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rachelb36's review
2.0
Firstly, I should state that this book is geared toward youth, which I didn't realize. After I gathered that, I approached the book from my junior-high-self point of view.
After finishing it, I'm having trouble summing it up. It's all over the place, lacking continuity. The best I could do is say that it's not so much about serving Jesus as much as explaining very basic truths about who Jesus is and what He did while on earth. It was so overly simplistic that it almost seemed the authors were talking to un-churched youth... except they weren't. I felt that I was being talked down to, even taking into account that it was written for students.
Throughout the book, we're told that being like Jesus often means being like Him in our everyday, ordinary lives right where we are. So I found it frustrating that every "real life" example was a "Mission Year" story. Mission Year is a "movement" encouraging youth to move to the inner-city for one year to show the love of Christ to the neighborhood. If we really want to encourage our youth to "be Jesus" to those around them, let's focus first on their immediate surroundings. If we tell them "you can be Jesus to your classmates," let's give them a real-life example of another student who showed Christ's love to a classmate! People in the inner-city need Jesus, but so do those in suburban and rural areas.
Overall, there were a couple nuggets in this, but I think they would be more easily extracted from a different book.
After finishing it, I'm having trouble summing it up. It's all over the place, lacking continuity. The best I could do is say that it's not so much about serving Jesus as much as explaining very basic truths about who Jesus is and what He did while on earth. It was so overly simplistic that it almost seemed the authors were talking to un-churched youth... except they weren't. I felt that I was being talked down to, even taking into account that it was written for students.
Throughout the book, we're told that being like Jesus often means being like Him in our everyday, ordinary lives right where we are. So I found it frustrating that every "real life" example was a "Mission Year" story. Mission Year is a "movement" encouraging youth to move to the inner-city for one year to show the love of Christ to the neighborhood. If we really want to encourage our youth to "be Jesus" to those around them, let's focus first on their immediate surroundings. If we tell them "you can be Jesus to your classmates," let's give them a real-life example of another student who showed Christ's love to a classmate! People in the inner-city need Jesus, but so do those in suburban and rural areas.
Overall, there were a couple nuggets in this, but I think they would be more easily extracted from a different book.
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