Primal – A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity by Mark Batterson

The title of this book  reminds me of the book I read a few years back called the Barbarian Way (which I will add that I thoroughly enjoyed!), so I don’t think the concept is new.  However, the presentation is EXCELLENT!  Primal by Mark Batterson is a great call for the things we long to do as Christians, but rarely put our minds and hearts into it as much as we should, thus letting it sit in the background and eventually forgetting why we call ourselves Christians in the first place.

So, what is that primal call?  It is a call to go back to our roots and  strip down to the rawest part of our faith.  It’s a call to become primal in Christianity.  “It is an invitation to be astonished again.”

On the back of the book:

Our generation needs a reformation.
But a single person won’t lead it.
A single event won’t define it.
Our reformation will be a movement of reformers living creatively, compassionately, courageously for the cause of Christ.

This reformation will not be born of a new discovery.  It will be the rediscovery of something old, something ancient.

Something primal.


What would your Christianity look like if it was stripped down to the simplest, rawest, purest faith possible? You would have more, not less. You would have the beginning of a new reformation—in your generation, your church, your own soul. You would have primal Christianity.

This book is an invitation to become part of a reformation movement. It is an invitation to rediscover the compassion, wonder, curiosity, and energy that turned the world upside down two thousand years ago. It is an invitation to be astonished again.

Mark Batterson doesn’t hold much back when you open up this book.  He jumps in quickly and discusses the problem that has become emergent among Christianity today.

“… Christians are more known for what we’re against than what we’re for.  But the real problem isn’t perception.  We as Christians are often quick to point out what’s wrong with our culture.”  We put up so many rules and roadblocks, but Jesus really simplified it all by saying that it all comes down to loving the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength (Mark 12:30) which is the basis of the book.

I have to laugh hard because in the next few sentences he talks about choosing between political and biblical correctness and that “we must choose biblical correctness every time.”   If you were at one of the last family events around here this was a hot topic of the evening — whether the Bible was correct in it’s teaching even if it offended people.  Anyhow, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I received this book at the perfect moment for me.  It encouraged me and spurred me on to better my relationship with Christ.  It challenged me with questions such as “How much do you really love the Lord?”

Wow!  Let me say I had my highlighter out marking up this book because there was so much to glean from it.  I found it refreshing and I will be re-reading it again and again to grasp the ideas in this book.  I appreciated Mark’s intellectual appeal as well as his spiritual appeal. This is a book of action.  It’s not about sitting down and just reading, it’s putting feet to your faith!  It’s about understanding why you started to believe in the first place!   And I’m feeling on fire because of it… that igniting that I am happy to have and pray that it will become more contagious than H1N1!

I’ll be looking for any books by Mark in the future.  He will be on my author watch list!  I suggest you make this your top read for 2010!

* Thanks to Waterbrook Multnomah books for providing me with this copy to review.

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