:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

We’re welcoming Jamie Wright as this week’s guest blogger in the Women in Ministry Series. You probably know about her incredible blog Jamie the Very Worst Missionary. 

I’m just gonna come out and say this: I never, ever, in a million years, wanted to be a “woman in ministry”. Never. And I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would actually be one.

I grew up far from any church influence, so the very narrow example I had seen of women in ministry came mostly from television, where they were often portrayed in the form of nosy, judgmental, gossip-loving Bible-thumpers. As a teen, when I finally crossed paths with some real live women in ministry, I found them to be…well…nosy, judgmental, gossip-loving, Bible-thumpers. (“You know who’s going to burn in Hell? You, honey.” That’s how a youth pastor’s wife so gingerly shared the Gospel of Jesus with my 15 year-old self.)

Many years later, when my husband and I began the process of moving our family into full-time ministry, I wasn’t exactly aching for a chance to join the ranks of Pastor’s wives and Missionaries – at least not the ones I’d been exposed to, with their Bible tracts and sensible shoes, and their strong, loud opinions about who is going to burn in Hell.

The truth is, the women who ministered to my own wanting soul weren’t “women in ministry” at all. They were good neighbors and generous friends. They were soccer-Moms who took my babies off my hands for a few hours at a time, when I most needed help. They were steaming coffee dates where no subject was off limits, where laughter flowed freely and tears of anguish were met with tears of empathy. They were gentle spirits who whispered the Love of a Savior into my life, slowly and sweetly, because they understood that, through friendship, Grace abounds. It just does.

Those women didn’t work in churches. They had government jobs, they were part-time consultants, some were homemakers, one was a personal trainer, another ran a daycare. They taught me that there’s a really big difference between “women in ministry” and “women who minister”. And they showed me that a woman’s ability to deeply impact the world around her, her value in ministry, isn’t limited by her job title (or her husband’s).

That means that Missionary or not, I am a woman who is called to minister. Pastor’s wife or not, you are a woman called to minister. Sunday school teacher or not, your wife/sister/daughter/friend is called to minister.

Our neighbors and co-workers are counting on us to use our God-given gifts and abilities to bring Hope to this broken world. Our families and our friends are depending on us, with our uniquely feminine voices, to speak into their lives with wisdom and authority. And the God who created us, in all our girly glory, has released us to feed the hungry, care for the sick, love the unlovely, and guide the lost.

He has invited each and every one of us into ministry. Even the chick who never, ever, in a million years, wanted to be a “woman in ministry”.

About Today’s Blogger

Jamie writes from her home in Costa Rica, where she lives with her husband and three sons. She is best known for candid conversations about life and faith on her blog, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary.

If You Appreciate Jamie, Read This

I (Ed, the owner of this blog) couldn’t invite Jamie to contribute to this series without thinking of some concrete ways to support her and her husband Steve in their ministry. Jamie had no idea I was going to do this, but I’ve been plotting  a special ask of this series’ readers. Here it is:

1. Steve and Jamie are trying to figure out their next step in ministry. Will you commit to praying with them?
2. Whether they stay in Costa Rica or move someplace else, Jamie and Steve are going to need some serious bucks. They have poured themselves out in ministry to others, and I would like you to prayerfully consider donating toward their ministry. In particular, can you give at least $10? They have some major expenses coming up that we can help them meet so that they can focus on their ministry and family. Go here to donate: Donate at PayPal Now.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book if you sign up in January)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed. Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy, read here.

Next Week’s Blogger: Alise Wright

As a veteran of Catholic elementary school and a survivor of fundamentalism, I like to think of myself as rather experienced in the realm of poorly exercised authority. My elementary school seemed to teem with sadistic teachers who only knew how to punish us in groups because of the one undiagnosed ADD kid.

At their worst, the fundamentalists figured out a way to make the Bible feel like my sadistic Catholic school teachers—a guide to the punishments we’re bound to receive unless we’re perfect. As a child, most of the religious authority figures I knew were rather heavy on the guilt and punishment end of things, save for a few women who were amazing teachers and Christians.

Attaching the word “loving” with authority strikes me as impossible in some unguarded moments, and yet, for Christians, this is really the only way authority truly works.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I searched for general “leadership failure” and the overwhelming results mentioned the failure of Christian leaders.

From affairs to power struggles to personal meltdowns, the internet results suggested that Christian leaders have issues with time management, character, sin, relationships with colleagues, and communication. Are Christian leaders alone in the failure department?

I dug into general leadership failure trends, and I found an article at Psychology Today that shared the following numbers:

“In the past two decades, 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs have lasted less than 3 years. Top executive failure rates [are] as high as 75% and rarely less than 30%. Chief executives now are lasting 7.6 years on a global average down from 9.5 years in 1995. According to the Harvard Business Review, 2 out of 5 new CEOs fail in their first 18 months on the job.”

Those are some pretty staggering numbers. The article goes on to suggest a number of reasons why leaders fail. These include hubris, resistance to change, and hostility toward colleagues.

It’s hard to say whether the existing conventional wisdom on leadership is inherently flawed or whether these washed up CEOs are simply failing to execute wise practices. Likewise, it’s hard to point to a cause behind the failure of Christian leaders. Do we expect too much from them? Are they just as sinful as the rest of us?

I’m honestly the last person to prescribe a path forward for Christian leaders, but I’ve seen what seminary students and pastors read when it comes to leadership. I know what church leaders talk about and where they look for their examples of excellent leadership.

Our church leaders look to the business world for lessons on leadership.

Can we learn something from good leaders? Sure. This is not a black and white matter.

The main point for consideration in my view is that we need to ask whether the high failure rate of CEOs in the business world tells us anything about the quality of the advice in our business books. Even if a small percentage of CEOs can rise to the top, overcome tremendous odds to succeed, and publish a book about “how they did it,” should we fawn over the advice they offer? What works for a small group of successful CEOs may not apply to other CEOs, let alone the pastors who read leadership books.

What’s more, if that Psychology Today article is right about CEOs failing because of pride, resistance to change, and failure to communicate, the solutions to these problems are not necessarily found in leadership books.

Do you struggle with pride? The cross has something to teach you about that.

Do you fight change? The Holy Spirit can change your mind.

Do you fail to communicate effectively? Love will help your relationships stay healthy.

The failure of a church leader is a tragedy, but today it’s not surprising. In fact, church leaders are in good company, since the leadership models that many churches follow seem to produce high failure rates in the business world as well.

Christianity has something to say about leadership, failure, restoration, and rethinking a new way forward. A good place to begin is admitting that the CEO leadership model is not the most healthy way forward for our leaders and their churches.

The solutions to our problems may be right under our noses.

Did you read what a celebrity pastor wrote on his Facebook wall?

I hope not. However, if you did, I’m pretty sure you heard about it because other Christians told you about it.

Ironically, you, your non-Christian friends, or anyone who may feel “bullied” or “attacked” by his insensitive remarks would probably never have heard what he wrote if some other Christians hadn’t made a big public outcry out of it.

And that leads to a dilemma when we deal with offensive Christian celebrities.

We feel like remaining silent just lets them win. If we don’t speak out, we’re letting down everyone who is wounded by this pastor’s coarse jokes.

And so blog posts are written, the word spreads, and the message goes out: “Celebrity pastor is a bully, and we’re not going to stand for it.”

Unfortunately, the part that tends to stand out in people’s minds is the first part, “Celebrity pastor is a bully.” That’s what the news media wants to report on. That’s what will remind people of old wounds.

Here’s what I’m wondering about all of this…

In this particular instance, must we really care what some pastor on the west coast writes to his followers on Facebook? Yeah, a few thousand people read it, but then he writes something else about Jesus being a cage fighter with tattoos or whatever and his insensitive remark fades away.

Very few people who could actually be offended by his remarks would have actually read them. He’s going to keep making them, and the sooner we leave him alone with his remarks and his gang of followers, the better. The perception of an assault from outside of his ranks only strengthens him and convinces his macho followers to ignore any calls for change (see the Backfire Effect).

Is there another way forward?

I have a couple of examples in mind, but the most powerful example I can think of is the “It Gets Better Story” in the aftermath of a teen’s suicide over homosexual bullying. Fort Worth councilman Joel Burns shared his own story of growing up as a homosexual, and his vulnerable moment overshadowed all of the outrage and transformed that horrible situation into a beautiful step forward.

Granted, there wasn’t a celebrity or organization to target, but the story changed from teen suicide to open dialogue about supporting teens during a particularly fragile time in their lives. Instead of focusing on the offense, everyone’s attention turned to healing.

How could anyone listen to such a real, powerful story and persist in bullying someone? (Well, let’s hope at least, eh?)

I think that could provide us with a good path forward in this particular case.

While it would be appropriate to confront a pastor in our own congregation, a nationally known celebrity who makes offensive remarks is another matter. Offensive celebrities need to be drowned out by a counter-message so that they can fade into their own obscurity—especially since this pastor’s personal brand is being offensive.

We need to drown out his message because once we confront him publicly, we give him free publicity that he probably wants and spread his message to people who don’t need to hear it. I doubt very much that he cares about critics outside his congregation and affiliations. He probably doesn’t even have time to consider it.

Therefore, the best way I can think of countering an offensive message, such as the one delivered on this pastor’s Facebook wall, is to tell stories of Jesus’ radical love and inclusivity and how those stories have shaped us—how we’ve put his love into action. This macho pastor would probably want to punch himself in the face if he ever understood the extent of Jesus’ radical, inclusive love that accepted sinners who were willing to repent.

That is, he’d punch himself in frustration for underestimating the love of God.

Dealing with celebrities and public figures is not the same as dealing with someone in your community. We can personally confront someone in our community, and if they want to be part of our community, they will reform. Celebrities don’t have the same things at stake.

Celebrities thrive on exposure. They draw their power from attention. If we deny this pastor the oxygen of attention, his flame that burns so many can be reduced to a tiny spark that few will notice or care about outside of his immediate circles.

And while we may think we’re somehow standing up for someone by opposing this man, the truth is, we really aren’t adding anything constructive. We are just telling others what we’re against. We need to oppose offensive remarks with real neighborly love to people around us, creating stories that overshadow what this pastor has done.

This is not the easy way forward. It will cost us our lives to create stories powerful enough to overcome messages of intolerance, hate, and fear. But the costly path of love is the only way I can think of changing what this pastor writes on his Facebook wall.

Perhaps one day this pastor will ask for examples of the best ways his readers have been loved in a time of need. He’ll only do that if we give him something to write about.

While in college I called my Dad and told him I was dropping my English major in favor of Biblical Studies. By the time I hung up the phone, he had convinced me to stick with English and to add Bible as a double-major.

He didn’t raise his voice or tell me what to do. I remember him spending more time reminding me of what I liked.

By the time I stumbled out of seminary unsure of what to do with my life since a career as a pastor wasn’t an option, I was really grateful to have that English degree. If anything I understood the jokes in Prairie Home Companion about the Professional Organization of English Majors.

However, during that fateful phone call, my dad saw something that I should have seen all along. Writing and books are important to me.

My teacher in sixth grade assigned free-writing activities every week in our notebook called an “Anything Book.” I filled up every scrap of white paper in my Anything Book. My imagination went crazy, even spilling stories into the number charts on the back cover.

During seventh and eighth grade, my friend and I would toss around a football after school and then sit down at his MS DOS computer and rewrite fairy tales with a twist. The one that stands out had something about the big bad wolf being framed by those horrible pigs.

In high school I moved away from fiction and toward more academic forms of writing with lots of research. I thought that writing was just a nice thing I did in addition to my other work. I also had no clue about what to do with my life. I didn’t know how people found jobs or selected careers.

The post-college world was terrifying to me. Books and writing always made sense, and I’m thankful that my family never questioned my English major in college. The English program in college became a safe haven for me until I thought that I had another path figured out as a pastor.

My dad wisely persuaded me that I shouldn’t toss away all that I’d already invested in studying literature and academic writing. Even after sticking with the English degree, I’m writing stuff today that I never pictured myself doing.

Today I help pay the bills by writing for blogs and websites, while I plug away on a novel that most closely resembles the zany stuff I scrawled in my Anything Book in sixth grade.

It’s fascinating to see that our parents can’t tell us exactly what to do. There’s no way my Dad could know that I’d end up writing for websites or I’d love writing fiction so much. However, he tried to keep me faithful to what he’d seen of me so far.

Parents aren’t perfect, but I’m grateful for the times when they keep us pointed in the right direction at the right time. I couldn’t have asked my dad to do anything more, and I’m forever grateful for that conversation.

Read more Father’s Day themed posts at Faith Barrista for the Thursday Jam.

While in seminary I read a lot of job descriptions for pastors and letters from search committees. They usually consisted of bullet point lists that were about as long as any other job description. However, as I read these lists I realized I wasn’t qualified for these openings.

In fact, I’m not even sure if Jesus would have been qualified for the positions at most churches.

I’m sure that someone was eventually hired, but I’m equally certain that whoever took on this mantle of “pastor” let his/her congregation down pretty quickly. Perhaps letting a congregation down is the best thing a pastor can do, since it forces everyone to talk about their expectations and abilities.

There are no simple solutions here that I know of. I wouldn’t dare offer a one-size fits all solution. However, I can offer a few thoughts on what we should aspire for in our pastors and some dangers to avoid.

What Pastors Must Do: Managing Direction

A pastor keeps a group of Christians pointed in the right direction. That applies to big picture stuff and to smaller groups and ministries in our churches. This is a huge task to fulfill, and I know many pastors who do this well.

However, some congregations expect their pastors to do a lot more than this. Whether they’re from a pastor’s personal expectations or a congregation’s expectations, these can contribute to burn out.

The Pastor as A Jack of All Spiritual Trades

Pastors are usually one of two kinds of people: leaders of people or managers of people, both of whom love teaching the Bible and praying for people. However, most churches want a visionary leader/manager/counselor/custodian/communications manager/whatever else needs to be done.

I grew up in a church that had a head pastor and counseling pastor, which struck me as one of the smartest things a church could do. 

The Pastor is Responsible for All Spiritual Growth

Most people go to church hoping to be “fed” in some way. We want something spiritually significant to happen each Sunday, and that is a huge burden that pastors have to carry. In addition, our church service formats place all of the emphasis on the pastor to make it happen.

That is one of the reasons why I don’t put a lot of stock in Sunday meetings. I prefer to view church as a bring your own lunch, with the pastor responsible for preventing a food fight.

Most Churches Want a Visionary, Big-Picture Pastor Who Does Stuff

You can spot a manager pastor by looking at his to-do list. Is he/she involved in every committee in a hands-on capacity? Does he/she take on smaller tasks that should actually be delegated? I’ve found that many churches want a visionary pastor who can see the big picture, but they may feel slighted if that pastor isn’t involved in a hands-on way like the manager pastor.

The visionary pastor and manager pastor are two very different people. A visionary pastor will be more hands off, while a managing pastor will be more hands on. Expecting both qualities in the same person will lead to burn out.

The Pastor Serves “Us” or Else

The hardest part of being a pastor is being placed in a position where he/she must challenge or confront a congregation to move in a new direction. When I look at the ministry of Jesus, he spent a lot of time telling his followers what they didn’t want to hear. Can you imagine what we would say to him today?

“Why do you keep talking about going to Jerusalem so you can put us and yourself in danger? Talk sense Jesus!”

Any pastor who suggested the possibility of death in Jerusalem wouldn’t have a salary for long.

And that’s the problem: our pastors serve US. If they don’t give US what we want, we can cut them loose. Even worse than that, if pastors don’t meet our unrealistic expectations, we may view them as failures.

Maybe some pastors have issues. I’m not here to discuss that. All that I can see for certain is we pay some very ordinary people very little to do some very extraordinary work—work that requires incredible dependence on God.

The fact that most congregations have some kind of financial power over their pastors is perhaps inevitable. I don’t know if there’s a better way to compensate pastors through freewill offerings or some kind of tent making hybrid—I’m sure there are advantages and disadvantages.

However we set up our compensation for pastors, we need to remember that we are putting quite a lot of pressure on the men and women who serve as pastors and that we hold tremendous power over them. This is a power we can use to bless or to curse.

Christianity teaches, among other things, that God can change us and that disciples of Jesus should live different. In keeping with the teachings of the Bible, Christian leaders are held to a high standard, but what should happen when our leaders fail?

We can debate our ideals on this matter, but Pastor and author David Trotter knows what it’s like to follow Jesus, to lead a church, and to then abandon himself to a series of sins that tore apart his church, his family, and eventually himself. He writes about his experiences with powerful, raw honesty in his book Lost and Found: Finding Myself by Getting Lost in an Affair.

I won’t lie to you, this book is difficult to read. It’s hard to watch a Christian make so many destructive decisions. It killed me to watch Trotter’s wife suffer through his neglect and unfaithfulness. I hated to read about Trotter’s indulgence in an affair with his wife’s best friend. I became upset as Trotter became depressed and suicidal, eventually checking himself into a hospital for three days.

This is a book that I can’t say you’ll “enjoy.” However, David has worked hard to sharpen his writing in this self-published book. He presents more details than necessary for the purpose of his story, but the book is important because he raises issues about leaders, churches, sin, and restoration that are essential topics today.

It’s a well-written account that I found hard to put down.

David and his wife Laura are opening up their lives for the benefit of the church, and whatever your first impressions may be of their story, you’ll be a better leader or church member for having read it. I don’t mean they have all of the answers for us. I wouldn’t be surprised if some readers disagree on certain points. However, if we read David’s book we’ll be much better prepared to handle pastoral affairs with greater compassion and understanding.

The subtitle suggests that David “found himself,” but that isn’t really the point of this book. In fact, the subtitle almost turned me off to the book. Trying to find himself was the problem in the first place. He got lost because he was consumed with himself and what he wanted. What he found at the conclusion of this book wasn’t necessarily himself. He really found a core group of reliable friends, his two children, and a wife who simply defies description with her character, strength, and grasp of forgiveness.

While this is David’s story, his wife Laura outshines everyone else in the narrative.

She endured one devastation after another, and yet she was willing to work with David and to eventually take him back (something you’ll know since she wrote the afterword to the book). After taking him back she lost a number of friends who were not willing to forgive him, thereby adding to the tragedy of the story.

I don’t want to minimize David’s pain and suffering, which were severe. However, Laura’s strength to continue working and serving her children, to reconcile with David, and to even edit this book leaves me amazed.

The reconciliation of David and Laura alone makes the book worth reading.

While watching David’s painful downward spiral will alert us to the personal hell that engulfs pastors in the midst of scandals and will help us prayerfully consider ways to help them, the restoration of David and Laura’s marriage shows us that God is able to change lives, to heal, and to restore what is broken.

Whatever you think of this book, David and Laura are worthy of respect for so openly confessing and sharing their story. I can’t imagine willingly reliving such a terrible time for the sake of a book, and that alone makes this book an important source for our discussions about leadership, accountability, expectations, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

You could say that this book proves that the Gospel is true.

If we truly believe this stuff about Jesus, then we have to believe that David and Laura can be reconciled even after he ran away from her, demeaned her, and suffered a breakdown. We need to talk about the expectations we place on pastors, the power and control that pastors demand, and how we are all complicit in such scandals. However, the most important lesson from this book is one of healing and reconciliation.

Besides my qualms with the book’s title, I also noticed that David often mentioned prayer and different points of growth with God, but the details were lacking. Since David personally sent me a review copy and I’m more interested in letting him tell his story than saying “Gotcha”, I asked him to flesh that out in a blog post. His post also raises the important matters related to the ways that pastors can misuse scripture and prayer as part of the “God business.”

Super-blogger Chad Estes has another review of David’s book and an interview that gives an excellent introduction to the book and to David’s heart.

I have previously addressed pastors and affairs in the following posts:

Why Pastors Fall Into Affairs

The Dark Side of Pastors

Note to authors/readers: I don’t review many books. If you read my blog and think I may be interested, drop me a line. However, I may take a pass on it. If I do review your book, I will try to be a critical reader.

Have you heard about the pastor down in Florida who wants to burn the Koran?

Yes, of course you have. It’s all over the news. General Petraus has asked him to stop. Blog posts and tweets are expressing concern and outrage. You can’t miss it.

Each day we read a story about this pastor’s dogged persistence, interviews on the news, and small protests that are erupting around the world.

It sounds terrible to us. The stakes are high. Our troops may be in danger. The reputation of America is on the line and the reputation of Christianity is REALLY on the line.

But is this really that big of a deal?

If you’re a Muslim, I understand that this pastor’s actions are offensive, but keep in mind that this man represents the tiniest fraction of American Christians. His church is not that large, and just about every Christian I know thinks he’s an offense to our country and our faith.

I’d like to think that most Muslims around the world can see that. I understand there have been some protests and some have thrown rocks at American soldiers in Afghanistan. However, does one extremist need to dominate the news cycle when his actions hardly come close to representing anything close to a majority or minority position?

In addition, must we view the protests over this event as a concerted reaction from the Muslim world?

I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Muslims don’t see American Christians as the kind of people who would burn the Koran, just as the majority of American Christians don’t see Muslims as the kinds of people who would blow up innocent civilians. Most people can see the nuances, the extreme elements, and the true course of those in the center.

However, our news cycles thrive on highlighting the controversial extremes. They just need a Christian who’s willing to do something stupid and some groups of people who are willing to protest it, and presto, we have a leading news story that pits civilizations and religions against each other.

The only people who won’t see the nuance in the story of this Koran-burning pastor are those hungry for a news story and those looking for an excuse to get angry. Otherwise, this is exactly the kind of story we should ignore.

This pastor has made terrible protests against Islam—calling it Satanic—before, but there were no consequences because no one reported the story.

Stopping this man is not the only way to defuse this situation. Reporters could stay away from him, bloggers could write about something else, and tweets could cover what we’re having for lunch. Because really, the average person should be able to grasp the nature of extremism and sort out the rest. If we’ve lost our grasp of nuance, then God help us.

And besides, we have much better things to do on September 11th, such as honoring those who sacrificed themselves in order to save lives. That represents the best of the Christian faith and the sentiments of the majority of believers.

There is no doubt in my mind that Ed Dobson, a former pastor and author of The Year of Living Like Jesus, has some tremendous insights for the church today. Who can’t respect someone with a few years to live because of ALS who devotes a year to live like Jesus?

The simple fact that Dobson has set out on this project is reason enough to admire him. In addition, his attitude throughout the book is one of both compassion for others and a personal passion for the Gospel. Dobson has so much to teach us, and yet I was disappointed by this book because it promised far more than it delivered.

The Absurdly Short Review

Do you believe Christians should only vote for Republicans? Read this book. Did that question strike you as a silly one? Then read Shane Claiborn’s Irresistable Revolution and Jesus for President instead of this book. Not sure yet? Then read this:

The Long Review

While I can’t give this book a positive review, I can’t say enough good things about Dobson. The book reads like a personal journal, and therefore I don’t want to take away from the gains he made in his one-year project. A lot of good stuff happens in this book, but to put it bluntly, the book’s presentation as a year of living like Jesus doesn’t work. Perhaps he could have just listed a few lessons learned after immersing himself in the Gospels rather than claiming he was “living like Jesus.”

The first sixty five pages alone drag on with insignificant details and fretting over silly things like whether to use electronics during a plane’s take off or whether he should eat shrimp. Such passages zeroing in on minutiae are far too common throughout the book. In addition, any project like this needs parameters and Dobson doesn’t really set up hard and fast ones to follow, which could have saved a lot of ink and paper later in the book as he confronts the limitations of his ALS.

Was he going to follow all of the Old Testament? Was he going to live like Jesus in light of Acts 15? He doesn’t really tell us, and so he does a little of each, spending a lot of time worrying about what to do and talking about the Jewish customs he picked up along the way.

In addition, while Dobson wants to focus on praying more so he can be like Jesus, I can’t quite figure out why he’d pick up the Rosary and the prayer beads of the Eastern Orthodox. While his openness to these things is admirable, it’s hard to see how they fit in this book, which brings us back to his project’s parameters and the way it has been marketed.

The book’s main problem is that it still presents living like Jesus in a fairly tame form where we have to think a little harder about how we vote, make ourselves a little bit uncomfortable by picking up hitchhikers, give away a few things, and read the Bible more. These are all good steps that I want to honor, but when I read about the folks  living sacrificially in the communities of folks such as Shane Claiborn and Mark Scandrette, I can’t help but feel this project didn’t quite go far enough.

Though Dobson is careful to set his own course in order to distinguish himself from A. J. Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically, I think the book would have benefited by interacting with some other Christian leaders beyond the few clergy he sought out. Wouldn’t it have been amazing for a former assistant to Jerry Falwell to sit down for a chat with someone like Jim Wallis or Shane Claiborn?

Dobson is honest about some of his failings, such as not visiting someone in prison or giving up more of his possessions, but at the same time there is a failure throughout the book to tackle some of the teachings of Jesus that many American Christians would find most difficult to stomach. If the publisher knew Dobson hadn’t done these things, then why not present the material in a slightly different light?

It was nice that Dobson gave away some suits and even sacrificed his preaching gig at his gated community in Florida, but his example of trusting his wealthy friends to buy him dinner didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of thing worth recording in a book about living like Jesus.

Dobson takes admirable risks at times and reaches out in wonderful ways to those outside the church, but there are plenty of awkward moments where he uncritically mentions his corvette and his gated community without wondering how the story of the rich young man could apply to them. He very well could have justified either of them, but his lack of attention to them makes them a glaring oversight that makes this book a bit difficult to digest at times.

I have really struggled to review this book because it does some things well, but also has some glaring weak points in light of the way the material is presented: a year of living like Jesus. The bar has no doubt been set high, but in reality we have a series of journal entries from a gracious and compassionate brother who benefits greatly by devoting more time to prayer, scripture reading, and attempts to live like Jesus.

As far as the benefits of this book, pastor Dan Kimball notes that Dobson has a passion for those outside of the church and has a lot of great stories to share from his year of trying to live like Jesus. Just taking a gander at the comments on Kimball’s blog you can see how some Christian brothers and sisters can’t stomach a discussion in politics beyond abortion, and to the extent that Dobson helps broaden the pro-life agenda and add nuance to our discussions, his book has made a valuable contribution to Christianity.

This book was reviewed as part of Zondervan’s blog tour.