Pictured is the cover for Larry E. McCall’s revised “Walking like Jesus.”
Pictured is the cover for Larry E. McCall’s revised “Walking like Jesus.”
Larry McCall wanted his revision of his first book “Walking like Jesus” to be a general discipleship book to help people know how to live a Christian life.

McCall, a Warsaw resident, said he has lived in the area for over 40 years. He went to Grace College in the 1970s, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in New Testament Greek and a Master of Divinity degree. In 1993, he received a Doctor of Ministry degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill.

Christ’s Covenant Church was starting about the time McCall was finishing at Grace College. In 1981, the church was looking for a pastor and they asked McCall to fill that role. In October, he stepped off the staff at the church but is still involved with the church.

He said a lot of people ask what Christian maturity looks like.

“And I like to tweak the question to who does Christian maturity look like?” he said. “Christian maturity isn’t following a list of rules. It’s being shaped in the image of Christ. It’s being transformed into his image. And so, in this book, I took 14 character traits of Jesus that are explicitly said in the Bible to be replicated in our lives and I talk about each of those. And then how does that happen? How do we forgive the way Jesus forgave us? How do we love other people the way he loves us?”

Some of the characteristics that McCall talks about in “Walking like Jesus” include accepting others, being patient and forgiving others.

“Walking like Jesus” is McCall’s first book, but the revised version came out in February. The first edition came out in 2005. He has two other books: “Loving Your Wife Like As Christ Loves the Church” and “Grandparenting with Grace.”

About 20 years ago, there was a young couple in McCall’s church that were new to the faith who asked McCall to mentor them. When asked what they wanted to study, the response was they wanted to study Jesus.

“So I wrote this Bible study for this young couple,” he said. He was encouraged to put it into a book.

He revised the book because the original edition didn’t read as smoothly as he wanted it to. He reached out to the original editor about the idea about revising the book.

He said the revised edition reads a lot better than the original. He worked on the revision all of last year, saying he probably put hundreds of hours into the revision.

“Walking like Jesus” talks about a topic that is applicable to any sort of Christian.

“Some books are very specific,” while “Walk like Jesus” is a good general book for Christian growth, McCall said. The book can be used in several different settings as McCall has heard of Christian schools using the book in high school Bible curriculum and churches using it in adult Sunday school groups or small groups.

There’s several questions at the end of each chapter so it’s easy to use for group settings.

McCall said he wanted the book to be something that was usable by Christians of all kinds, calling it a general discipleship book. “It helps us know how to live a Christian life,” he said. “It’s very easy, very accessible.”

“My hope is not that they put the book down and say, ‘That was cool.’ I want them to say, ‘Lord change me,’” McCall said of what he hopes people get out the revised edition of his book. “So my prayerful desire in writing this is people be changed, that they be different people if they not read the book, but then apply what they learned.”

He said he finds him being transformed. He’s much more focused on every day life and on Jesus and seeing Jesus as his mentor. He said he wants to be a reflection of Jesus in his family and community.

“Walking like Jesus” can be purchased from places like Amazon, BMH Book and Christian book distributors.