Very readable, medium-size history of the church fm Christ to early 2000s. Covers major events & notable people.

Well written, concise. Sine gaps in order to achieve it's intended purpose of making a rich and complex subject "easy." Sometimes, "easy" is not a good thing. We need to read some "not easy" and enjoy the discipline gained by doing so.

Too broad of an overview to do justice to any one time period.
Lacked positive highlights of the growth of Christianity.

We used this book in a church class, and I found it as many others did - clear, concise, and easy to read. It provided me with more depth and background to parts of church history that I had already known, and, especially related to modern church history, defined terms in a clear way that helped me see which church groups believe what.

One thing that I especially liked about the book was the study guide and lesson plan that were laid out in the back, making this an even more accessible resource for groups or classes. Another thing I really appreciated was the author’s occasional editorial encouragements. After describing a stretch of particularly disheartening stories of brutality and unchristian behaviors, the author would add in a comment of how there was always one or two (or more) believers truly committed to following God, no matter the popular behavior or risks to themselves. This helped to put matters in perspective, to see how, similar to the prophets in ancient Israel, God never lost control of any situation or was without people, no matter how small their numbers, who were truly his.

The one drawback I would state is that I did happen to find one factual error related to a piece of historical information. The error had no effect on the event described in the book, but it did make me wonder if there weren’t more in there that I didn’t notice.

That being said, I am seriously considering using this as a high school history text for my homeschooled kids when they reach that level.

For those of us who have asked "why do we do that or why is the Christian faith like this?", this book does a great job laying the foundations of explanation. Book would be a great small group study for a those that seek a better understanding of church history.

I'm glad I read it. .

This is an excellent resource for those who want to learn church history without having to dog through a 400 page tome. There is also a 12 week DVD-based study available by the author. I taught this class at my local church and we all thoroughly enjoyed it!

This is very well written book, providing an abbreviated, even-handed synopsis of influential people and events in Christian history. It plows through Christian history from the time of Christ until now in 12 relatively brief but information-packed chapters. Despite the abundant content, it is easily digestible because of the conversational (sometimes humerous), story-telling narrative that is used. This book would be wisely used as a base-level introduction before moving onto studying certain eras/people/events in-depth. This would also be well-suited for those who are not history buffs and are unwilling to "suffer" through some drier texts on the subject. This will remain a great reference on my bookshelf.

I used this to teach Church History to my son (12 at the time). He likes church history and would often ask to learn more. Many books were just above my head so I couldn't use them to teach. This was very good for us. It has side notes, charts, maps, little quizzes and online websites, so it kept the topic from being too "boring" or monotonous.

very good overview.