Mr. Ash, now director of the Proclamation Trust's Cornhill Training Course in London, was StAG families curate from 1993-97, then rector of one of its church grafts, All Saints, Little Shelford, from 1997-2004. He writes very perceptively about the right motivation for church planting - no empire building: We were very concerned that that the church-planting projects should avoid any danger of magnifying St Andrew the Great. We saw that it was all too easy for an influential city-centre church to plant in such a way as effectively to increase its own sphere of influence, to build its empire by planting imperial outposts and to end up creating its own denomination. St Andrew the Great bent over backwards to avoid these dangers. From the moment the leaders and planting group were commissioned and sent, the apron strings were cut.

And herein lies the dilemma that Bible-believing Anglican evangelicals are facing within the institutional Church of England. The book reveals the extent to which StAG has been working within the denominational structures and indeed has depended on them for its growth. For example, Mr Ash himself brought a group from StAG into an existing Anglican parish church that led, under God, to its spiritual revitalisation.

Furthermore, the chapter by Peter Robinson, who oversaw the finances of the StAG building renovation, reveals that the Diocese of Ely lent the church £500,000, the final £20,000 of which is due for repayment next year. So, StAG was dependent on its Diocesan Board of Finance for this building project, very necessary to its future growth.

In StAG's case, belonging to the Church of England was hugely beneficial for its growth and its ability to proclaim the love of Jesus Christ on a greater scale. But twenty years on, would an Anglican evangelical church looking to expand its premises and plant new congregations really want to be so dependent on a denomination that is rapidly becoming like The Episcopal Church in the United States - politically correct and morally deviant?

And that is where church planting networks, such as the Co-Mission Initiative in London, which are not dependent on the institutional structures, are arguably becoming so important for the preservation of Anglican evangelical ministry in the UK. But can these networks resist the temptation to roll out an imperialistic church planting brand?

So, the book unintentionally raises important issues about the future of the faithful biblical ministry that the two Marks pursued by God's grace in Cambridge.

Now onto the appendix containing nearly 40 pages of testimonies from various people who knew the two Marks. The pile-up effect of these unfortunately made for something approaching hagiography, though the contribution on Mark Ruston from John Hutchison, chaplain of Sheffied Children's Hospital, is witty and that from Richard Coombs, vicar of Burford, very informative about his tremendous gift in teaching God's truth to teenagers. The extracts from personal letters to Mark Ashton, when he was diagnosed with cancer, are both edifying and moving.

The word 'strategic' appeared a few times in relation to the Round's ministry among university students. The truth, of course, is that Cambridge is no more significant in the light of eternity than Cleethorpes.

However, a growing Anglican evangelical church needing to expand its premises in the latter would face the same institutional dilemma as that faced by a biblically faithful city centre church serving a university.

Would they really want the denomination to own its building?

Julian Mann is vicar Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, South Yorkshire, UK.