Amy Peterson

This is not really a book about missions, as some people think. It's Peterson's "growing in Christian faith" story.

She starts out naive, optimistic, arrogant, and with a savior complex. She ends up realizing that real life and real faith are messier than we would often like. We don't always get to understand why God does what He does. While I could certainly relate to a lot of her growth, and therefore want to extend some grace to her, I feel it necessary to say that at the end of the book, she still seemed just as arrogant... her positions had changed, but she is just as convinced of her own "rightness."

Peterson is very critical of "traditional" missionaries, even though her own experiences were only possible because of the groundwork these missionaries laid. No missionary, no Christian, no person is perfect, and nothing we do will be 100% inscrutable. However, I felt that she was trying to apply 21st century principles and practices to people and organizations who lived in completely different eras and cultures. This just isn't fair. In another hundred years, how harshly will future Christians be judging us for everything we messed up? Will they acknowledge any of the good that happened? Will they acknowledge that the "missions" that were recorded in the Bible were also messy? Will they acknowledge God's sovereignty?

I find it very frustrating to hear young Christians preach to all Christians, including those with far more experience and wisdom, about how "wrong" the Church is doing everything - how they know the "right" way to do these things.

So this book is valuable for what it is: a memoir - one person's experience and opinions. But it left a bad taste in my mouth at many points.… (mere)

To those of us who feel adrift and without a Church, this book helps to ground us a new view of virtue and practical theology. If this is what post-evangelicalism looks like, sign me up. While some of the chapters are meatier than others, Peterson carefully illustrates mistakes the American evangelical church has made, on how to address these mistakes in our own personal walks with Christ.

Recommended for: Christians who have grown increasingly ashamed of their church, those seeking what faith in Christ truly looks like, and all those in between.… (mere)

"Where Goodness Still Grows dissects the moral code of American evangelicalism and puts it back together in a new way. Amy writes as someone intimately familiar with, fond of, and also deeply critical of the world of conservative evangelicalism. She writes as a woman and a mother, as someone invested in the future of humanity, and as someone who just needs to know how to teach her kids what it means to be good. She reimagines virtue as a tool, not a weapon; as wild, not tame; as embodied, not written. Reimagining specific virtues, such as kindness, purity, modesty, hospitality, and hope, Amy finds that if we listen harder and farther, we will find the places where goodness still grows" (Publisher)… (mere)