Ultra Brief Reviews: THE WHOLE YOUTH WORKER and HEALTHY MEALS FOR LESS [Midweek Edition]

Ultra-brief Reviews of

The Whole Youth Worker:
Advice on Professional, Personal, and Physical
Wellness from the Trenches.
Jay Tucker.
Paperback: Loving Healing Press, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

and

Healthy Meals for Less:
Great-Tasting Simple Recipes
Under $1 a Serving.
Jonni McCoy.
Paperback: Bethany House, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

I don’t know much about youth ministry, and I’m a little cautious about segmenting the Church up into age groups, but I was intrigued by a recent book that crossed my desk The Whole Youth Worker by Jay Tucker.  Recognizing at the outset that youth ministry can be grueling (as well as rewarding), Tucker offers advice on how youth workers can remain sane and their work, sustainable.  He even goes so far – and this was particularly striking – as to explore how the health (especially diet and exercise) of the worker is intertwined with his/her work.  If only, we all as ministers and priests of Jesus Christ would reflect upon how of our bodies affects the Kingdom work that we do.  Tucker is to be commended as well for his theological emphasis on the Church as the place where youth ministry occurs (versus parachurch ministries).  There was a fair amount of material here that didn’t sit well with me or at least made me raise my eyebrows, but Tucker’s holistic focus and ecclesiological firmness make this a good book that should be read by youth workers everywhere.

In a similar holistic vein, the recent book Healthy Meals for Less: Great-Tasting Simple Recipes for Under $1 a Serving by Jonni McCoy appeals to our pocketbooks as it makes a case for healthier diets, nixing the excuse that we cannot afford the costs of eating better.  I imagine that there are a number of similar cookbooks available (for instance, it reminds me of one of my favorites, Doris Janzen Longacre’s classic More-With-Less Cookbook), but it was particularly interesting to me that this cookbook was published by the fairly conservative publisher, Bethany House.  McCoy offers us many tasty recipes here, providing a cost-per-serving figure for each one; this serving cost will likely need to be taken – pardon the pun – with a grain of salt, but it does provide a means to compare the relative cost of recipes within the collection.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 4:32 pm and is filed under *Ultra-brief Reviews*, Midweek Edition, VOLUME 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.