Craig Groeschel - Weird: Because Normal Isnt Working

WEIRD

Because normal isnt working.

CRAIG
GROESCHEL

This book is dedicated to

everyone who is sick of normal

and is ready for something better

Ive got bad news, America: normal stinks! The normal family is broke, stressed, overworked, and generally unhappy. If we want Gods best for our families, faith, and finances, weve got to stop striving for normal and start being weird!

D AVE R AMSEY , HOST OF T HE D AVE R AMSEY S HOW;
AUTHOR OF T HE T OTAL M ONEY M AKEOVER

Craig Groeschel is the weirdest person Ive ever known. And once youve read this book, youll understand thats the highest compliment I could ever pay him. Groeschels passion for God, integrity, and wisdom are abnormal. He approaches his relationship with God on a level that compels all of us to go higher. And its these very distinctions that make him the perfect person to help you stand apart from a world that is dying in a sea of normalcy. I cant recommend Weird highly enough.

S TEVEN F URTICK , SENIOR PASTOR OF E LEVATION C HURCH ;
AUTHOR OF S UN S TAND S TILL

Craig Groeschel has always been different in a good sort of way. His new book will motivate you to abandon the normal path and live for Jesus with all your heart.

J ENTEZEN F RANKLIN , PASTOR OF F REE C HAPEL ;
AUTHOR OF F ASTING

This book is nothing at all normal. Its weird. And weird is good. Groeschels challenge is a timely one, motivating us to jump off the normal path, onto one that may seem weird. As followers of Jesus, we should be different and set apart from the culture around us, to live lives that stand out, never settling for normal again. Since normal is a long way from what God ever intended for us, its time to turn up the weird! Thanks, Craig, for laying a framework for getting back to what God has called us to.

B RAD L OMENICK , EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF C ATALYST

Normal doesnt work! Normal has never accomplished anything significant. And Jesus didnt die on a cross so that his followers could live normal lives. Craig Groeschel does an amazing job of challenging us to go beyond others expectations in order to honor the calling that Jesus has placed on our lives. Jesus was a lot of things, but normal wasnt one of them. Craig challenges all of us to stop being normal.

P ERRY N OBLE , SENIOR PASTOR OF N EWSPRING C HURCH

Weird is weird. In this book, Craig Groeschel will take your normal life and ask deeper existential questions, leaving you yearning to be weird. No platitudinous easy solutions rather, an inner view of your life that leads to living off the beaten path. Weird is what we dont know, do, or understand. Thats the quest Weird will take you on. Go be weird.

D R . S AMUEL C HAND , INTERNATIONAL SPEAKER, CONSULTANT,
AND AUTHOR OF C RACKING Y OUR C HURCHS C ULTURE C ODE

Craig Groeschel is weird in the best kind of way. If anyone can give advice on how to be set apart from the world and just plain weird for God, its him. His book is a must-read.

C HRISTINE C AINE , DIRECTOR OF E QUIP AND E MPOWER M INISTRIES ;
AUTHOR OF T HE C ORE I SSUE

Normal is overrated. Weird is inspirational, challenging, and practical.

E D Y OUNG , SENIOR PASTOR OF S ECOND B APTIST H OUSTON

I cant put this book down! I started reading Weird, only to realize this book is reading me. It confirms the inner voice that keeps telling me its time to abandon normal, because normals not working.

B IL C ORNELIUS , F OUNDING AND LEAD PASTOR OF B AY A REA F ELLOWSHIP ;
AUTHOR OF I D ARE Y OU TO C HANGE

Know whats weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everythings different.

B ILL W ATTERSON

F rom as early as I could remember, my life was pretty normal. As a child, I tattled on my sister, had a crush on the girl next door, and performed Evel Knievel stunts on my red 1975-model Schwinn bike with the fire-striped banana seat. Normal stuff for a kid, right?

In middle school, I enjoyed playing soccer with my friends, watching reruns of Happy Days, and playing truth or dare with girls behind the library during recess. Again, pretty normal stuff.

In high school, I ran for student government, counted down the days until I got my drivers license, and exaggerated to my friends about what I did on dates with the girls I used to meet behind the library. Typical teenage stuff.

In college, I regularly overslept my 8:00 a.m. economics class, charged dozens of Dominos pizzas on my first credit card, and became a brother of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. Although I wouldnt have acknowledged it then, looking back I see that being normal was my main goal. Fitting in felt infinitely better than standing out. I worked hard to dress like the rest (Levis and polos were king), act like the rest (party hearty, study hardly, and in between chase any girl I meet), blend in like the rest (act cool no matter what, talk like everyone else so theyll know Im as cool as they are).

For me and my peers, normal was in. Nobody we knew wanted to be weird. (Except for that freshman we paid ten dollars to eat a live roach, but I think he liked the notoriety.) Normal was cool, and weird was uncool. Normal people were winners on their way up; weird people were losers headed downward.

When your full-time job is fitting in, you rarely stop to contemplate the more serious issues of life that is, until one of the more serious issues in life smacks you upside the head. All of us cool-wannabes experienced such a blow one warm October night my sophomore year. Laura, one of the most normal girls I knew, had started driving the three-hour trip home to see her parents. Like most normal college kids, shed probably had much less sleep between late weeknights studying and late weekends partying than her body needed. And on that tragic night, she fell asleep at the wheel, wrapped her car around a tree, and died instantly.

Suddenly normal life didnt seem so normal anymore.

Lauras death was so sudden, so unexpected, and so permanent. She was eighteen and had her whole life ahead of her. Beautiful, smart, funny, she was just like all the rest of us. Only now she had a firm grasp on the meaning of eternity, something my normal friends and I conveniently avoided considering.

Our school hosted a celebration service to honor Lauras life and to give us an opportunity to mourn. I sat silently on the end of the third-row pew in that tiny campus chapel most of us had worked so hard to avoid until then, aware that life was now different, but not exactly sure how. Suddenly my English lit test and tennis match the next day no longer seemed so important.

This was only the beginning. Without warning, my normal mindset started to bother me. Like a dull toothache that begins to throb, my discomfort with the way things were seemed to increase steadily. For years Id asked the questions normal people ask: Why wont the head cheerleader go out with me? What class should I take? Should I change my major? Am I popular enough? Good enough? Successful enough? Can I get a good-enough education to land a good job and afford a good house and marry a good woman and have good kids, all so I can what? Be normal?

With a kind of magnetic power, Lauras death now pulled me toward bigger questions: Is this all there is to life? Why am I here? What if that had been me dozing off behind the steering wheel? If my life ended now, would it matter? What happens after you die? Is there really a God and a heaven and a hell and all the Christian stuff Ive heard about?