There are many reasons why I’m indebted to Brad, but on this specific occasion, it’s because a few months ago he gifted me a free copy of the audiobook version of his latest book The Pastor: A Crisis, co-written with Paul Young, author of The Shack. I promised to listen to it and share some thoughts by way of an informal review. I did listen to it… and promptly forgot to share any thoughts. Mea maxima culpa. So here I am, very late: but better late than never.
Before turning to the content of The Pastor, I need to first say something about the audiobook version in particular. The thing is, I don’t generally get on with audiobooks. I think this is principally because the format isn’t well suited to my preferred learning style. The spoken word piped into my ears just doesn’t hold my attention like the printed word on a page, so that I often find my mind wandering, which means I end up frequently having to rewind to catch up on what I missed hearing. With printed matter, I can read as quickly or as slowly as I like, underline passages I find particularly striking, scribble notes in the margins and flick back and forth as needed.
All of which meant that, while I was interested to find out what The Pastor was all about, I didn’t relish the prospect of having to slog through it in audiobook format.
But.
Listening to this audiobook (produced by Boyd Barrett) was unlike the experience of any other audiobook I’ve ever listened to. Where many audiobooks have a single narrator who might do their best to adapt their voice and/or accent for different characters, The Pastor has a complete and varied multi-person cast. Add to that it's clearly very high production value, and what you have is really more like a radio play than just a plain old book. For me, the listening experience really was quite compelling, so that I found myself really connecting with the characters and being drawn into their story.
So, as far as the listening experience goes, The Pastor gets a big thumbs-up from me.
Now, what to say about the content? In short, the story is about a fundamentalist pastor who, after apparently suffering some kind of mental and/or emotional breakdown, finds himself in a hospital psychiatric ward where, if he is to find freedom and healing, he must first come to terms with his past, wrestle with his demons and be reconciled to himself and the world. The Pastor narrates and explores this broken man’s journey from striving and control, through failure and despair, and ultimately to renewed hope and redemption. It might aptly be described as a story of death and resurrection, with one proviso: if death happens on Friday and resurrection on Sunday, much of the journey narrated in The Pastor happens on Saturday.
Narrating as it does the journey between death and resurrection, The Pastor does not shy away from dark subject matter: shame, unworthiness, self-hatred, and abuse are among the issues it explores. And when I say explores, I mean it rolls up its sleeves and gets stuck right in up to the elbows: it gets real, and it gets messy. There were moments when I winced while listening. If you’re looking for unalloyed sweetness and light, this ain’t it; squeamish readers/listeners need not apply. On the other hand, if you’ve had about as much as you can stomach of happy-clappy, faux-positive, saccharine spirituality and long for something that’s refreshingly real and fearlessly honest, The Pastor might be just what you’re looking for.
The Pastor is the story of one man, but it’s also the story of every man and every woman. We all have deep places of shame – places we find too painful to expose, even to ourselves; but if we’re to find true wholeness, we must have the courage to surrender our pride and self-will and allow ourselves to be led on a journey through the valley of the shadow of death to the place where we can feast at an overflowing table, even in the presence of our enemies. The Pastor is a clever kind of allegory of that journey.
I think one of the reasons the story feels so authentic is that in telling it the two authors, Jersak and Young, each draws from their own deep, personal experience. Each has been through fire and carries scars that will no doubt always be with them; but each has also met the Healer and allowed him to walk with them along the painful but necessary and ultimately liberating road to healing and wholeness. This means that, far from offering platitudes and armchair psychology, The Pastor draws from a deep well of hard-won insight, and it shows.
In summary, The Pastor is quite unlike any other book I’ve ever read (or listened to!). If you’ll let it, it will take you on an emotional journey that will invite you to consider and confront your own deepest darkness and fears and, with the help of the Wounded Healer, find the way to renewed hope, redemption, and purpose. I commend it to you.
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