"Wrecked" by Jeff Goins :: Book Review

"In a world that refuses to be healed, we must face the fact that we are not the heroes of our stories." -Jeff Goins 

I have long said that in almost every area of life that really matters, the best path lives in tension between two other viable options. As a dad, I have to find the middle path that lives in tension between authoritarian control and anything-goes, laissez faire parenting. Both extremes will likely lead to angry, wounded, distant children. As a ministry leader with a family, I have to find the good middle ground that lives in tension between committing my heart, best energy, and most of my waking hours to serving other people and the deep and important calling I have to be a hands-on leader in my home and a servant and leader to my wife above all. Humility and confidence. Pouring ourselves out and being renewed. Community and solitude. There is tension in the middle path, but it is almost always the road that leads to the greatest results and the deepest satisfaction.

This is the brilliance of "Wrecked."

Jeff Goins inspires. But this book won't hype you into a brand new life. Jeff calls us out to live the Biblical values we espouse. That means entering into other people's pain - without being incapacitated. It means willingness to uproot and GO when it isn't comfortable - and it means being willing to COMMIT and STAY when it isn't comfortable. It means if you want to live your best, richest, deepest faith life... it won't be about you at all. Once we are wrecked we most certainly are not the heroes of our stories.

Jeff navigates this hard middle path with a rich palate of personal experiences to draw from, yet he does so without making the book all about him. Instead, I got the sense that he's living what he believes, and we get in on it as God shapes his heart and character. In it he shaped me, too. I felt equally challenged and inspired, equally affirmed and chastened. Jeff's frank talk manages to pierce through the rhetoric without sounding preachy:

"We've all heard that it doesn't matter what you do as much as how you do it. That God can use you anywhere. That you never know what seeds you are planting in people's lives, even when you can't see the fruit. All this is true, but only if you're not using these statements to justify your life." -Jeff Goins 

Thanks, Jeff for the swift kick. And the call to live out a better story. And the reminder to pray for my pride and selfishness to be continually torn out of me. We get one life. I want mine to be wrecked.

God bless you, brother Jeff, and congratulations on a masterful gift to the Church. Everyone else... read it now.

NOTE:  For more info, visit http://wreckedthebook.com 

"Gracenomics" by Mike Foster :: book review

This book was disturbing to read.

I have long been a supporter of Mike Foster's organization, "People of the Second Chance," which is all about waging grace as a way of life. I've been inspired by Mike and his partner Jud Wilhite to get off my high horse and let go of judgment in choosing radical, irrational grace-filled interaction with everyone I come in contact with. I've been inspired to extend grace like Jesus did - in loving broken people and wrecked people who need the life-changing power of the grace of God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. That grace is what they need. It is really the ONLY thing we need... before anything else. The grace of Jesus Christ is our breath and heartbeat. Our only hope.

Therefore it was disturbing to read "Gracenomics." I tore into it, eagerly expecting a platform - a scriptural framework - a manifesto of the powerful grace of Jesus alive in us that undergirds and empowers our ability to give grace to others in return. Instead, there wasn't a single mention of God.

Not one.

Mike Foster is a Christ follower. I understand that People of the Second Chance is a 501-c3 faith based organization, yet per their website, they "work diligently to produce 'human' messages and not religious ones." These ideals stand in conflict with one another.

Instead of a grace-filled reminder of the cross of Jesus and our freedom to love the marginalized and wounded in His name, "Gracenomics" presented a combination of self-help therapy and a law-filled "do it better, do it more, try harder" message that, frankly, is the OPPOSITE of grace. Without Jesus, our best efforts are anemic at best, misguided and ineffective and dangerous at worst. Without Jesus, "Gracemenomics" is empty.

For those who believe, we can still read Jesus INTO the book, and try to filter the grace dynamic through our own theological grid, but the size and depth of the missed opportunity here is staggering.

Also, I found the many editing errors to be very distracting. The book design is flat-out gorgeous, but cool graphics can't redeem sentences that end with "anyways" and phrases like "all of the sudden" and spelling REIGN as RIEGN. I stopped counting after about a half dozen or so of these errors. Even though the book is beautiful, the shoddy editing made it hard to take seriously.

I still love Mike and Jud and what POTSC is all about. I'm not about to chisel the "People of the Second Chance" sticker off the back of my Jeep just yet, or change out my POTSC desktop on my laptop any time soon. There is some irony here as I write out a stinging critique of a book all about GRACE. And yet, we are also called to speak the truth in love. I just have to be honest about "Gracenomics."

It was shallow. It seems like it was rushed to print. Frankly... It just wasn't very good.