I recently read a copy of Leonard Sweet's book "I Am a Follower," thanks to the BookSneeze program. They give you books for free, so long as you write a review on your blog. It's quite a good system. At the beginning I wondered that they were giving books out for free (you only have to have a working blog). But I published a book last year and so far it's sold about 5 copies - at a rate slightly less than one a month. At this point I'd be happy for anyone to be reading it, whether they pay for it or not. And a review is certainly not something to be sneezed at (see what I did there?).
Right, on to the review. From memory I think this is the first of Leonard Sweet's books that I've actually finished, and as I was reading I started to realise why. It's not the content. The content is great. Sweet has been an out-of-the-box thinker for years, and I love hearing his ideas. I love hearing his take on church and Christianity. I'd love to go to a conference with him as the main speaker.
The beauty of a conference is that the speaker condenses everything into a handful of sessions, and then you can discuss it together afterwards. I imagine Leonard Sweet would make a great speaker, and it'd be stimulating discussion. But in a book? I feel like he got the main points across in the first few chapters of the book, and they were brilliant. But the book has over 50 chapters. Thankfully short chapters, but still. 50 different thoughts is a lot, and there was a lot of repetition. It's like Sweet did a conference and then included transcripts of all the discussion groups afterwards, looking at the topic from every possible angle. It was too much.
I do think it's a good book, and I think he has some great stuff to say about leadership, church and following Jesus. There are a lot of great quotes in here. I wholeheartedly recommend you put aside some time to read this book. A lot of time.
Like maybe a year.
