I’m torn on this one. On one hand, I know that Mr. Simon’s stories, easy to understand points, and conversational tone will resonate with most of his audience: those in the church who have perhaps never encountered intentional friendship. He breaks down the intangibles of pursuing virtuous friendships and discipling those around us in an easy to understand manner - just keep your eyes and heart open and walk with them where they are at. On the other hand, I found it incredibly simplistic, and at times a bit too much like a sales pitch. Maybe it was the repeated cadence of “disrupt their lives!” Maybe it’s because I was hoping for more intellectual depth, stories from scripture or the lives of the saints, or even an emphasis on the importance of first being rooted in one’s own serious life of prayer and intimacy with the Lord before all else. Maybe my opinion is based on my experiences of living out these things through college and young adult ministry and knowing that his stories and examples don’t quite measure up to the real thing. But at its heart, I think “Mission-Ready Friendship” gives a fine blueprint on how to live out our call to “go and make disciples of all nations,” and issues a challenge to Catholics and Christians today to remind those around us of what they are truly seeking. They just need to keep it off the shelf long enough to let this knowledge inform their everyday habits.

Thanks to Ave Maria Press and NetGalley for the review copy in exchange for my honest feedback!

Enjoyable read. Practical instructions. This is the review I will post on Amazon (with a note that I received my copy through NetGalley):

Revealing, personal, intimate, and practical, Simon’s Mission-Ready Friendship gives readers a guide for connecting with others through faith. In breaking down and explaining specific steps readers can take to reach out to people in meaningful ways (and to overcome obstacles to forming deep relationships), Simon gives his audience a blueprint for making a difference in lives … one friendship at a time. He shows his readers how to form the habit of genuinely caring about others and expressing that care in material, tangible ways—and this habit, of course, can change the world … change someone’s world.

With easy prose, lots of stories readers can relate to (including accounts of weaknesses and failures—because we all have them!), questions for reflection, summaries, and citations to the Gospels, Catechism, and words of the saints, Simon easily initiates people into the practice of reaching out. In asking his readers to “be ready” and “be curious,” he reminds us all that a path leading to great works and connections may be right around that bend in the road just up ahead, but we have to be alert to the possibilities if we are to recognize them!

Mission-Ready Friendship is a practical guide for evangelizing through personal accompaniment as modeled so many times by Our Lord during his public ministry. Whether it be the Woman at the Well or meeting secretly with Nicodemus, Our Lord understood the role of friendship in encountering God. This book is a roadmap for harnessing the power of friendship to bring others to Christ. Each story and each chapter challenges readers to look beyond the surface of our relationships to the depth of potential for evangelization that awaits in authentic friendships.

Is it weird to read a book about friendship and know without a shadow of a doubt that you would not want to be friends with the author? This author's tone is very obnoxious, to the point that whatever message might be buried in the book is unrelatable. It's just not there for me.

To be honest, he's not really talking about friendship anyway, which is my major disappointment with the book. It's not as advertised. To the author, friendship means looking for the train wreck in someone else's life so that you can schedule regular meetings with them to tell them how to get back on track. That's not friendship. That is, as he says in one of his chapters that it shouldn't be, targeting persons as projects. The entire discussion has a tone of targeting persons as projects, and if you read this book, you know this guy doesn't want to hang out with you because he wants to be your friend; he hangs out with you because he wants to be your mentor, and that is very, very different. It can never be an authentic friendship when one person has in their mind that they must constantly be imparting their wisdom to the other "for their own sake." And that seems to be the direction this takes.

As a reader, I will also say that the chapters are far too long. There are a couple of chapters in the middle in which he says right at the start that he will be making 4 points in them. As such, they are 40-ish pages long, which makes them very daunting. If you're making four points, make four chapters. That only seems like common sense.

There are very, very few books that I have read in my life in which I did not find at least one redeeming quality, at least one thing on which to recommend them. Unfortunately, this one joined that very short list. I simply cannot recommend it.

I have found some of the greatest blessings of my life have been my friendships. Without them, I would have missed out on some magnificent adventures.

I have also discovered that the best friendships are those where Christ plays a central role. It seems that friends who pray together stay together.

As a result, I was greatly interested in Mission-Ready Friendship: A Blueprint for Deeper Relationships and Life-Changing Faith. Author Jason J. Simon has created a work that explains to readers how to effectively evangelize the people within their circle of influence.

The goal is to serve as a guide, helping friends to draw closer to God. In the process, we can find our own faith strengthened and fortified for the crosses we encounter in our own lives.

At a time when so many individuals experience loneliness and isolation, this book is a much-needed resource for the ills that characterize our age. It is engaging and down-to-earth and offers concrete steps to achieving authentic friendships that go beyond merely hanging out together.

I cannot wait to put what I learned from Mission-Ready Friendship into action!

Mission-Ready Friendship gives me the encouragement and framework I need to get up and go when it comes to being intentional in my friendships and sharing the Good News. This book is for everyone, like myself, who desire deep connectedness with others but think through all the possible reasons someone might say no to an invitation and prematurely decline on their behalf. Jason reminds us that God desires to work through the imperfect and on His timeline, so we need not fear rejection, inefficiency, or lack of knowledge in our work to evangelize. We need only to bring our "yes" to the Lord's call to go and make disciples and take one step at a time.