Leadership Journal, Fall 2001 Rocked, Shattered, and Battered Larry Crabb says sometimes brokenness is better than being fixed. Ed Rowell "I have never read a book that left me so unsettled," a young mother told me. I know the feeling. After a friend raved that Larry Crabb's Shattered Dreams (Waterbrook, 2001) was a must-read, I devoured it in one sitting. I can't recall when a book so rocked my world. Like many pastors, I keep a few trophies of accomplishment on display for the world to see, but out back are truckloads of broken dreams. Until reading this book, I considered those dreams trash. But according to Crabb, in my piles of pain, which include a broken engagement, a failed church plant, and a painful rejection by a group of believers I loved and tried to shepherd, God had been at work. Amid each of these broken dreams came my times of deepest yearning for God. A group of friends and I were discussing the book at a party. One woman, eyes welling up, said, "If these things are true, maybe my life hasn't been wasted after all." She didn't know that I had penciled a similar sentiment in my copy. In Shattered Dreams, Crabb offers a painful yet insightful exposition of the life of Naomi from the book of Ruth. He writes, "Happy people rarely look for joy. Their central concern is to keep what they have. They haven't been freed to pursue a greater dream. In his severe mercy, God takes away the good to create an appetite for the better." That is frightening for those of us who secretly believe God owes us exemption from the pain of life. Scarier still is Crabb's insight into the unexplained phenomenon so many have experienced—an unresponsive God. In our time of greatest need, when we cry out for him, God is nowhere to be found. "God's restraint has a purpose," claims Crabb. "Only in the agony of His absence, both in the absence of blessings and in the felt absence of His Presence, will we relax our determined grasp of our empty selves enough to appreciate His purposes." Hard thoughts for soft minds like ours. Our churches are full of people Crabb describes this way: "Satan's masterpiece is not the prostitute or the bum. It is the self-sufficient person who has made life comfortable, who is adjusting well to the world and likes living here, who longs only to be a little better—and a little better off—than he already is." We want life to be easier. God wants it to be better. I plan on using this book to introduce a teaching series taken from Ruth. I'm also planning discussion groups utilizing the Shattered Dreams study guide. I've found release and hope in knowing that God is using my shattered dreams, that he is answering my, "Why?" I want the same for my congregation. As the group of agitated readers at the party dispersed, I realized that I had recommended the book indiscriminately. Those who haven't suffered won't get it. Those who are happy with the status quo will be offended. And those whose theology demands blessings of a tangible nature will disagree. But for the rest of us, Shattered Dreams is a brave response to some of life's hardest questions. Ed Rowell is a teaching pastor at The People's Church in Franklin, Tennessee Q & A Isn't it my responsibility as a pastor to help broken people become whole? Crabb: As spiritual directors, we need to encourage people not to see brokenness as an unnatural state. Rather than trying to pull someone out of his brokenness back into our world, we need to jump into his brokenness and meet him at the place where God is working. QUESTION:How does sharing in the brokenness bring someone to God? Crabb: Lasting transformation doesn't begin with information or obedience. People change when obligations give way to an all-consuming yearning for holiness . …but the only way to find that yearning is through brokenness. Only when we've given up on everything else can we finally find that ultimate hunger in our heart. Interviewed by Ed Rowell Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Leadership journal.