Endorsements:

“If you're a leader who's weary of bluster and preening and you long for an honest, faithful voice to name the ache in your soul, you've found a friend in Mandy Smith. These pages take us deep into our story, into our fear and hope, into the places where God waits for us with open arms.”

Winn Collier,

Director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination and author of A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene Peterson

“Mandy gives us no new programs, no new methods, no new identities as tech savvy innovators. Instead, she reminds us of call. Like Augustine, she calls us back to right our loves, directing those loves to God and God’s people. Ultimately, she calls us back to loving and wrestling with God, believing that in pastoring people—in that same fear and doubt, hope and faith—God will truly and really move. ‘Confessions of an Amateur Saint’ is an important book and one I believe will start a new genre we desperately need in Protestant pastoral reflections. This is a book by a practicing pastor discussing her wrestling with the living God. It’s a gift to us all.”

Andrew Root,

Professor and Author of The Pastor in a Secular Age and When The Church Stops Working

Why are so many Christian leaders burning out, losing faith, and abusing power?

Rather than relying on our self-sufficiency and toughing our way through the tension, Mandy Smith invites us to confess it. As a pastor who also equips and encourages other pastors, Mandy feels the pain. Instead of offering more strategies to fix our problems, she reminds us of the call that first captured our imagination, directing our passions back to God and God's people.

In her book you will:

• experience the surprising freedom of grappling with a loving God

• be released from illusions of control into a lifestyle of healing hope

• rediscover your passion for ministry and your love for God and God's people.

Confessions of an Amateur Saint is a different kind of leadership book for a different kind of leader. And different is what we need these days--spiritual leadership refined by fire rather than burned out by it, a leadership unencumbered by unrealistic expectations, a leadership reconnected to the God who receives our confession with love and restores our soul for the task ahead.

In a time where all Christian leaders are required to be pioneers, let Mandy skillfully guide you to a fresh, spiritually-fueled integrity, not weighted by false expectations but leading your people as your faith is increasingly shaped like Christ.