cover image Rooted in Good Soil: Cultivating and Sustaining Authentic Discipleship

Rooted in Good Soil: Cultivating and Sustaining Authentic Discipleship

Tri Robinson, . . Baker, $14.99 (166pp) ISBN 978-0-8010-7253-6

Don’t scoff at the idea of a pastor who is also a farmer writing about Jesus’ parable of the sower. Robinson is the real deal—a farmer who lived off the land for two decades, raising children with his wife and without electricity. He is also founding pastor of Vineyard Boise Church and author of several books, including Saving God’s Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church’s Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship . The book resonates with the injunction to live simply so others can simply live and has a profound simplicity of message and tone. Sometimes focus is lacking; many specific details of people and places are interesting—young lovers in a cabin—but other details belong in memoir, which the book doesn’t claim to be; they bog down the exposition. In the end, the book redeems itself by its humility and raw edge—“Notice me,” the author confesses as a young man. In a gently admonitory tone the author offers a radical call to all believers to join in the harvest of a healthy crop of followers in the fields of the Lord. (May)