One.Life — A Reflection

This has been a wonderful two weeks for One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow. The book appeared almost mid December, and it’s now starting to kick in with some readers, and I want to offer a reflective piece about what’s happening.

Pastors are reading it, benefiting from it and “using” it in their ministries. Just today I got a note from a pastor who will be using it in some small groups but said he’s passing it out like candy. Another pastor told me she’s giving it to everyone on her staff. Last week a pastor told me he had bought copies for anyone who showed up to church on a given Sunday. Another pastor wrote me to say thanks and said it was his favorite of my books.

But what was perhaps most moving to me was the 65 year old pastor who wrote me to say that the book had given him a new vision for the last decade of his ministry — he said “if God so wills” — and that it had given him themes for this year in preaching. But he also said it was making a difference in his life. Sometimes it’s the simplest of themes — Jesus wants our one and only life — that dig into our deepest yearnings.

These letters and observations strengthen my resolve to be the sort of professor who walks the bridge from the academy to the church on a constant basis. In some ways this book is the result of 27 years of teaching students in academic settings, but in other ways it’s the result of speaking in churches and listening to the heartbeat of lay folks and pastors.