Book Review: Starting Something New by Beth A. Booram

Someone I know recommended that I read Starting Something New by Beth A. Booram. Published in 2015 by IVP under its Formatio imprint, the book seemed like a good starting point as I discern and process some things in my own life. It also comes with a recommendation from David G. Benner, one of my favorite authors on spiritual formation and strategic pastoral counseling. Booram is also connected to the Sustainable Faith community, a movement I respect.

At roughly 180 pages, this is a relatively short book with some important takeaways. As Booram quotes Rufus Jones, “I pin my hopes on the quiet processes and small circles in which vital and transforming events take place.”

There is much to appreciate here about dreaming, discerning, and deciding where God might be leading us. Booram offers practical ways to pay attention to our desires, identify our values, and begin putting an emerging vision into practice. Yet, despite the helpful material, I found more bones to spit out than meat to chew on. For someone who leans toward a slower, struggling theology of spiritual formation, this book left me with some significant reservations.

The Problem with the Dream

At times, Starting Something New feels like an invitation to live your best life now, discover your God-given dream, and build something around it. I am not sure it is that simple, and I’m not convinced the biblical picture of faithfulness calls us to pursue the kind of dream-centered life Booram sometimes seems to envision.

Booram argues, more from silence and personal experience than from an explicitly developed biblical theology, that everyone has a dream worth discovering. I agree that God can shape our desires and that we should pay attention to what stirs within us. But I am less convinced that these desires necessarily lead us toward a platform, a ministry, or a particular project we are meant to build.

Our hearts may carry God-given desires, but those desires don’t always translate into something we are supposed to launch, lead, or make our life’s work. Sometimes they shape how we serve in an existing ministry. Sometimes they lead us toward a season of quiet faithfulness. Sometimes they remain unresolved, or we discover that what we wanted was not what God was asking of us.

I have spent seasons investing in platforms and ministries, including some I started myself. I know what it means to pursue an idea and give myself to something I believe matters. But I do not feel called to do that in this season. At times, this book left me wondering whether it would interpret that absence of a dream as evidence that something in me is broken.

I do not believe that is a healthy conclusion.

Calling, Will, and the Single Task

One distinction Booram makes is between calling and dreaming. She writes:

“When I think of calling, I understand it to refer to an overarching life passion and purpose…While calling is also God-given, a dream is a specific application or step toward living out one’s calling. Our dream should align with our developing understanding of our calling and be an expression of it.”

I understand what she is trying to communicate, but I am not entirely convinced by the distinction. I tend to see God’s will and calling as deeply intertwined, with the particular expression of that calling changing throughout our lives. We may be called to faithfulness in different ways in different seasons without needing to identify a singular dream that defines our lives.

I appreciate the idea of becoming a single-tasker, giving ourselves to the work God has placed before us rather than scattering our attention across endless possibilities. But I would argue that the calling to faithfulness is the constant, while the particular task changes with the season.

The challenge is not necessarily to discover the one great dream that will define us. It is to discern what faithfulness looks like here and now.

I am also cautious about the suggestion that we should build something out of the things that break our hearts. There is certainly value in paying attention to the burdens we carry. But a burden isn’t automatically a call to start a ministry, build a platform, or create a brand. Sometimes we are called to respond directly. Sometimes we are called to support someone already doing the work. Sometimes we are simply called to remain present without trying to turn our concern into something larger.

On page 122, Booram describes a dream as being as concerned with the dreamer as with the dream itself. I understand the importance of attending to the person God is forming, not merely the work being accomplished. Still, I worry about how easily this framework can turn discernment inward, making our personal fulfillment and the realization of our dreams central to the process.

I would rather begin with faithfulness and let the shape of our lives emerge from there.

The Value of Knowing Your Values

Despite my reservations, Booram has some genuinely helpful insights on discerning our values. This was one of the most anchoring parts of the book for me.

She writes:

“Discerning my values began to give me greater clarity about the dream in my heart, what I was to create.”

She goes on to explain:

“If values are deeply held beliefs that act as guides in our decisions and actions, then it makes sense that our values might be the raw material of a God-given dream. Values aren’t simply personal preferences. Not really. If you get in touch with your real values and you reflect on where they come from, you will notice that God has likely instilled them in you through your life journey, through the shaping experiences of your life and your response to those experiences.”

This resonated with me. I have identified ten core values in my own life, having previously worked with nine. They help me hold on to who I am when life gets hard and provide a framework for evaluating opportunities and decisions. They become something like a trellis around which I can organize my days, allowing the life I am cultivating to grow in a particular direction.

I don’t need a grand dream to benefit from that kind of clarity. Knowing my values helps me discern what deserves my attention, what I need to decline, and what faithfulness might look like in the circumstances I actually inhabit.

This is one of the book’s most useful contributions. Even if I disagree with some of Booram’s conclusions about dreams, I appreciate her insistence that we pay attention to what matters most and let it inform our decisions.

A Word of Caution for Those Who Are Struggling

My reservations about this book are not merely theoretical. In my work with guests experiencing homelessness, I regularly encounter people who struggle to imagine tomorrow, much less articulate a grand vision for their lives. For someone living with instability, grief, trauma, or the daily demands of survival, the invitation to discover a God-given dream and build something around it can feel overwhelming. It can even suggest that they are somehow falling short of what God intends for them.

I felt some of that pressure, too.

Spiritual formation isn’t always about discovering what we are meant to create. Sometimes it is a long, difficult journey of learning to trust God, receiving the grace we need for today, and remaining faithful when tomorrow is unclear. Scripture gives us a much more complicated picture of calling than a simple movement from desire to discernment to dream fulfillment.

The Christian life has room for ambition, creativity, and new beginnings. They can also be a downfall at times. The Christian life also allows for disappointment, waiting, suffering, obscurity, and seasons when we cannot see what comes next. Any theology of calling needs to make space for all of these realities.

I wish Starting Something New had engaged Scripture more deeply and wrestled more directly with the struggles that complicate discernment. I also wanted a more nuanced account of how our desires relate to God’s will, particularly for readers who may be vulnerable to false hope or who already feel that their lives have not amounted to enough.

We should be careful not to confuse the absence of a big dream with the absence of God’s work in someone’s life.

Is Starting Something New Worth Reading?

Yes, with some qualifications.

If you believe God is leading you to start something new and need a practical framework to put that emerging vision into words, examine your values, make decisions, and decide which parts of an idea to pursue or release, Booram offers useful tools. Her reflections on discernment and decision-making are worth considering, and her emphasis on values provides a helpful starting point for anyone trying to make faithful choices.

But I would encourage readers to approach the book critically, particularly its assumptions about dreams and calling. Read it alongside Scripture, remembering that God’s work in us does not always result in a new ministry, a public platform, or a project we can point to as the fulfillment of our potential.

I am grateful for the questions this book raised and for its practical insights into discernment. But I remain unconvinced that we all need to discover a dream around which to build our lives.

Sometimes faithfulness means starting something new. Sometimes it means tending what is already growing. And sometimes it means trusting God through a season when we cannot see what we are becoming.

That, too, is spiritual formation.

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