Rooted: Connect with God, the Church, Your Purpose. Kenton Beshore, et al. NP: Rooted Network, 2020. 227 pp. Cloth, $15.00.
Rooted is a 10-week discipleship course that invites participants to practice seven “rhythms” based upon Acts 2: Daily Devotion (Acts 2:42, 46), Prayer (Acts 2:42), Repentance (Acts 2:37-39), Serve the Community (Acts 2:44-45), Sacrificial Generosity (Acts 2:44-45), Share Your Story (Acts 2:14-36), and Worship (Acts 2:26-28, 46-47). The premise is that when Christians commit to practice these seven rhythms in community, as the early church did, they will see growth and transformation in both their personal lives and communities (pp. 7-8).
Each week contains five devotional readings from Scripture and Christian authors and leaders, teaching, and daily response questions intended to prompt personal reflection and application. I especially enjoyed the practical suggestions given by the authors for most of the seven rhythms.
I greatly appreciated the authors’ intent to see Christians live radically counter-cultural lives by being rooted in God’s Word and truth (p. 12). At this point the authors seem to correctly distinguish the freeness of salvation from the costliness of discipleship. Sadly, however, this distinction is not clearly maintained throughout the book.
I found several sections to be helpful for discipleship, including the weeks focusing on spiritual warfare (pp. 87-110), serving others (pp. 111-135), expressing Christ’s compassion through a lifestyle of service (pp. 137-56), God’s view of money (pp. 157-76), and why the church is important (pp. 207-224).
The primary weaknesses of the book are an unclear gospel message and blurring the distinction between the freeness of salvation and the costliness of discipleship. For example, when answering the question, “How do you accept Jesus’ sacrifice on your behalf?” we are told to “just think of your ABC’s” (p. 37). These include:
“A. Admit you’re a sinner…” (p. 37).
“B. Believe in Jesus and what He has done” (p. 37). So far, so good here. But then they add, “Baptism is our outward response and declaration of the inward decision to believe and follow Jesus.” Now they are adding discipleship conditions (baptism and following Jesus) to salvation.
“C. Commit to follow Jesus” (p. 37).
This is a far cry from what Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:16: “Whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Christ never said, Whoever commits to follow Me and is baptized will not perish but has everlasting life.
While the authors do occasionally refer to belief or faith in Christ as a condition for salvation (pp. 17, 37, 51, 112, 197, 215), more often they employ unclear evangelistic invitations such as ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life (p. 37), ask Jesus into your life (pp. 37, 50, 125, 196), give your life to Christ (pp. 40, 98, 122), follow Christ or commit to follow Christ (pp. 11, 16, 37, 51, 100, 104, 125, 190-191, 197), commit to Jesus or commit your life to Jesus (pp. 186, 190, 192, 195-196), change the way you were living (pp. 112, 196), receiving Jesus Christ as Savior (trusting) and Lord (obeying) (p. 216; cf. p. 122), all of which do more to confuse the gospel than clarify it. Instead of using the words God uses the most in evangelism—believe and faith (over 200 times in the New Testament)—they use substitutes that can hinder their readers from believing in Christ alone for His gift of eternal life.
This unclear gospel in Rooted is not a solid foundation upon which to build one’s Christian life. Not being clear on the gospel can prevent a lost person from getting saved because he is confused about what God requires for eternal life (believe in Christ). It also reduces the evangelistic effectiveness of believers who are taught to be less clear in communicating the saving message with the unsaved.
For example, when teaching believers how to share the gospel with the unsaved, telling others of your faith in Christ alone is left out, and the readers are instructed to share “[your] commitment (your decision to follow Christ)” (pp. 190-91). The authors refer to Paul’s faith story before Agrippa in Acts 26:1-23 as an example of someone whose conversion was the result of a commitment to follow Jesus and the subsequent changed life (pp. 191-96).
So, when a nonbeliever is told that he must commit to follow Christ and experience a changed life to be saved, it is likely to raise more questions than answers. How much must I commit to follow Christ to know I am saved? How much change in my life must take place to have or know I have eternal life? Sadly, the danger of using this invitation is that the nonbeliever is more likely to believe in his commitment to do good works rather than believe in Christ to obtain eternal life (John 3:14-16).
For those who do believe in Christ, such a foundation will likely crumble when they encounter temptations and trials. It will set them up to lose their assurance of salvation when they struggle with living a consistent, holy life in an unholy world. If Christians doubt their salvation because they don’t live up to the discipleship conditions said to be required for salvation in this book, they are more likely to live like the unsaved (cf. Prov 23:7).
Sadly, the book makes no mention of eternal rewards as a motivation for discipleship. This relates to the failure of the book to consistently distinguish salvation from discipleship (see for example p. 98).
Because of the unclear gospel message in Rooted and the failure to distinguish conditions for discipleship from conditions for salvation, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book. There are much better discipleship materials which are very clear in these above areas and therefore provide a much better foundation for discipleship.
Jeff Ropp
Online Missionary Pastor
Des Moines, IA