Average Joe - a review

Average Joe: God's Extraordinary Calling to Ordinary Men

Face it, we can't all have super powers! We don't but God does, and sometimes he picks on us Average Joes and uses us to do things we could only dream about.


I've been interested in Men's ministry for several years, and I keep reading all the men's ministry books, and most of the time I finish the book, put it down and look for another book, (or another ministry in which to get interested).Average Joe is different. Instead of leaving me feeling like there's no way I can ever be that {you fill in the blank} I finished this book, delighted to hear that it's okay to be an Average Joe.

Troy Meeder has found the right words to show us that we're not all a Billy Graham, a Chuck Colson or a Coach McCartney. Most of us are average guys, but God takes those average qualities that most of us wish were different and He uses them, and us, in some pretty extraordinary ways.

Meeder is a man's man; he fishes, flies an airplane, rides horses, and enjoys the wilderness. His life is a mass of stories, and throughout the book you sense that he doesn't see himself as anybody special, he just goes about the business of being Troy Meeder, and being the best Troy Meeder that he can be. And as he goes about taking care of business, God uses him.

Maybe I shouldn't say this, since this is a book for the manly man, but there were a couple of times that I had to wipe away a tear or two, but there were other times that I laughed, I thought, I mused, I pondered, and left the book hoping to run into a few more Average Joes.

It's all about story telling these days and Meeder is an excellent storyteller. Sometimes the stories went a little long, and when I read the introduction to the study guide, I found myself thinking that Meeder's editor should have been the kind of facilitator the Meeder recommends for this to work as a small group study. I would have liked some more scripture references, but all in all this is much better than many of the books that try to tell us how to do things if we want to be extraordinary Josephs: this is an average guy telling us what he does, how he does it, and how God works through him despite his being so average.

"I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review".