Recently our church had an all-church study of the book Soul Shift: the Measure of a Life Transformed, by Steve DeNeff and David Drury. Our pastor preached sermons from the book and our life groups studied it during Sunday School hour.
If I had to describe the book in one word, I’d say “disappointing.”
It is essentially a discipleship book with a cute title. DeNeff and Drury identified seven ways in which a practicing Christian’s life should change to be wholly devoted to God:
- from Me to You
- from Slave to Child
- from Seen to Unseen
- from Consumer to Steward
- from Ask to Listen
- from Sheep to Shepherd
- from Me to We
Each of these is given a chapter in the book.
While there’s nothing wrong with the book, I suppose I was disappointed because there’s nothing new here. It’s the same old discipleship stuff packaged differently, perhaps for a different audience.
The book is well written, though possibly a little boring in places. Also, whenever the authors used first person, they always indicated which of them that first person applied to. This was a minor annoyance that I was somewhat able to ignore as I got through the book.
I don’t think I’ll be keeping this one, nor will I likely ever read it again.