In addition to working as a Registered Nurse, a home-health nurse and being a mother, Nancy Ortberg served for eight years as a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL as part of Axis, a ministry for, what Ortberg describes as “the eighteen to twentysomething generation.” Ortberg is also a founding partner of Teamworx2, a leadership consulting firm.

Ortberg’s first book, Looking For God: An Unexpected Journey Through Tattoos, Tofu & Pronouns is a collection of essays exploring various aspects of modern spirituality, while challenging us to realize that God is often found in more places and in more ways than we typically look.

Ortberg is a skilled writer with a keen attention to detail which helps the fact that the book is primarily a collection of personal anecdotes, each eliciting different levels of reflection and application. The thread running through each of the essays is the notion that we have “formalized” (a word she does not use but I hazard to guess she would agree with) our modern American pursuit of Christianity. In fact, she avoids the word “Christianity” altogether, instead referring to “Christ followers.” Ortberg makes the case herself:

We get so prescriptive with the spiritual life. We prepackage it, duplicate it, mass-produce it, insist upon it, and brag about it. We make it a formula. As a result, we tend to see God from such a narrow perspective. We box God up and compartmentalize Him into thirty minutes each morning. But in reality, He is waiting for us to realize that He invades all the parts of our days . . . if only we would just pay attention.

That is what Looking for God is all about.

One might rightly wonder whether we need another book telling us we have gotten it all wrong. Well, no, we don’t, but how many books do we really need? And yet, Ortberg’s sometimes brutal honesty penetrated many of my preconceptions about her agenda. This isn’t to say she doesn’t have an agenda, but her winsome approach will at least get your attention long enough for you to consider many of her points, even if you don’t agree at the end of the book.

And, there are some some points that I do have significant hesitation about. For example, while challenging the “traditional” notion of a (very) structured “quiet time” including reading, prayer and journaling, Ortberg comes dangerously close to implying that we don’t need to make the effort to actually be in the Word when our schedules are busy. By demonstrating how her relationship with God was refreshed by some overwhelmingly powerful emotional experiences, she seems to imply that emotional experiences can take the place of the Scriptures. I’m sure I’m reading too much into this section, but I doubt I’m the only one who will come away with this implication.

But there is also much to take to heart in Ortberg’s challenges. Throughout, she returns to the theme that our best intentions mean nothing if they don’t translate into action. This is a much-needed message to a much-deluded church that seems to believe that following Christ can be removed from our daily lives. Through sometimes painful, always challenging, Ortberg continually challenges us to put our faith into action.

This is an easy-to-read book that is not easy to digest. Not easy because Ortberg has lived through enough failure to point out these same failures to others with a bold compassion. By draping her admonitions in the everyday successes and failures of life, she has bypassed many of the pitfalls of a purely polemical book (again, that’s not to say she doesn’t have an agenda). She poignantly describes some of her own failings as a means to warn others not to make the same mistakes. Such transparency goes a long way in gaining an audience and will go even farther in getting readers to consider admonitions they might not have otherwise entertained.

At its best, this book reminds us to continually reexamine our faith, to fight apathy and remember that God is much “gooder” than we ever thought. A thought we can all spend some time meditating upon, even if we don’t buy all of Ortberg’s conclusions.

• Read Looking for God: An Unexpected Journey Through Tattoos, Tofu & Pronouns by Nancy Ortberg
• Visit Tyndale House Publishers page for the book