Stay Salt: this book has the potential to change lives - will you read it with us?
I can still remember how I felt the first time I read Out of the Saltshaker by Becky Pippert when I was a student. It turned my life upside down. It helped open my eyes to some key things that, up until that point, I just wasn’t seeing in focus - the people around me, the Spirit inside me, and the Spirit’s work in the people around me. It helped me to celebrate God’s strength and my weakness. It helped me to look for and embrace opportunities that I thought impossible for someone like me. It changed the way I looked at the world around me and the things I saw when I looked.
I didn’t expect to ever read another book like it, with its unique blend of brilliant theology and real-life (hilarious) stories. But then I read Stay Salt! 20 years have passed since I read Out of the Saltshaker (more than that since it was written), and in the years that have elapsed the world has changed massively. The questions have changed. And my own heart has changed too. And this book was ready to face all those changes with the same great, unchanging story of the Bible, but with fresh stories, and fresh insight from Becky, perfectly pitched to this cultural moment we find ourselves in.
Becky’s stories are different from mine because she is her own unique combination of personality traits, likes and skills; which are very different from mine. One key difference between Becky and me is that you will never (I repeat never) find me in a beauty salon getting my nails done. But what I loved about the stories she uses to illustrate and bring to life the theology she teaches in the book is that they never alienated me. I never felt that to be an effective evangelist like Becky I would have to become as glamorous as her and go to nail salons, but rather it showed me that God can use the things WE naturally gravitate to to reach the people we meet there. I am much more likely to be getting mud under my nails with the local tree-planting group. This is OK! I like muddy nails. I will not be going to get them sorted at a nail salon afterwards (did I already make that clear?). But not trying to be someone else is key, and this is what I got from Becky’s stories. I loved the way that none of her stories made me feel like I would have to be her in order to apply the principles in her book. Reading this book I felt free and inspired to live these things out in my own unique ways, with eyes wide open to see how the Spirit leads me!
This book could change your life. I certainly feel that it could change my life. And may I suggest that if it changes our own lives, then I really think it could change the lives of those around us - as we are more open to what God might be doing in his world, and how he might want to use us; weak and afraid though we are!
As ever with a potentially life changing book in my hands, I face the temptation to close it and immediately forget everything I have read. That’s why I need other people to help me! That’s why I need people like you to read with me, to challenge me, to tell me what you have been learning and what God has been saying to you. It is always better to read with others, to learn from each other, to inspire each other and to pray for each other along the way. A life-changing book read in solitude will likely end up gathering dust on my bookshelf. But a life-changing book read in community has more potential to stick. Will you consider being one of that community this Autumn?
By Alison Bolton
Find out more about our Book Club here.