Customer Reviews

Soul Talk: Speaking with Power Into the Lives of Others

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Crabb's latest book does an excellent job of telling you how to really minister to what is going on in the deepest parts of people. What makes this book so good, it it refuses to give you a formula. Granted he has steps, but his steps are more to get you to avail yourself to the holy spirit's leading. Thus SoulTalk will look a variety of different ways. Crabb really shows you how to pay attention to what is going on behind people's words, what's really going on with you as you're listening to people talk, and how to get past mere empathy and advice giving to Dance with the Spirit. Required reading for every minster/spiritual director type person.

In his latest book Dr. Crabb continues his exploration and pilgrmimmage into what should make the body of Christ different, both individually and corporately, from the rest of the world. How do we interact with others, in a meaningful way, in a supernatural way, in a way that genuinely helps them walk with God? Not through just encouragement, not through just rules, but through a dance with the Spirit, as he likes to put it, that makes us humble and dependent and powerful, all at the same time. Excellent mind-stretching material to make you think and reflect on how to better enter people's lives in a rich and God-soaked way.

It seems that the Larry Crabb of the last few years has been on a new mission: to teach Christians a way of living that is more Real than what we've been doing. The "New Way", "the dance" that leads us to try to find God before we try to make life "work."

In SoulTalk, Dr. Crabb spends time addressing the way we can build this into our communities: how to speak to each other in a way that builds our energy towards seeking God, and helps us discover our natural tendency to seek just about anything else. He insists that words are powerful to move the heart, and that spirit-led conversation - as difficult as it can be - is powered by someone other than ourselves, deepening friendships and driving spiritual formation.

Although he insists that formulas are deadly, Larry Crabb lays out an ordered approach to learning SoulTalk:

1. Think Beneath
2. Think Vision
3. Think Passion
4. Think Story
5. Think Movement

This is perhaps where the book gets bogged down - the trendy labels are similar in connotation, and can become confusing. At times, it feels Dr. Crabb is being repetitive, taking two chapters to lay out what could have been described in one. But the concepts themselves are rewarding, and worth the effort to absorb.

SoulTalk is probably a good parallel to "Shattered Dreams" also by Larry Crabb, or even Waking the Dead by John Eldridge - seemingly a similarly rooted call to the church to live more actively by the Spirit of God than by formula.

Overall: highly recommended. This is one that you'll take notes on, re-read chapters, and will feel urges to forcibly pass on to your friends and small groupies.

I wondered how Crabb would continue his honest look at contemporary Christianity. This book echoes a million things I have felt over the last five years of my life. While I found the writing to be somewhat repetitive, what was said was well worth it. I would like to say that this is the most important book to come out of the current glut of contemporary Christian literature. I hope this book finds its way into the hands of many.

The book is really good but Crabb is a little slow getting to his point. However, once you get to chapter seven, the book takes off in an awesome way. Larry Crabb takes a fresh propective on the way we communicate.

Larry Crabb has wonderful insight into humans and their spiritual needs and tendencies, and writes in an easy-to-understand style. [NOTE: I ordered this from an Amazon marketplace seller who never bothered, after 6 wks., to fill the order. Amazon refunded my money, and I purchased the book elsewhere so I wouldn't have to wait any longer.]