When a 17 year old girl runs down railroad tracks toward an approaching train, lays down on the tracks so the train can run over her, and yet miraculously lives to tell about it, I want to read about the thoughts and motives she was experiencing that led her to that tragic choice.  Thankfully, she wrote a book, and Life, In Spite of Me, by Kristen Anderson, is exactly that: a look inside the thoughts, emotions, and circumstances that surrounded her choice on that fateful January day.

Since this is a book review, let me address the book issues first, and then deal with the message later.  Without giving too much away, let me just say that it felt like the book moved very slowly at times, and it seemed to take three-fourths of the book for Kristen to get to the point where she realized that she had, in fact, attempted suicide.  But then, it seemed that every other major section after that would begin with “Two years later” or “It had been 10 months since.”  There’s nothing wrong with that, but the flow of the book felt good until suddenly the timeline hit hyperspace and the reader was rocketed past large chunks of time in the author’s recovery.

Two of the features that I loved about the style were the inclusion of personal notes to the reader from Kristen at the end of some of the chapters.  These gave a nice, personal touch to the difficult issues she had dealt with, and acknowledged that the reader could be, as well.  The other inclusion that I found helpful was the Afterword written by Kristen’s mother.  Those pages really helped tie together some of the threads that still felt like they were dangling a bit at the end.  She addressed the circumstances around the night of Kristen’s suicide attempt and also the personal guilt she’d felt over knowing something was wrong in Kristen’s life but not being able to “figure it out.”  This also led to a resource page giving warning signs of depression and suicidal tendencies, which I think was extremely helpful for parents and others who are around teens.

But without a doubt, the best feature of this book is it’s undeniable message of hope in the light of horrible choices.  Anderson never once backed away from her responsibility in what she did, and the book allowed us to see the way she struggled to come to terms with “what now?” after her failed attempt.  She shows honesty, faith, doubt, and courage all the way through the book, and that is the one quality in this book that will resonate with readers every time.

You will not be disappointed that you pick this book up.  I know I wasn’t.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

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Just an absolutely beautiful real-life example of how the father of the prodigal son runs to us when we are at our lowest moments. A very moving video.

I’ve gotten a few weeks behind in posting reviews of the books I’ve read, and this is a great day to catch up.  I’m quickly approaching the halfway point of this one year reading challenge, and honestly, I’m wondering if I’ll be able to keep it up.  I’m still trudging along, but right now it feels every bit like that word – trudging.

Enough about the apparant hardships I’m experiencing from reading more!  Let’s get to the review of book #24: Suprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them, by Thom Rainer.  It’s a long title, but it does live up to it, and the book chronicles the research findings from a 6 year research project that included studying 2,000 churches and giving surveys to people who never attended church but made the decision to start attending.  Without trying to simplify the survey too much, it basically asked why they eventually landed in the churches they did, and then compared those churches to others who weren’t chosen.

Rainer had some pretty consistent standards that allowed churches to “make the cut” as an effective church.  In order to be an “effective church,” a church body had to see at least 26 conversions a year and have a conversion ratio (number of members/number of conversions) of less than 20:1. These standards are pretty strict, as the national ratio is 85:1.  In fact, less than 4% of American churches meet both of these criteria.

True to its title, the first surprising insight came on page 21 with the very first graph.  When the formerly unchurched were asked why they chose the church they did, the top 2 answers were…

1. Pastor/Preaching
2. Doctrines

Not only were those the top 2, but they were the top 2 by a mile.  The distant 3rd was friendliness, and way at the bottom of the reasons a church was picked was age specific ministry and worship music/style.

The rest of the book breaks down the results of the research project in 2 parts.  The first part shares the insights of the unchurched who were now plugged into churches, and the second part shares insights from the pastors of those churches.

As the quote from Lee Strobel says on the front of the book, it’s pastoral malpractice to ignore this book.

I agree.