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Reviewed by Patricia Farris, Senior Minister, Santa Monica First United Methodist Church, Santa Monica, CA Making Spiritual Sense: Christian Leaders as Spiritual Interpreters by “Christian leaders help other Christians see and understand everything in their lives in spiritual terms.” The work of providing a Christian framework for making sense of daily life and the things that keep people awake at night is the focus of this very insightful book by Prof. Scott Cormode, formerly at the Claremont School of Theology and currently the Hugh De Pree Associate Professor of Leadership Development at Fuller Theological Seminary. A Presbyterian, Prof. Cormode has written a book for pastors that is both supportive and challenging as well as deeply pastoral. Amidst the current selection of books defining the pastoral vocation, this may prove to be both the most pastoral and the most radical. How to be more effective and more faithful in the work of pastoral ministry, while juggling all the demands of ministry that compete for time, attention and energy, may well be one of the nagging questions that keeps pastors awake at night. Eschewing the leadership models of hierarchical authoritarian and egalitarian enabler, this book challenges pastors to claim their identity as spiritual interpreters, shaping people to live as Christians in the world, a vocation he calls “the interpretive office.” Drawing on the insights of Ronald Heifitz, Max DePree, Chris Argyris and others, Cormode builds on the work of these ‘secular’ leadership gurus to push pastors to inhabit the daily thoughts and night-time fears of parishioners in order to speak to their real life issues and concerns and guide them into Christian frameworks for giving meaning to it all. Cormode examines the ways in which people create meaning, including expectations, culture and pre-legitimized paths. Theory is interwoven with mini-case studies from a fictionalized but all-too familiar congregational setting. Every pastor who has come home from a meeting in which things did not go well and “perfectly reasonable people” found it impossible to communicate with one another will find incredibly helpful ways of interpreting and understanding congregational dynamics. Cormode then explores the rich possibilities in a variety resources available to the pastor working to shape meaning—community, beliefs, values, goals, narrative and ritual, and practices. A draft letter recruiting new Sunday School teachers re-designed through each of these frameworks is revelatory. And the discussion of applying this learning to our discussion of money in the church is worth the price of the book alone. Making Spiritual Sense teaches, clarifies, empowers and enlightens, making the privilege of pastoral leadership simultaneously more ‘secular’ and more sacred
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