Bill Hybels
149 pages
There are times when you come to a book that you expect an awful lot from the author, not just because of who the author is but because of the subject matter he/she is trying to tackle. This was one of those books for me and unfortunately didn’t deliver. This is a great subject and an enormous one to attempt to tackle in light of our current cultural situations, the upheaval in the church and the strong feelings of discontent within the church among our emerging brothers and sisters but Hybels barely touches the surface. I’m pretty sure I came to this book with a different set of expectations than Hybes and maybe that’s partly responsible for my disconnect (this might be one of those subjects where an introduction explaining your expectations for the book would have been extremely helpful and clarifying.)
For me, this book seemed rather passionless (until the postscript) and full of disconnected words and associations—maybe it was my state of mind while reading this book (I’ve heard from a lot of other people that absolutely love this book). Unfortunately this book was nothing more than a 149 page definition of what a “holy discontent” is and an attempt to get you to locate your and do something about it… but it fell more on the definition side than the attempt to locate it and motivate. (This book was full of interesting stories of other people’s Holy Discontent.) So, if you know what a Holy Discontent is, don’t bother with this book… if you have no clue, then this could be just what you’re looking for and it could quite possibly give rise to the voice within and help you move on that discontent that is within.
One question that I did have coming out of this book, which is totally unrelated to the subject matter: “Where is the bridge between bragging/boasting and telling a story?” There were times as I read the different stories that I felt like I was reading a propoganda piece for Willow Creek and at other times I felt like I was reading about all the cool and important people Hybels knows (and maybe that’s just me reading into the intent of the stories). I guess my question would be, is there a way to tell stories like this without coming across as a braggard or by telling stories like this will you always come across that way to someone?
Related posts:
- redemptively discontent: a new way of understanding the critics.
- Visioneering (a review)
- sex god (a review)
- Faith of My Fathers (a review)
- survivor (a review)
If you’re talking about writing only, then I’d imagine the best way to tell a great story about a well known community is to omit the name of that community from the story.
I suppose the other option is to draw facial expressions in your book…but somehow I don’t think that go over the way it’s intended.