Making Room for Life: Trading Chaotic Lifestyles for Connected Relationships - eBook

Randy Frazee is a pastor at Westside Family Church in Kansas City. A frontrunner and innovator in spiritual formation and biblical community, Randy is the architect of The Story and Believe church engagement campaign. He is also the author of The Heart of the Story; Think, Act, Be Like Jesus; What Happens After You Die; His Mighty Strength; The Connecting Church 2.0; and The Christian Life Profile Assessment. He has been married to his high school sweetheart, Rozanne, for more than forty years. They have four children and two grandchildren, with more on the way! To learn more about his work and ministry go to randyfrazee.com.

In Randy Frazee’s Making Room for Life, he provides solutions to living a life filled with solid relationships and less stress. Families are often overwhelmed with activities that cause high levels of stress. Relationships with others as well as family time are often neglected. The purpose of this book is to enjoy the simple pleasures of life while existing in a busy, fast-paced culture. Frazee stresses the importance of family time, friendships, and relaxation, by pointing to related passages in the Scriptures.
Frazee tackles the importance of community with others, how to restructure relationships and value time, and how to raise children in a way that lets relish childhood. His writing is clear, well organized, and easy to follow. Each chapter contains discussion questions for small groups, and space is provided for personal responses to the topics. Randy Frazee is the senior pastor at Pantego Bible Church, in Ft. Worth, Texas, and the author of two previous books.
The first situation Frazee analyzes is crowded loneliness. Although people are constantly surrounded by others, they still can feel lonely because they have not formed solid relationships. Frazee states, “We were created with a connection requirement, and if this requirement is not satisfied, we will eventually die.” Time must be spent on creating deep relationships with other people. It is also important to raise children in a way that lets them enjoy their youth. “Childhood is fast becoming an endangered species,” warns Frazee. He emphasizes that children should not be involved in every activity offered to them. Children need to be able to have time for unstructured recreation. Frazee gives practical steps to help make these healthy goals a reality.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It was fascinating to read about how our hyper-drive culture can have damaging effects on people. Frazee successfully uses scripture and other sources to reinforce his points, but at times his solutions to problems seemed simplistic. The ideas behind time management, building relationships, and having more time for life were good, but aspects of his specific game plan did not work for me, being overly structured and lacking freedom. With that said, I do recommend this book because it stresses the destructive nature of fast-paced living. Parents will benefit the most from this book because of the primary themes of family life and raising children. -- Kyle Waalen, Christian Book Previews.com