Growing Edge

Our self-help culture regularly makes best sellers of books that promise “20 Days to Iron Abs” or “7 Steps to Inner Peace.” Two-week diets and 30-day money-back guarantees assail us, and we buy. Why?

Beneath our gullibility lies a pervasive discontent and uncertainty about why we are here.

As Os Guinness writes: “We have too much to live with and too little to live for.”

The Call takes on this dilemma without resorting to formulaic answers. Quite the opposite, Guinness welcomes the mystery and wonder of a calling. He bids us set aside hopes of a quick vocational fix and join him in reflecting on “the many-splendored truth of calling.” He divides the book into 26 reflections and suggests we read no more than one a day.

These reflections as well as an amazing number of quotes and stories invite us to remember the truth of who God created us to be. This is not new truth, but deep truth that has been discovered and forgotten time and time again.

It is truth awash in grace. “We start out searching, but we end up being discovered. We think we are looking for something; we realize we are found by Someone.” There can be no calling without a Caller, Guinness asserts, and he leaves no doubt about the identity of the One who calls. Each chapter but the last ends: “Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call.”

This simplicity, though, does not belie the need for the book. “To be sure,” Guinness says, “calling is not what it is commonly thought to be. It has to be dug out from under the rubble of ignorance and confusion. And, uncomfortably, it often flies directly in the face of our human inclinations. But nothing short of God’s call can ground and fulfill the truest human desire for purpose.”

The stories Guinness tells draw one in and lend substance to his reflections. Ordinary businessmen and great artists, young philosophers and old warriors appear on the pages to offer their wisdom on and struggles with call.

“There’s one thing I have never been able to hire anyone to do for me: find my own sense of purpose and fulfillment. I’d give anything to discover that.” Or, “You can get all A’s and still flunk life.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins once described God’s grandeur this way:

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.

The Call reads like this. Guinness’s gift is in stirring up longing rather than offering any numbered path to fulfillment. Yet somehow I find this hopeful. We do not serve a paint-by-numbers God with a finite number of variations on a stock call, but a God who delights in our uniqueness and invites us to step into the reality of an individual and corporate call that is “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.”

On this journey, Guinness is a worthy guide.

—Kevin Finch, associate pastor First Presbyterian Church 1013 8th Ave. Seattle, WA 98104

TOP PICKS

To help you upgrade your ministry.

• Gung Ho! by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles (William Morrow, 1998; to order call 800-843-9389).

Big Idea: By imitating animal behavior, any organization can create an atmosphere of energy, enthusiasm, and productivity. The Spirit of the Squirrel assures all work is meaningful and values-centered. The Way of the Beaver lets workers determine how best to achieve the company’s goals. The Gift of the Goose constantly cheers workers on every step of the way.

Best Section: Beaver. I appreciated the caution to make sure your goals are challenging, yet possible. Many small church pastors aim for the stars but can’t get to the launching pad, given their resources. Everyone grows discouraged.

Quote: “At a football game, the crowd doesn’t sit mute in the stands while the home team moves the ball to first down and goal to go and then cheer only when the touchdown comes. But that’s what most organizations do. Worse, they score in November and then wait until the annual award dinner in February, a hundred or so games later, to cheer.”

Buy If: (1) You are interested in what secular management theory can say to the church, (2) you don’t mind paying $20 for a book that takes only an hour to read.

1. Preaching Hard Texts of the Old Testament by Elizabeth Achtemeier (Hendrickson, 1998; to order call 800-358-3111).

Big Idea: The Old Testament is grounded in the holy love of a sovereign, powerful God for his people. Therefore, even the most difficult texts remain relevant and can and should be used to feed God’s people today.

Best Chapter: “Mourning—Lamentations 1:1-6.” The church should recapture mourning in worship. God’s people must cry out to him, not only when tragedy strikes, but also regularly, accepting responsibility for the sinful state of this world. Then we can accept God’s forgiveness and his power for change.

Quote: “The peaceful, benign gods of beauty and quiet that we imagine for ourselves in our day are quite powerless before the violence and wrong of our sin-pocked planet. But the Lord is not powerless. He is the warrior who can defeat every evil and prevent anything in life or death from separating us from his love (Rom. 8:39). ‘The Lord will reign for ever and ever,’ says our text (Exod. 15:8), and indeed, he has and does and always will.”

Buy If: (1) It’s been awhile since your last Old Testament class, (2) you aren’t bothered by an author who buys into Higher Criticism, yet has an unshakeable belief in the Bible as the inspired Word of God, (3) you want your assumptions challenged and your mind expanded.

1. Reinventing Your Church by Brian D. McLaren (Zondervan, 1998; to order call 800-727-1309).

Big Idea: We live in a new world, so we need a new church. This new church is not the result of “15 Steps to a Better Congregation.” It comes from changing our thinking about what church and, indeed, Christianity, are all about.

Best Chapter: “Resurrect Theology as Art and Science.” Old systematic theologies don’t speak to the postmodern world. Theology should be an ongoing vital search for truth about our infinite God. Besides, if the disciplines of science and art are never “finished,” how can theology ever be?

Quote: “The new, reinvented church does not view the New Testament as a ‘New Leviticus’—a law book of strict rules—nor as a fixed, detailed blueprint to be applied to all churches in all cultures across time. Rather, the New Testament serves as (among other things) an inspired, exemplary, and eternally relevant case study of how the early church itself adapted and evolved and coped with rapid change and new challenges.”

Buy If: (1) You expect to minister in our postmodern world, (2) your concern is as much for The Church as for “my church,” (3) you are interested in watering some seed thoughts and seeing what sprouts.

—Steve Bierly, American Reformed Church P.O. 365, Hull IA 51239

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Reviewed by Tim Ostermiller, computer services, Christianity Today International.

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