Holy Play: The Joyful Adventure of Unleashing Your Divine Purpose by Kirk Byron Jones. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007. ISBN 0787984523. Pb., 188 pp., $21.95.
She had been dead for perhaps two decades when I became their pastor, but the people of the church in rural Southside Virginia where she had taught Sunday school for some forty years still quoted Mrs. Cowie: “A Christian is not supposed to have fun!” Kirk Byron Jones dares to disagree. In Holy Play: the Joyful Adventure of Unleashing Your Divine Purpose Jones asserts not only that life is to be enjoyed but that having fun is living faithfully and that our passions and joys are means through which we discover divine purpose for our lives. To use Jones’s words, “This book will teach you how to stop waiting for God to tell you what to do and start confidently doing what God has been inspiring you to do all along” (xiv).
I highly recommend Jones’s adventurous advice over Mrs. Cowie’s lessons on solemnity. An African-American Baptist who felt the call to preach while a teenager in New Orleans, Jones recounts the struggle he experienced when, after founding and growing a church in the city of his birth, he felt a desire to teach others preparing for ministry. How could he abandon his calling? An experience on the banks of the Hudson River transformed his understanding of vocation from predetermined divine appointment to calling one co-creates with God.
In Holy Play Jones first challenges the idea of vocation as predetermined appointment, then addresses attitudes and beliefs that keep one stuck in unsatisfying labor for the sole purpose of financial gain. He offers an alternative definition of purpose, moving from “something we passively receive from God” to “something we actively create with God (34).” Claiming “God invites and inspires but never imposes” (36-37), Jones pictures God as a loving partner who leads in a dance rather than as a domineering parent who dictates orders.
Jones recounts how his understanding of calling expanded as he developed a desire to write as well as teach. He claims that divine purpose is “open and evolving” (67). Passion is inspired by God. Because we are creatures of a creative God, creativity is part of our nature as well as God’s. Equipped with the power to choose, the power to perceive multiple options and the power to create opportunities, each person can create his or her calling. Jones provides seven ways to stimulate creativity, encourages readers to use their God-given capacity to dream, and insists that fun and playfulness are attributes of a godly purpose.
In his journey from preacher in New Orleans to professor of ethics and preaching at Andover Newton Theological School and eventually to published author, Jones lives out Augustine’s admonition to “love God and do what you will.” Although he does not acknowledge Augustine, he sprinkles his work with the insights of writers as varied as Irenaeus, Stephen King, Judith Viorst, Howard Thurman, and Viktor Frankl, as well as the inspirations of an impressive lineup of jazz musicians. Jones openly challenges the notion that one discerns purpose by “praying and waiting for God to show us what to do” (34-35) as advocated by Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life. His emphasis on dreaming of what one can accomplish is a refreshing contrast to the stress the gospel of prosperity gives to dreaming of what one can acquire.
Jones’s book does not address how one’s vocation incorporates the limitations life inevitably brings. He says nothing about the compromises dual-career couples make to maintain their marriages, passions not pursued for the sake of growing children or aging parents, or the dreams that dim due to illness or disability. Life is not endless possibility without constraints. A candid account of how Jones maneuvered the obstacles he encountered and prioritized his callings would have been helpful.
In spite of that omission, Holy Play has something valuable to offer those at a transition point in life, be it graduation, a mid-life career change, retirement, or simply restlessness. Exercises at the end of each chapter help the reader discover his or her own passions, but the discoveries one makes could be shared with others in a group setting. Anyone seeking vocational guidance will benefit from reading Holy Play. Others will find the book just plain fun to read.
Is that an earth tremor I feel? Mrs. Cowie must be spinning in her grave.
Barrie Miller Kirby is stated supply pastor of Immanuel Church in China Grove, N.C.
