I was recently sent a copy of Revolve: A New Way to See Worship (2011, Baker Books) by Nelson Searcy and Jason Hatley with Jennifer Dykes Henson. It is a good thing it was free, because I would have never paid the $6.99 cover price. It is not that it is a bad little book; it is just that there is not much to it. At about 100 pages, it took me about an hour to casually read through it.

Nelson Searcy is founding pastor of The Journey Church, which is based in New York City and has locations across the city and in Boca Raton, Florida. He is also provides coaching and consulting services through ChurchLeaderInsights.com, another organization he founded. Jason Hatley is pastor of worship arts at The Journey Church and was part of the churches original launch team. He is also the founder of WorshipLeaderInsights.com. Jennifer Dykes Henson is a freelance writer based in New York City and a member of The Journey Church.

As the title says, Revolve is a book about worship; and the content is pretty good. There just isn't much of it. In all fairness, it was not written to be a thorough treatment of the subject. It seems to have been written for distribution to a congregation to help them better understand what worship really is. It clearly was not intended to be a thorough treatment of the topic of worship. In fact, it is being marketed to go alongside Engage: A Guide to Creating Life-Transforming Worship Services (which I have not read), by the same authors. It appears Engage is written for leaders and Revolve was written for congregations.

Revolve seeks to dispel four common worship myths, and it accomplishes this simply and succinctly. They are:

1) Worship is about me.

2) Worship happens one day a week.

3) Worship is just a part of my life.

4)) Worship is a religious activity.

If you are a pastor or church leader and you think that only other churches congregations believe these myths, you are only deceiving yourself. I have been part of churches with good leadership and strong teaching and many in the congregation believed, or lived like they believed these myths. I really believe no church is immune.

If you are a pastor or church leader, this book will likely not be very helpful to you personally. If you want to plan a teaching series on the subject of worship, this might be a good resource to provide your congregation. It might be very useful in a small group setting, especially if you are having all your small groups discuss the topic together.