable of profitting from this book.

I, too, found the fictional case study presented to be of little value, but did not find it significantly distracting.

However, in the few pages in which the authors described and praised the "mega-ministry" of Perimeter Church in Atlanta, Georgia, I thought I could not help but wonder if the story did not get inserted by mistake from the word processor of the Public Relations or Fund Raising Departments of Perimeter Church itself. How they could present Perimeter Church as anything but an another example of American excess, that makes anything vaguely reminiscent of the Gospel a travesty, I do not know. Within that example, they again praise a sister 17,000 member congregation in Guatamala City, which cannot be anything other than another example of the ineffective Christianity that the book is warning against. A "gospel" with has no "good news" for anybody, let alone somebody in trouble. I think they could have safely used these 2 churches as examples of what they were speaking against rather than their fictional account.

So puzzled am I by this lapse, that I'd like to hear from the authors themselves as to whether they are serious about the rest of the content of the book in view of their praise for this church in Atlanta.

This book is a must read for all who desire to be involved in Christ's mandate for world missions. He begins with a brief critique of the modern mission movement and how we have allowed our Western managerial mindset to influence missions. Yet, missions has changed dramatically as the mission centers are no longer in the West but in the 2/3rds world. The greatest challenge is to see how missions in not just a one shot evangelistic experience but rather to see spiritual formation take place in the lifetime of a believer. He encourages global partnerships to form between us and the national leaders of other nations where God's Spirit is at work. His example of using "GHM" as an missions study of one organization was so very helpful in applying his critiques to a "real" agency. This is a book that is a must read!