Customer Reviews

Faith as a Way of Life: A Vision for Pastoral Leadership

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Inspired by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture's "Faith as a Way of Life Project" of 2003-07, this book is an attempt to summarize its findings; its main gist is to encourage Christian pastors with ways to help develop holistic faith and practice in their congregations. Scharen's biggest cultural critique falls upon the common compartmentalization of our lives, since people tend to place "religion" or "faith" into one of those many compartments, rather than letting it act as the overarching metanarrative that guides one's life.

Challenging both the results-oriented "managerial" model and the felt-needs/highly individualistic "therapeutic" approach adopted by many American churches, Scharen builds his case for a faith that is trans-compartmental utilizing both established social theory (Weber, Bellah) and theology (predominately Lutheran/Reformed) to show how Christians can engage one another and the broader society in faithful and transformative ways. This isn't a how-to book in the classical sense, but Scharen does a good job at balancing theory and real-life examples to suggest how one can work towards his paradigm. I also appreciate the relative balance of his views; where many similar social-engagement books seem to be as captive to Leftist politics as others are to the Religious Right, Scharen's work seems to be more Christ-centered, allowing more room for alternate views and acknowledging "grey areas," and is thus more applicable to a broader audience, allowing for greater impact, especially among his diverse pastoral audience.

The above editorial review gives a good overview of the topics covered however it misses the one thing that sets Scharen's book apart from others of its kind. What Scharen accomplishes that others do not is to display the "interconnection and coherence of the whole". By approaching the topic from an admittedly generalist viewpoint he is able to take the reader through a hermeneutical circle of 1) observing the obstacles that prevent faith from impacting daily lives in various spheres, 2) reflecting on these situations theologically and 3) sharing stories of Christian leaders who have tried out ideas with varying degrees of success. The image that Scharen uses to pull these activities together is that of gathering and scattering. Like the process of breathing, collecting inward in community and then expanding outward in daily life are not two separate activities that we do but rather God's life giving rhythm for our lives.