Rating: 
Summary: "Making Room For Life" makes an unexpected difference
Review: "Making Room For Life" is an enlightening book with a unique approach to resolving some of the problems todays busy families face. Though our kids are nearly grown and gone and our lives are quieting down some, this book has made a huge difference in my life in an unexpected way. Three days after following the Hebrew Day Planner that Randy recommends, my diabetes, which had been out of control, fell within normal ranges and has remained there without the assistance of insulin. I highly recommend the book!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book, but with serious flaws
Review: "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."
Rating:
Summary: "Making Room For Life" makes an unexpected difference
Review: "Making Room For Life" is an enlightening book with a unique approach to resolving some of the problems todays busy families face. Though our kids are nearly grown and gone and our lives are quieting down some, this book has made a huge difference in my life in an unexpected way. Three days after following the Hebrew Day Planner that Randy recommends, my diabetes, which had been out of control, fell within normal ranges and has remained there without the assistance of insulin. I highly recommend the book!
Rating:
Summary: "Making Room For Life" makes an unexpected difference
Review: "Making Room For Life" is an enlightening book with a unique approach to resolving some of the problems todays busy families face. Though our kids are nearly grown and gone and our lives are quieting down some, this book has made a huge difference in my life in an unexpected way. Three days after following the Hebrew Day Planner that Randy recommends, my diabetes, which had been out of control, fell within normal ranges and has remained there without the assistance of insulin. I highly recommend the book!
Rating:
Summary: Top of the "To Do" List
Review: As an educator and parent, I highly recommend not only reading about "making room for life", but highly pursuing it as well! "Countercultural" comes to mind when reflecting on the principles in Frazee's book. And for the sake of kids, it's time to fight back to recapture a culture of security, nurturing, and safety for them. I would dare you to read this book and not see your life, home, and children in a different way--a better way!
Rating:
Summary: Top of the "To Do" List
Review: As an educator and parent, I highly recommend not only reading about "making room for life", but highly pursuing it as well! "Countercultural" comes to mind when reflecting on the principles in Frazee's book. And for the sake of kids, it's time to fight back to recapture a culture of security, nurturing, and safety for them. I would dare you to read this book and not see your life, home, and children in a different way--a better way!
Rating:
Summary: Top of the "To Do" List
Review: As an educator and parent, I highly recommend not only reading about "making room for life", but highly pursuing it as well! "Countercultural" comes to mind when reflecting on the principles in Frazee's book. And for the sake of kids, it's time to fight back to recapture a culture of security, nurturing, and safety for them. I would dare you to read this book and not see your life, home, and children in a different way--a better way!
Rating:
Summary: cures for the common American epidemic of crowded loneliness
Review: Every so often, a well-credentialed scholar (such as University of Chicago political philosopher Allan Bloom) will write such an insightful critique of her or his own culture (as is The Closing of the American Mind) that it invariably evokes genuine confession or angry denial from that society's full spectrum of serious readers (leftists, centrists, and right wingers). And rarer is the critic of culture (such as Oxford then Cambridge University English professor C.S. Lewis) who can show irrefutably how persons cannot but do damage to themselves and to others when they socially construct values that refuse to acknowledge natural design (as shown in The Abolition of Man). But more uncommon and refreshing is the author (such as Bible church pastor Randy Frazee) who can humbly claim the problems of culture as his very own until he begins to find and to implement real-life solutions for himself and then advisedly for others (as in Making Room for Life). Bloom, Lewis, and Frazee have discerned the issues of culture-warping modernity during the later 20th century. So Bloom suggests people "cannot remain content with what is given them by their culture if they are to be fully human." And Lewis notes how "we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible . . . We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." But Frazee (not intending to be an academic heavyweight) goes further: he is content with neither modern American culture nor the unfruitful lifestyles it has given us as we enter another year of the 21st century. He is after being fully human and connecting more fully with others. And it's personal for him. Frazee dedicates his latest book "To Rozanne, my wife and best friend: my personal journey to make room for life has been driven by a passion to spend more time with you." Trying to make room for life, this pastor of The Comeback Congregation (which is the title of Frazee's first book) is a typically busy senior church manager, a jet-set speaker, a consultant, a researcher, a writer, a husband, a father (of four), and a neighbor (though hardly in that order). In the stress of these various roles, he has gleaned hard-knock lessons on relationships and on the abundant life in his communities. And the most relevant communities are his common American suburban neighborhood and his partially-overlapping Connecting Church [that goes] Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community. (That last phrase happens to be the title of his widely-read second book). That's not to say the answers Frazee has discovered are all homegrown. The counter-cultural solutions are also based on compelling Biblical, historical, sociological, and medical research, to illustrate some of the best natural designs for being fully human in community. So the author confesses he's following the advice of one of his early seminary professors (Howard Hendricks) who says: "pastors should not focus their ministry on teaching people how to do church but on how to do life." And so, this pastor's book is not preachy; there is no hint of "dogma," defined by another mentor (Dallas Willard) as "having to believe whether you believe or not" or of "law" as "something you must do whether it is good for you or not." Frazee's book is an easy read, sometimes humorous and always relevant. It is well documented and gives thoughtful individual and group suggestions in each chapter. In the end, it encourages readers to start with intensely-practical, humbly-offered, and tried-and-true proposals for good-life relational change. These are modest, substantial, and radical proposals for the person struggling with the American epidemic of "crowded loneliness." The book is for the single parent; for the one-income stay-at-home parent; for the two-income family; for the entrepreneur; for the shift worker; and for the business traveler. It's for any who would "move closer to living the life that Jesus Christ envisioned for them when he died on the cross"; for all who "would end up leaving the chaotic life behind and experiencing the delights of connected relationships."
Rating: 
Summary: Great Idea, Not Good for Rural Living However...
Review: Great theories and makes a definite impact on how our culture (even Christians) have gravitated away from home. However, like his other book "The Connected Church", it is quite urban-based in philosophy. He feels we should be connected and fellowship with our neighborhood. Alright if you have 20 families in a square block or whatever. The rest of us may not have 20 families in a square mile. We have to drive everywhere! If my children are to involved in anything in means driving more than his recommended 20 minutes round-trip. And be home by 6pm every night? Sounds great, that's what made me buy the book. But in the book I found he was relating more to urban folks that are not taking part in their own surroundings, but those of another part of the city. Oh well, I still recommend this book for its valuable ideas. It just doesn't apply very well to country living.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Step toward a Healthier Life
Review: 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.
|
