The Problem with Monolithic Mentors

Book of the Month, Sep 2025: The Very Good Gospel by Lisa Sharon Harper

Public Theology is based on the work of Zach W. Lambert, Pastor of Restore, an inclusive church in Austin, Texas. He and his wife, Amy Lambert, contribute to and moderate this account. Zach’s first book, Better Ways to Read the Bible, is now available wherever books are sold.

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In February of 2020, just about a month before the COVID-19 virus began rapidly spreading across the United States, I received an email from Lisa Sharon Harper. Well, that’s probably overstating things a little bit. As a member of Lisa Sharon Harper’s email list, I received an email along with thousands of her other subscribers, but for some reason it felt like this one was written for me.

I need to back up and say that I’d been learning from Lisa for a few years at this point. I read her book, The Very Good Gospel, back in 2016 just as our church was getting off the ground and it changed my life. I vividly remember reading this paragraph and weeping over the state of Christianity in our country:

All humanity is made in the image of God. To slap another human is to slap the image of God. To lie to another human is to lie to the image of God. To exploit another human is to exploit the image of God. To kill another human is to kill the image of God. To declare war on another human or an ethnic group or a religion or a nation is to declare war on the image of God. In essence, to commit acts of physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, political, and economic violence against fellow humans is to attempt to crush the image of God on earth. Likewise, to exploit or harm or overconsume the rest of creation is to abdicate our human vocation—to steward creation. If we engage in such acts, we turn our backs on God’s way to peace and, by extension, on God.

Lisa Sharon Harper, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right

Back to the email from February 2020. It said, “The inaugural Freedom Road Coaching Cohort will wrap up next month and we are now accepting applications for the next cohort to begin in April.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard God audibly, but when I read that sentence I knew God was telling me to apply.