Book Notice: Summoned

David Allen

Summoned: Stepping Up to Live and Lead with Jesus
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014.
Available at Amazon.com

Summoned is intended as a call for Christians to live vocationally; to consider the holistic way in which following Jesus should transform our lives. The book aims to inspire and to encourage reflection on how this call works itself out in individual contexts. As the title implies, there is a particular emphasis on convincing the reader that leadership is a core aspect of vocation; that everyone will have some sphere in which they exercise leadership, and faithfulness in vocation involves leading well.

Allen is a leadership and life coach, with an informal and personable style that is easy to navigate. The book is well-written and moves quickly through a range of topics he has clearly engaged with in mentoring and training of others previously, and is peppered with stories throughout.

My biggest disappointment with this book is that the target audience is so limited; there is clearly a young American male college student in the author’s mind here. None of the many stories provided though out the book, for instance, are those of women. This is not just a shame for the women who might like to reflect on some of this material about vocation, but also for the young male readers who perhaps would benefit from considering the impact of Christ’s call on a greater diversity of people and contexts. This focus also leads to the inclusion of material that I found odd – a chapter on pornography, for example, seems quite disjointed in a book purportedly about vocation, but highlights the target audience clearly!

Having said that, there’s some helpful and sensible advice in here for the reader who fits this profile, including the importance of personal character and relationship with Christ as the central pillars of leadership (and of vocation more generally). I appreciate that Allen’s vision of what vocation is goes beyond narrow ministry roles, and introduces ideas of vocation as relationship and an almost unlimited range of occupational applications in serving God. While I would have liked some additional engagement with vocation beyond the framework of ‘leadership’, I trust this book will stimulate some good conversations and helpful reflections.

Reviewed by Justin Denholm