The Purple Book, Updated Edition: Biblical Foundations for Building Strong Disciples is by Rice Broocks and Steve Murrell, with a foreword by Ed Stetzer. This edition came out in August 2017 at 144 pages. It has sold over a million copies, which for a study guide rather than a trade book is unusual.
Broocks and Murrell founded Every Nation Churches. Broocks is also the author of God’s Not Dead. Worth knowing where a study on foundational doctrine is coming from.
How it works
This is a workbook, not a book you read. Each section poses a question, gives you a Scripture reference, and leaves you a blank to fill in from the text itself. You are not being told what the Bible says. You are being made to go look.
That design is the whole value and also the whole demand. If you sit down with it and a Bible and actually do the work, you will finish knowing where things are and why you believe them. If you skim it, you will get nothing, because there is nothing to skim. The pages are mostly blanks.
What it covers
The foundations. Salvation, the authority of Scripture, the person and work of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the church, prayer, giving, discipleship, and the Christian’s mission. It is a survey rather than a deep dive on any one topic, which is the correct choice for what it is trying to do.
Doctrinally it sits in mainstream evangelical territory. Every Nation is charismatic in practice, and the treatment of the Holy Spirit reflects that, though the book is not written to argue anyone into a position. Readers from cessationist backgrounds will notice it and will not find it belligerent.
Where it is strong
For a new believer, this fills gaps fast. Most people who come to faith as adults have real holes in what they know and no orderly way to fill them, and this gives them one. It is equally useful for a man who has been in church for twenty years and privately could not explain why he believes half of what he believes.
The group format works. The blanks give everyone something concrete to bring, which solves the problem where one person talks and everyone else nods.
Where it is limited
Breadth over depth, by design. You will not come away with a deep grasp of any single doctrine. It is scaffolding.
The fill in the blank format also has a known weakness: it is possible to complete the blanks correctly without thinking much. A good group leader who asks the follow up question makes the difference between a study and a worksheet.
Who it is for
New believers. Discipleship pairs. Men’s groups that want structure and Bible work rather than discussion of a video. Anyone who wants to know the basics properly and has been too embarrassed to say so.
Bottom line
A genuinely useful foundations study that has earned its sales. Do the work and it delivers. Skim it and it is a stack of blank lines.
Find The Purple Book on Amazon.