Monday, September 03, 2012

7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess

Author: Jen Hatmaker

One-sentence summary: The author decides to radically reduce the excess in her life, choosing one subject a month for seven months to combat: Food, Clothes, Possessions, Media, Waste, Spending, and Stress.

B.A.D. Girls Book Rating: 9

Our favorite thing about it: The wakeup call and the down-to-earth practical ways to reduce it.

Our least favorite thing about it: Just that we didn’t read it sooner.

Main Topics of Discussion: Food, Clothes, Possessions, Media, Waste, Spending, Stress (sorry, that’s not a copout…those actually were our topics of discussion!)

Our favorite quote: “7 will be an exercise in simplicity with one goal: to create space for God’s Kingdom to break through.” (p.4)

This is the only time I’ve done this, but I couldn’t pick just one…

“The careful study of the Word has a goal, which is not the careful study of the Word. The objective is to discover Jesus and allow Him to change our trajectory.” (p.24)

Notes: We all absolutely loved this book. The concept and message has been stirring in all of us for a while and in reading this book, we all just thought…”wow, yes!” But she articulated our stirrings into a coherent book that said it so much better than we ever could. It reads like a blog, which for her experiment was perfect and really down-to-earth.

One of the reasons we loved the book (besides the general message) was that Jen is so relatable to us. She is a mom, who lives in Texas, is a Christian, etc. Her way of writing and humor really spoke to us and we felt like we were talking to a friend when we were reading. And that humor is so wonderful. We found ourselves being challenged to the core on some of these issues and laughing out loud at the next paragraph. We totally loved that. The book has a really heavy, important message(s), but Jen does not take herself too seriously.

I won’t go over all the details of things we said about each chapter, but suffice it to say this was our longest discussion to date. And we could have gone on much longer.

One aspect of the book that was really encouraging was Jen’s refusal to give up on the Church despite the way things have gone in the past regarding the way we use our resources and focus our energy. She emphatically believes that there is hope for the Church…and we do too.

Another really valuable part of the book is the end where Jen makes sure you don’t walk away feeling guilty or overwhelmed (both of which are exactly what we would tend to feel). Instead she offers practical advice for implementing some change in our lives. Along that vein, this book has already sparked some real action among our group, and soon, our church.

Each of us will probably pick different “baby steps” to take after reading this book, but together, we are collaborating on an impactful movement toward serving the poor in our city.

Memorable Meeting Moments: Kelli S. joined us and had some really great contributions to the discussion…thanks Kelli! We all brought some clothing and accessories to the meeting as a partial and immediate response to the book. And we carefully selected where to donate the clothes. We also ate food based on the 7 foods that Jen selects to exclusively eat for the first month of her exercise:

What We Ate: Chicken with tomatoes and avocados, risotto, bread, and sweet potato cake.

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