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<em>Frequency</em> by Eric Parks and Casey Bankord is a new book coming out in February which is bound to be popular in some Christian circles.

It has a foreword by John Ortberg.  That's because this book is part of the Monvee offering, a programme for the spiritual growth of individuals and churches which has been championed by various U.S. pastors and writers, including Ortberg.

You may have an immediate response to that piece of information.  Monvee has created a bit of a stir, for all the usual reasons - it seeks to be a comprehensive and programmatic method for making disciples; it claims to celebrate the individuality of believers before classifying them(!) into nine types; and it celebrates the contemplative approaches to spirituality popularised in recent times by Richard Foster and Dallas Willard.  These things, in themselves, are enough to arouse strong opposition in some quarters of the church.

But I think it is still possible to engage with this book as a standalone resource and that is what I have tried to do.  I felt that the first half of the book was potentially quite useful for me to share with others in my church.  It talks about the uniqueness of believers: how each of us may connect with God using slightly different devotional practices; how we have different personalities and gifts, different ways of serving God and his people; how some of us are more prone to certain sins than others, again because of personality and personal history.

This first half also offers examples of such differences, using tools such as a learning styles indicator, the 'spiritual pathways' material popularised by Bill Hybels and Gary Thomas, and the Enneagram (although without admitting that these are the Ennegram descriptors - again, a bone of contention for some, I would imagine).  I am torn in my response to this choice of examples.  On the one hand, it is good and useful and I have benefitted from similar material in the past.  And yet, on the other hand, it is surely something of a contradiction to spend pages celebrating the uniqueness of each person's frequency when it comes to God and then to categorise people by seven 'spiritual pathways', five learning styles and nine Enneagram descriptors!

The second half of the book was probably not intended to be read as a whole.  It comprises descriptions of the different 'personality styles', as the authors have chosen to characterise what I think are still the Enneagram categories (despite their spiritualisation by the attachment to each category of the name of a Bible character - almost exclusively Old Testament characters, by the way.  I wonder why?!).

These sections are all right; I think they are made more readable by the inclusion of a 'famous' Christian's story about what it is like to be one of these types.  But I do note that most of these testimonies seem to be from believers who have adopted the Monvee programme wholesale in their churches!  I would also question what would be so wrong with inviting Joe Bloggs to give testimony in each of these sections instead of 'celebrity Christians'.  After all, if anyone other than a church leader is going to read this book, then testimony which relates to living as a believer on the frontline in the marketplace would probably be much more use than yet another description of how to do church or parachurch ministry as someone of this personality type!

So, in overview, my response to this book is mixed.  There are some good sections but I'm not sure that they are enough to warrant the cover price of the book for me, at least.  (I received a free galley copy of this e-book from www.netgalley.com.)
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