Book Review: Interrupted

My favorite piece of summer reading so far has been Jen Hatmaker's latest book, "Interrupted." It's Jen's personal account of how God shook up her & her husband's faith and started steering them to interact with & befriend "the lost, the least, and the last" in this broken world.

They've been church-going people since they were kids & vocational ministers their entire adult careers... yet in 2007 they couldn't shake the lingering question inside their heads "God, isn't there more?" She prayed and asked "God, raise up in me a holy passion." And God responded.

"Interrupted" puts words to an inner angst that has gnawed at my insides for almost 2 years now. I have been a Christian just long enough to have gotten a good hold of the "routines" of American Christian life-- I go to church weekly, pray & read the Bible almost daily... I have attended plenty of "Bible Studies" and classes on what we think, I've studied theology, I've read a billion Christian books-- I have learned plenty (that is NOT to say I know it all, or even anywhere close to it). But at the end of the day, what was I doing with any of it? Mostly just talking to other church people about it.

I feel sometimes like we are all just "playing church", and that can be a suffocating place at times (just being honest) because... well, here's the way Jen put it: "Why did I spend all my time blessing blessed people who should be on the giving side of the equation by now?" (p. 21) Answer: because its safe and because its comfortable.

Joey Shaw charged a group of us one time with the parable of the shepherd who went in search of the one lost sheep-- he left 99 other sheep behind to go and pursue the 1. Joey reminded us that we like to stay with the 99 because that's easy, its comfortable, its safe.

But if we want to act like Jesus, we go out from the flock, in search of the lost, the least, the last.

I am hungry. Hungry to serve outside the four walls of the church. In Austin. My city is full of poor people, hurting people, hungry people, beaten-down and broken people. Do I know any of them? Do I spend time with them? Do I know their stories? Have I listened and loved well? How much of my life (my time, my energy, my money, my sleep, my home, etc) have I sacrificed in order to love them well?

I am increasingly wondering... not just "have they HEARD about Jesus?" but "have they SEEN & EXPERIENCED Jesus through MY interactions with them?"

This book will challenge you to live beyond Christian comfort and mediocrity. It will tempt you to be crazy enough to actually DO things Jesus talks about in the Bible.