Just love authors like Yancey who deal with their own experiences with honesty and wit, using great historical (and maybe not so old...) theories to find their way through the battles. Giving us ordinary mortals permission to feel all of the frustrations with the established church in a consumer culture, while providing tools to meet them head on and not feel alone in doing so.

I love the sub-title to this book - whatever issues might be going on in your local church this book pushes that aside and gets to the heart of living a life of faith. Yancey looks at the stories of 13 people whose lives have shaped his Christian growth (despite the doubts he had about his own church at the time). From Martin Luther King Jr to Paul Brand (pioneering Leprosy surgeon) - the two best chapters for me. This book has really helped me at a crucial time in my faith. The chapters have provided a really helpful summary of the characters without the need to read entire books on each individual. I would strongly recommend this book.

A new edition of this excellent book which includes the first chapter of another of Philip Yancey's book Prayer . Philip Yancey has the gift of writing prose that you want to keep reading, but what he has to say deserves as wide publicity as possible. In this book, he talks about his own roots and dissatisfaction with the church his family attended, and how he grew through many stages to his present position. Brought up in the southern states of USA he recounts his racist feelings as a youngster, and it is no wonder that the first of the people he wants to tell us about should be Martin Luther King jnr, and the influence he had on his life. He has picked thirteen men and women, some he has met personally, and tells us about them, others like John Donne long dead, whose writings or lives have shown him the way of Christ. He stresses how much there is to gain from hearing of others experiences. At the end of each chapter he suggests further reading. Highly reccomended! WINNER OF CBC AWARD FOR BOOK OF THE YEAR. 2002.