Discovering the Power of Ugly will cost you your pride.You will learn to take off your religious masks and stand naked before God. Ugly will liberate you from a false spirituality which pretends that being spiritual means that you stop being a real, flawed human being. Ugly is a celebration of the beauty of God’s grace reflected through our weaknesses, not our strengths.
About Ugly:
The book has 17 chapters, and you will find as you read that 17 is a very important number in my life. In fact, you will find it 34 times in the book, and 34 divided by 2 = 17.
I have used 203 bible quotes, keeping Ugly filled with the Word of God. I have also quoted from over 40 different people, and that list made up of many of my favorite authors-such as Eugene Peterson, NT Wright, and Charles Spurgeon.
At the heart of Ugly are what Bert Waggoner referred to as “home spun stories,” and there are about 75 that fill the book. Over 50 of these are my personal, ugly experiences. Stories are the windows into my world and the mirror I hold up for the reader to see themselves. As I streak through Ugly, there are several encounters of me in my “tighty whities” or even worse-butt naked.
Ugly tries to combine some unique ingredients that are not found mixed together in most books. Ugly has the earthy humor of Larry the Cable Guy, mixed with engaging theology of a Eugene Peterson book. It is seasoned with a pastoral heart like Charles Swindoll’s, and the raw honesty of Anne Lamott. All of those ingredients are woven into stories in a style like that of John Wimber.
Ugly has gone through 6 revisions from the original hand written draft (which was translated as only Katie B could do). One of those revisions was done by a professional editor, Alice Peck. All of the revisions have had the input of my Rib City buddies-Jasen and Caleb. Having two sets of eyes from the next generation has been a huge help to make Ugly’s appeal multi-generational. Of course, all throughout the journey, my bride Kim has been Ugly’s # 1 fan.
About Jamie:
I have spent my entire adult life helping people discover and grow in their faith. My own journey began with a drug arrest in the 1970s, and I’ve never forgotten my roots. In The Power of Ugly, I use the humiliating (and hilarious) failures and challenges of my life-which I share with my beautiful wife of thirty-two years, our three daughters, and our nine grandchildren-to minister to others.
I graduated from Luther Rice Seminary in 1978, and began to pastor my first church on Sanibel Island, in South Florida, where I worked for seventeen years. My wife Kim and I are the founding pastors of the Cape Coral Vineyard Community Church (also in South Florida), which we started fifteen years ago. Our church is the testing ground for the principles shared in Ugly; I’ve always lived out the Power of Ugly in the context of this Christian community. You can learn more about the Cape Vineyard here.
