In His Steps

In His Steps is a book written by Charles M. Sheldon, and was written in the 1980's. The book's time period is late 1800's, and is the story of a pastor, as well as his church and town, who had a young tramp come to their church and give a remarkable speech about following Jesus and before making any decisions asking "what would Jesus do?". It moves the pastor so much that the next week he asks the congregation to take a pledge for one year to do nothing without first asking the question "what would Jesus do?". Amazing things start happening, for example, a newspaper editor decides to stop producing a Sunday paper, take out all adds about liquor and saloons, and only include articles that are wholesome and not time-wasting, meaning taking out things such as prize fights and crime reports. I found the book to be a little boring in the beginning, but around a quarter of the way through it started to get much more interesting. It took me several weeks to finish, mainly because we were on vacation for a week and a half during that time and I didn't read much during that time. The book has 24 chapters, and is 251 pages. It is not a very good book for younger readers, maybe 13-14 years and up, just because it is written for adults and wouldn't be very interesting to a younger person, and also because a large part of it is focused on the slum part of the town and includes drunk people and saloons. But it is still a great book to read, and will really change your perspective of following in Jesus' steps.