the purpose driven life barnes and noble

This book is not for all, but for those needing a certain kind of scriptural rock, it is solid. People are quoted without being identified, and subheads simply repeat lines of text, which tends to make the prose sound too simple. The book has flaws editing might have fixed. It's practical yet paradoxically abstract, lacking the kind of real-life examples and stories that life-application books usually provide in abundance. The almost exclusively biblical frame of reference stakes out the audience niche for this manual for Christian living. He deliberately works with 15 different Bible translations, leaning heavily on contemporary translations and paraphrases, as an interesting way of plumbing biblical text. Of 800-plus footnotes, only 18 don't refer to Christian Scripture. His 40 short chapters are intended to be read over 40 days' time, giving readers small pieces of his purpose-discovering program to chew on. The book argues that discerning and living five God-ordained purposes-worship, community, discipleship, ministry and evangelism-is key to effective living. The same principles Warren has taught to thousands of pastors to help churches be healthy and effective can also drive lives, he says. Pastor of Saddleback Church, a Southern Baptist mega-church in southern California with weekly attendance of more than 15,000, Warren now applies his highly successful 'purpose-driven' framework, developed in the best-seller The Purpose-Driven Church, to individual experience.

The purpose driven life barnes and noble