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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is the life I want to live, March 28, 2004
This review is from: Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships (Hardcover)
The back of this book has some hooks that grab the attention of the modern American rat racer (as someone has well said - "even if you win the rat race, its still a race for rats." The book asks: "What if you could?" get all your work done by 6:00pm?
eat dinner with your family every night?
form deep, satisfying relationships?
naturally blend the world of church with everyday life?
spend hours a week on your hobbies? While all of those questions may not resonate with everyone, they resonate enough because all of us have the feeling that we are overworked and overstressed, that life is out of control. He has an exercise in chapter 1 on managing your relationships where he walks you through all the many disconnected and fragmented relationships we have in our lives. By the time you add your spouse, your extended family, spouse's extended family, your work relationships, your spouse's work relationships, your children and their relationships at school and extracurricular activities, your hobbies, your church involvement and a host of other relationships, most of us have dozens of disconnected and fragmented relationships. The problem is that none of these relationships intersect with each other, so we are pulled in all different directions. This helps explain alot of our frustration in life. We are built for community, but because we are so fragmented, it is impossible to develop deep community in any area of our lives. Having set up the problem, he spends the book trying to solve it. Frankly, most people will see his solutions as undoable at first glance. However, I would highly recommend that you not write his suggestions off as undoable. A friend of mine says that there is a predictable pattern whenever we are given new information. First we reject, it then we consider it, then we embrace it. If you read this book and automatically reject it, please go back and at least consider it, and see if you can't embrace at least some of what he says. One of the keys to "Making Room for Life" is to live life according to the Hebrew Day Planner, which basically follows the clock set down for us in Genesis 1. We work during the day, and relate and sleep during the night. Because we moderns are so work-obsessed we work so much at night that we never have time to relate to one another. He offers some helpful suggestions for those who travel, or have shift work, on how to do this. He also addresses the need for consolidating our relationships - he suggests that we recover the idea of neighborhood - where we spend lots of time working and playing close to home. This will enable us to build relationships with our neighbors. He cites some studies that show that the automobile is the number one detractor from community. The more you drive, the less you can build community. He issues a clarion call to cut down all the driving and going. I also like his emphasis on the dinner table. The dinner table is where community is built in the family and amongst our neighbors. He suggests that we do whatever it takes to have dinner together with your family, or those who are in your community, every night. This is where conversation skills are built, this is where you get to know one another, this is where discipleship takes place. There are a few gaps in the logic here. I find his vision for life very desirable. However, he doesn't prove that it is biblically mandated. To say that Genesis 1 shows that God set up this day/night structure does not prove once and for all that no work should be done at night. However, I think he makes the case that this is a desirable situation. I would like to see a little more exegetical work with some biblical texts in order to strengthen his case. Intuitively, I think he is on to something here, but I think he can shore up his case with some extra biblical data. All in all, a book well worth reading and seeking to apply - I recommend it highly
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36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book, but with serious flaws, July 21, 2004
This review is from: Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships (Hardcover)
"Making Room for Life" is a book that Christians burned by the Rat Race may see as the Holy Grail. It contains a plan for disengaging from that spinning wheel and re-engaging with real people, family, friends, and neighbors, while also allowing us to sleep, think, and be all God intended for us to be.
Randy Frazee, a Texas pastor, postulates the idea of recovering the Hebrew idea of what constitutes a day. God, Frazee notes, instituted such a day and blessed it. From 6 AM to 6 PM is set aside for work, be it your job, your hobbies, meal prep, homework, and the like. After 6 PM the next four to five hours are solely devoted to relationships. No one works; they only relate. This becomes the new family lifestyle. Anything that interferes with this must be rethought and reworked to fit into the lifestyle.
That's the book in a nutshell.
Beyond the main theory, "Making Room for Life" covers the fundamentals of how to make this happen. The author notes how too much time is spent in the car and has us consider a lifestyle spent less in the minivan and more in the local neighborhood. He also advocates moving closer to work to cut down on commute times, freeing us up for better things. The issue of organized children's sports is also discussed, noting that families just a few years ago never used to plan all their kids sporting events; most kids play spontaneously and can even get good at sports without partaking in three different sports leagues a weekend.
Our work situations are also discussed. Frazee notes that most people only work well for about four hours a day before filling time or zoning out. Why work a twelve hour day then? Eight is good enough if you let the boss know this when you are hired.
And what to do with all this relational time? Why not start reaching out to neighbors? You could make your house the social hub of the neighborhood, develop deeper relationships with neighbors, and potentially even lead people to Christ through friendship evangelism. Small group Bible studies can come out of this, too, if we think outside the "go to church" model and rather "be the Church."
Personally, I believe that what Frazee is saying makes sense. His ideas are sound and have wisdom. This is not to say that the book is perfect. Unfortunately, it has a few profound flaws.
The first issue concerns Frazee's ideal neighborhood--urban or suburban. All his ideas are clearly wrapped up in these two. But what about rural communities? It's as if they do not exist in this book. Nor do many of Frazee's ideas work at all for rural communities, oddly enough. Consider that the basis for his theory, "Hebrew Time," was largely constructed for a rural Jewish (and later, Christian) people who did not live in the suburbs and were often spread out over an area that made the kind of community he advocates difficult to create. I live in such an area now and was constantly searching for references for how rural dwellers can make Frazee's ideas work--with absolutely no success.
The second, and larger, issue is that in his role as a pastor of a church, Frazee is radically out of touch with the modern business environment. At one point he insists that it is simply not true that employers look down on employees who work a mere eight hours when the rest of the crew is putting in eleven. This is a fine ideal to have, but reality shows that the eight hour guy is usually the first downsized. Many of the assertions Frazee makes about the way businesses operates are naive at best and dishonest at worst. Frazee admits that he's been a pastor all his life, so this does not help his cause here. He also possesses a number of high level degrees, which makes me ask how he got them if he was working within his Hebrew Time timeframe. The secular world does not operate on Hebrew Time.
That second issue is a breaker for most people, sadly, unless they can find a line of work that would operate within Hebrew Time. More power to them if they can! But for those of us with decades in a single industry, it's staggeringly hard to make the kind of break the author suggests, since the secular business world has its own set of rules.
This is why I rate this book merely fair. Too many people cannot implement these ideas due to work restraints. In a perfect world, it would be grand, but not everyone can line up all the ducks to make it happen. This is not to say it is impossible, but the Church needs to rethink its views on the business world and start interacting with it in new and radical ways that free up Christian employees if we are to make a go of the fine ideas found in "Making Room for Life."
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Step toward a Healthier Life, May 26, 2004
This review is from: Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships (Hardcover)
If you're so busy living life that you don't have time to actually enjoy it, this book is for you. Despite the abundance of resources, technology, entertainment, and opportunities that surround us, more and more people simply aren't satisfied with the life they're living. What's missing for so many of us is real relationships. Unhurried time of really knowing and being known. The type of lives most of our grandparents enjoyed and took for granted, but which "progress" and the advancement of technology have all but eliminated for most people today. Randy Frazee offers excellent insight into the things that keep us from experiencing authentic relationships, and ultimately from enjoying life itself. "In America, success is defined by the next purchase. In other places around the world success is defined by a simple meal and conversation with family and friends." Frazee offers practical ideas about the things that crowd authentic community out of our life and suggestions about how to rearrange our lives to once again (or for the first time)experience the joy of living. I found this book to be extremely relavent, to be supported by both biblical foundations and scientific research, and to be challenging. I have already begun making some changes and expect to make many more as a result. I have to admit, I fear some of it may be too idealistic, but I anticipate that over time the lives of myself, my family, and my community will be better because of attempting to live out the ideas expressed here. I think you should read the book.
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