Lost Boy: My Story

Great book. Probably liked it most because it mirrored a life I'm personally familiar with. It's an easy read, with humor and sadness.

Greg Laurie grabs your attention from page one. A wonderful book with lots of humor. A nice book to share with friends who are not believers. Anyone would find his story inspiring and fascinating. I highly recommend buying/reading this book.

Although this is an autobiography of a pastor, it is much more than that. It is a story of redemption, God's grace and power at work in the life of a "Lost Boy". As Greg put it best, if you see a turtle on a fence, you know one thing for sure: it didn't get there by itself, someone put it there. Likewise, this autobiography is about what God did and can do in people's lives. Moreover, this autobiography is a very honest story of a regular guy, with all his weaknesses and "baggage" who has been mightily used by God to do His work. As you read this book, you will hurt from laughing so hard, yet parts of it will drive you to tears. My 9 year old son is reading it and cannot put it down. Even if you do not know who Greg Laurie is, you will know him very intimately after reading this book.

Great autobiographies - whether by statesman, celebrity, hero or scoundrel - have 3 elements. A great autobiography: 1) has a compelling reason for being read: It always gives more than just the facts or details "behind the scenes". Not just a personal recounting of history, a great autobiography gives you such a sense of the "real" person that you can personally relate to them. The subject's foibles, failures and weaknesses are included with the requisite telling of their strengths. 2) when you start reading, it makes you want to keep on reading. 3) after finishing it, you know about more than just the writer's story. You know more about "life" - the human condition, life's possibilities, life's parameters, how the world "works" - than you did before reading it. "Lost Boy" by Greg Laurie, is a great autobiography. The reader is captured by the opening chapter, a description of Greg waiting to take the stage in front of 40,000 people who have filled Anaheim Stadium to hear him speak. Having spoken to over 4 million people in stadiums around the world, Greg should be on auto-pilot by now. But Greg Laurie has a reason for not being on "auto-pilot". The chapter then goes into short bursts of flashback, most painting a picture of how improbable it is that Greg Laurie could possibly be the guy about to take the stadium stage. Greg Laurie is not your typical church pastor. Nor is he a type of "TV evangelist". Avoiding the political traps and scandals of both the previous and current generations' religious leaders, Greg Laurie has proven to be a different kind of Christian leader for people to check out. Coming from a broken home (fatherless, mother divorced seven times), checking into 60's drug culture, cynical and untrusting in human relationships, Greg Laurie was not the kind of person who turns into a pastor at 19 years old. Certainly not a pastor who oversees a group of 30 people turn into one of America's first "megachurches", with over 15,000 weekly attendees. Certainly not the kind of speaker who combined cutting edge technology, culturally current music performances and understandable preaching to sold-out events at venues like Madison Square Garden. Certainly not the kind of person who Billy Graham would call the "evangelist of the future". And most certainly not a man profiled by the major TV networks and on the front page of the New York Times. Yet no one seems to understand that better than Greg Laurie himself. "Lost Boy" explains this unique life that has touched millions of other lives for the better, leaving the reader inspired and encouraged to personally dig further into the reason and message behind the book. A can't-put-it-down-like-a-mystery-novel kind of read, "Lost Boy" is a great gift choice for any reader.

Greg Laurie's book is his autobiography. It tells how he went from an unwanted child to the megachurch pastor he is today. I bought this book on a sunday (I go to his church) and was done with it by Friday, dispite the 30+ chapters. It was so interesting and really built me up spiritually as well as entertained me. After I was done reading it, all I could say was, "He is my hero." This is a book we all can relate to, no matter our circumstances or up-bringing.