Weightless pulpit

COMMUNICATING FOR A CHANGE
By Andy Stanley and Lane Jones
Multnomah Books. 199 pages. £16.99
ISBN 978 1 590 525 142

Quite possibly, this book takes the prize for the most frustrating book I have read – ever. There is much in it that is good and helpful, but it is couched in a rather arrogant tone and doesn’t say anything helpful that hasn’t been said in a much better way by someone else.

It is, as they say, a book of two halves. But that is also part of the problem. The first half is in the form of a fictional narrative, written by Lane Jones, of a disillusioned and frustrated preacher who is given communicating coaching by Willy Graham(!), a preacher and retired trucker. But the whole concept is so far-fetched and implausible as to get you into the second half of the book in an already deeply sceptical frame of mind.