BeScrooged: Imagining a Full Life of Generosity

by Gordon MacDonald

Few among us are quite so lost as the anti-hero of A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge lives a small, miserable life in sooty nineteenth-century London, rebuffing affection and offering none, showing a high disdain for the hungry and the sick, dismissing charity, faith, and family as nothing but a humbug. But the great moral of the tale lies in Scrooge’s seemingly miraculous transformation; he awakens from a shattering dream the very opposite of his former self—a person who loves, shares, and gives with unusual generosity.

What if we all could take a dose of Scrooge’s healing medicine? What if we all possessed the power to see ourselves and the world anew—and be better people for it? In their challenging new book BeScrooged, father-and-son authors Gordon and Mark MacDonald show us how we can do just that.

Their prescription for change is not to await an overnight visitation but to embark on a deliberate journey of reflection and action in our daily lives. Drawing on deep experience—Gordon as a longtime evangelical Christian pastor and bestselling author, Mark as the marketing strategist behind some of our era’s most influential Christian ministries—the MacDonalds have spent more than a decade helping to build a global movement for Christian generosity. In BeScrooged the authors distil their insights into an easy-to-follow yet penetrating four-week program for developing the joyful, life-changing spirit of giving that lies of the heart of this movement.

For each week, the authors introduce us to a new theme. Each day of the week comes with a biblical reading and commentary, followed by questions for thought and discussion and a real-world “BeScrooged Activity” designed to help participants connect the chapter’s insights to their own lives.

The ultimate destination? An Ebenezer-like “full-life generosity” that encompasses how we deploy our worldly goods, emotional resources, and physical and spiritual energies.
• In Week One: Idols, we meet seven Scrooges of the Bible and ask ourselves, What do I worship, crave, obsess over? These may be the very things that stand in our way.
• In Week Two: Intervention, we learn about seven powerful ways Jesus Christ embraced and embodied generosity. How can we follow his example with friends and strangers alike?
• In Week Three: Called to Full-Life Generosity, the authors offer seven biblically grounded and faith-based answers to the question, Why should we live generously?
• In Week Four: Full-Life Generosity, we discover seven fundamental elements of the fully generous life, from encouragement to hospitality to being a doer eager to serve alongside others.

In their friendly tone and hopeful message the MacDonalds enact the generosity they wish to cultivate. Readers will come away from BeScrooged just as Ebenezer awakened Christmas morning, looking forward with giddy delight to all the good they can do in the world.

128 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 14, 2015

About the author

Gordon MacDonald has been a pastor and author for over forty years. For many years he pastored Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massacusetts and continues to serve as Pastor Emertius. He has also provided leadership to influential ministries such as Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, which he served as President for three years, and World Relief, which he currently serves as Chairman. Gordon’s best-selling books include Ordering Your Private World, Mid-Course Correction and, most recently, A Resilient Life. He also writes and serves as Editor-at-Large for Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal. When not writing, leading or speaking at conferences, Gordon and his wife Gail can be found hiking the trails of New England.

Reviews

[Christy Bower · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part storybook, part devotional, and part Christian teaching, this book is a fast-paced, enjoyable read with a serious message. BeScrooged follows the transformation of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. At each stage in Scrooge's development, the authors provide Christian teaching on the subject of "full-life generosity" and devotional readings focusing on specific people in the Bible who exemplified either stinginess or generosity (or the struggle in between).

According to the authors, we each need to reach our personal crisis that brings about life transformation, a point at which we have been BeScrooged. Just as Scrooge had a drastic and total transformation of his outlook on life, we each need to experience a similar moment that forever changes our hearts and lives.

Full-life generosity is not just about money; it's about having a generous spirit. Full-life generosity gives a kind word, a helping hand, and all sorts of generosity. This type of transformation can only come from within.

The authors describe a ladder of generosity where readers can evaluate where they might be in their current level of generosity. But they did admit that we all tend to move up and down the ladder at different times in life. Still, they suggested that periodic appraisal was a worthwhile way to check our hearts.

I enjoyed reading the devotionals most of all. Each one focused on a different person in the Bible and I thought some of the points drawn from these examples brought about several fresh insights for me.

[Glenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generosity comes in many varieties. This book will expand your definition and invite a change in lifestyle.