Blue Like Jazz (Miller)

Blue Like Jazz 
Donald Miller, 2003
Thomas Nelson, Inc.
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780785263708


Summary
Donald Miller's fresh and original voice may change the way Christians view the "status quo" faith and build a bridge to seekers who believe that organized religion doesn't meet their spiritual needs.

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve... I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal.

Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Raised—Houston, Texas, USA
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon


Donald Miller grew up in Houston, Texas. Leaving home at the age of twenty-one, he traveled across the country until he ran out of money in Portland, Oregon, where he lives today.

Harvest House Publishers released his first book, Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, in 2000. Two years later, after having audited classes at Portland’s Reed College, Don wrote Blue Like Jazz, which would slowly become a New York Times Bestseller.

In 2004 Don released Searching for God Knows What a book about how the Gospel of Jesus explains the human personality. Searching has become required reading at numerous colleges across the country. In 2005 he released Through Painted Deserts the story of he and a friends road trip across the country. Don’s most recent project is a book about growing up without a father called To Own a Dragon.

Don is the founder of The Belmont Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation which partners with working to recruit ten-thousand mentors through one-thousand churches as an answer to the crisis of fatherlessness in America.

A sought-after speaker, Don has delivered lectures to a wide-range of audiences including the Women of Faith Conference, the Veritas Forum at Harvard University and the Veritas Forum at Cal Poly. In 2008, Don was asked to deliver the closing prayer on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

Don’s next book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years humorously and tenderly chronicles Don’s experience with filmmakers as they edit his life for the screen, hoping to make it less boring. He then shares the principles storytellers use to make a story meaningful and exciting, exploring their affect when he applies those principles to his actual life.

Of his new book, Don says: “It might be the greatest book ever written. I don’t think anybody is going to read a book again after they read my new one. I think God is proud of me. I am going to make a killing off this thing and I’m going to use the money to go to space. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Miller is a young writer, speaker and campus ministry leader. An earnest evangelical who nearly lost his faith, he went on a spiritual journey, found some progressive politics and most importantly, discovered Jesus' relevance for everyday life. This book, in its own elliptical way, tells the tale of that journey. But the narrative is episodic rather than linear, Miller's style evocative rather than rational and his analysis personally revealing rather than profoundly insightful. As such, it offers a postmodern riff on the classic evangelical presentation of the Gospel, complete with a concluding call to commitment. Written as a series of short essays on vaguely theological topics (faith, grace, belief, confession, church), and disguised theological topics (magic, romance, shifts, money), it is at times plodding or simplistic (how to go to church and not get angry? "pray... and go to the church God shows you"), and sometimes falls into merely self-indulgent musing. But more often Miller is enjoyably clever, and his story is telling and beautiful, even poignant. (The story of the reverse confession booth is worth the price of the book.) The title is meant to be evocative, and the subtitle-"Non-Religious" thoughts about "Christian Spirituality"—indicates Miller's distrust of the institutional church and his desire to appeal to those experimenting with other flavors of spirituality.
Publishers Weekly


This is a book worth reading. We're the richer for reading it, because Miller has given us a living, breathing example of a follower of Jesus who has expressed his many doubts about God and revealed his many frustrations with Christianity, and not only lived through it but actually got his book published by a Christian publisher. That's empowering. Miller accomplishes all this through a series of memoirish essays arranged topically. That's an accurate description of the structure, but there's a whole lot more life in the book than in that description.
Faithful Reader.com


Can you love a God who doesn't make sense? Like Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies, Miller's memoir-like collection of essays wrestles with the paradoxes of the Christian faith, describing his journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely gracious Savior. A mind-changing perspective for those who believe that organized religion doesn't meet their spiritual needs.
Christianbook.com

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started fo Blue Like Jazz:

1. In what way is Miller's understanding of his faith like jazz. How are the two related in Miller's eyes?

2. Talk about Miller's first journey of faith: how he came to his beliefs at Reed College in the confessional booth during the annual Ren Fayre. What happened when he went inside the booth "with doubts," as he says, "and came out believing so strongly in Jesus I was ready to die and be with him"? Can conversion happen that simply or easily?

3. Discuss also the way in which Miller nearly lost his faith. What brought him to the brink? How, then, did he find his path back? Have you ever experienced something similar?

4. What are his frustrations with "Christianity" or the way he sees it practiced in some quarters? Do you agree or disagree with his assessments? How does he learn to love Christians even in churches where he doesn't fit in? He refers to some of his co-religionists as "wacko Republican fundamentalists": do you find his epithet insulting? Funny? Truthful? Or...what?

5. Consider the characters who populate his book: Andrew the Protestor, Tony the Beat, Mark the Cussing Pastor. Do you have any favorites...are there some whose experiences you relate to more than others? Are their paths enlightening?

6. Miller refers to himself, somewhat ironically, as Captain Trendy Spiritual Writer. What does he mean? Do you agree?

7. Does Miller's humor enhance the message of his book? Do you find it honest? Refreshing? Glib? Irreligious?

8. In what way does Miller find Jesus is relevant to the 21st century? How does Miller interpret scripture to reflect today's culture?

9. What are the doubts that sometimes beset Miller? Here he says, for instance, "At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay." Can you comment on this interesting passage? It seems contradictory—if we've got it wrong, how will we be "okay"?

10. What other passages struck you in this book—passages that you found interesting, insightful, puzzling, humorous, wrong-headed?

11. In what way does Miller's book affect your own faith...or lack of it? Does it confirm your beliefs, alter them? Does it challenge you in any way? Is this book safe for your pastor to read? How about your children!

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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