Searching for Home: Spirituality for Restless Souls [Hardcover]

M. Craig Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

Deep down it's easy to believe that the better job, the nicer house, or the more dynamic church will finally make us feel ''at home.'' In Searching for Home, M. Craig Barnes challenges this belief. He reminds us that paradise is lost and we can't go home again. Our great comfort and hope, however, is that we are never lost to God. Seasoned by more than twenty years as a pastor, Barnes discusses the importance of confession, worship, and grace in our search for home. He offers advice about how we can move from being transient nomads ''too frightened to be grateful'' to pilgrims who are at home with God, guided by our pleasure in him. This book was written for both Christians and seekers who are still looking for a sense of belonging or ''home.'' It will be a useful tool for pastors, adult Sunday school groups, and counselors of all kinds who are advising pilgrims along the way.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Barnes, the former pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., weaves together personal stories, illustrations from Dante's The Divine Comedy and examples from the Bible to contend that our true home is in heaven. Home, he says, is where we were created to live eternally with our triune family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Sin alienates us from our home and makes us spiritual nomads. We are always searching for the path home again, in much the same way that Dante awoke in the middle of a dark wood searching for his true path home. Christ's sacrifice, argues Barnes, becomes our path home, the church is the threshold to our home and communion with the saints of the church here on earth provides us a picture of that home waiting at the end of our journey. Barnes nicely blends Dante's insights with biblical teachings, and his use of Dante is the most original thing about the book. Barnes's spirituality for the restless will appeal mostly to evangelicals who share his belief that heaven is a real place and a Christian's true home.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

M. CRAIG BARNES was formerly pastor of the National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C. He is currently professor of leadership and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is the author of Sacred Thirst, Hustling God, When God Interrupts, and Yearning.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Brazos Press (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587430622
• ISBN-13: 978-1587430626
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #465,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

M. Craig Barnes is pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His previous books are Yearning, Hustling God, and When God Interrupts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profound, June 28, 2005

By 

Jack Pemberton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Searching for Home: Spirituality for Restless Souls (Hardcover)

This is the most spiritually profound and socially relevant book I have read in years. Plus, the writing is just exquisite.

Barnes has an incredible ability to pull together deep insights from scripture, literature, sociological trends, and his pastoral experiences to describe why the contemporary soul is so restless. Best of all, he provides a helpful and honest response to our deepest longings.

I have read all of his books, and enjoyed them all, but Barnes is never better than in Searching For Home. The book works on so many levels: social critique, personal spirituality, literary insight, biblical teaching. But they all come together in his deep passion as a pastor for people to find their home with the Triune God.

If you want to be both intellectually challenged and emotionally engaged, you have to give this book a try!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars wisdom for pilgrims, January 17, 2007

By 

Daniel B. Clendenin (www.journeywithjesus.net) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Searching for Home: Spirituality for Restless Souls (Paperback)

Craig Barnes served as the pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. from 1993-2002, after which he taught as a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Today he continues in that role but also serves as pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. After studies at Kings College in New York and Princeton Seminary, he completed a PhD in church history at the University of Chicago under Martin Marty. All of that to say that he is a rare pastor-scholar who is deeply immersed in the trenches of every day life with his parishioners whom he clearly loves and respects, but equally at home reading sociological texts about American culture or parsing a fine point in history or theology that just might help you to think about something in a different way. If I count correctly, this is Barnes's sixth book, all of which explore just what it means to follow Jesus in our wild and broken world.

In this book he uses Dante's Divine Comedy and the journey toward home metaphor to unpack the pilgrim motif of discipleship. Each chapter begins with a short quote from the Inferno, Purgatory, or Paradise, and then proceeds with Barnes's theological and pastoral reflections, including his own Christian journey. Barnes does a fine job at avoiding cliches, taking the measure of contemporary culture, including a broad diversity of popular and scholarly sources, and drawing upon a fund of insights from pastoral counseling. The book moves us through the stages of Christian journey, from our profound lostness, to awakening, repentance, confession, faith, community, guidance, and sacrament. The truly good news of Jesus, writes Barnes, is that "all of the roads belong to God," and that "the Savior can use any road to bring us home." Quoting CS Lewis, he reminds us that God can even use the wrong roads to take us to the right places (pp. 121, 128).

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The need for home, February 12, 2004

By 

JAD (The Sunshine State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Searching for Home: Spirituality for Restless Souls (Hardcover)

In a society in which almost everyone is from somewhere else, and where they are likely to move on again before very long, how does one combat or respond to a profound longing for home? This is the problem M. Craig Barnes addresses in this timely book.

Barnes writes stirringly about the need for home. He cities many studies that show the rootlessness of our contemporary society and he offers anecdotal examples of our wanderlust. Barnes explains that he experienced this collective craving among the members of his congregation while serving as a pastor in our nation's capital, often a way station for those who serve for a time in government. Everyone was from somewhere else and spoke of that somewhere else as "home." He argues that most congregations will have this same challenge: many church members who long for a place that is far away and days that are long post, which they think of as their home.

Barnes reminds us that our home is not Duluth or Pomona or wherever else we were born, but rather home is "... the place where we were created to live from eternity to eternity ... ." Further, Barnes tells us that "When God created humanity, it wasn't until he breathed the holy ruauch into the nostrils of Adam that he became a living being" (both p. 33).

Not only is our rightful place with God, but God is the source of all that we are. We have come from God, we are going toward God: this is what it is to be human. Christians are the people who recognize this truth and who have as their companion on the journey God in the person of Jesus Christ.

The author, formerly the pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, is currently the pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh.

If you find this review helpful you might want to read some of my other reviews, including those on subjects ranging from biography to architecture, as well as religion and fiction.