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Mark Holmen provides a
personal-experience-filled guide toward building faith life into the
family system. Holmen taps into his own childhood experiences as well as
those in his many years of work as a youth and family pastor. He focuses
his makeover theme in five areas: Home, Parent, Child, Extended Family,
and Church. He provides useful encouragement, Biblical references and
statistical data to support his ideas.
Holmen has done an outstanding job of
organizing his ‘makeover’. The chapters are short and easy to read. At
the end of each chapter, he provides three helps: a review of the key
points in the chapter; activities that guide families toward
implementation of the key points; and discussion questions for a small
group.
The content of the book is not necessarily
revolutionary, and many of the ideas are things that have been said
before in various forms. Holmen’s packaging and implementation
strategies, however, are unique and serve to guide readers toward
actually using the information to build a faith-filled home and community
of believers.
At times, however, it is unclear who would be
the intended reader. Holmen seems to speak to parents, grandparents,
elders, church leaders, new Christians, and life-long believers. It was
difficult to see the book as being entirely useful for a family with
young children (under age 9) or a family that did not grow up with
parents who were believers. The cover photo shows a very young boy
standing on his dad’s feet, which seems to suggest that it would be a
good read for families with young children, whereas the activities are
geared more toward families of teens and pre-teens. The chapter about
extended family often assumes that the reader has had, and continues to
have, a positive and healthy Christian relationship with previous
generations. In addition there are times when it speaks more to
grandparents than parents.
Overall, this book was a helpful read. While
it may not meet the needs of an individual reader, I would highly
recommend it for multigenerational small groups in a church seeking to
enrich the family lives in their congregation. The diversity of people
Holmen addresses and the thoughtful small group questions would provide a
great discussion oriented dynamic that would definitely strengthen
families and help them to put Christ at the center. This book could serve
as a catalyst to teach the church to work together to ensure that faith
begins at home.
Review contributed by: A. V. Warkentin. She
attends Reedley First Baptist Church in California, is a full time mom
and wife, and enjoys tutoring, reading novels and analyzing just about
every part of life.
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