Many of you have heard (often, even) some of our origin story, at least some of what motivated us to open Hearts & Minds in the early 1980s. There were a lot of independent bookstores in those days — many were called “Christian bookstores” even if they didn’t carry many books. There are a whole lot fewer bookstores in North America these days but we’re still here, glad to be sending books all over the country, which keeps us afloat. So, a heartfelt thanks — more than you may realize, every customer is part of our (slim) endurance and we are grateful.
It’s kinda fun being a part of an epic David vs Goliath story, isn’t it? To change metaphors, we’ve been with Bilbo ‘there and back again’ more than once and we thank you for joining us.
Part of the story which shaped us was — to sort of tell it in shorthand code — the story also told by the CCO, a campus ministry formed in Pittsburgh more than 50 years ago that partnered with churches near campuses to fund young adults doing ministry on college campus. Evangelism, disciple-making, worldview formation, vocational discernment, social action, nurturing the Christian mind — we CCO staff were trained in doing all of this and more, inviting students into a wholistic kind of discipleship and missional living.
Some of our influences there in Western PA in the 1970s were visionary neo-Calvinists (that is, the Dutch Reformed tradition in the line of Abraham Kuyper) that insisted that all of life was being redeemed as salvation was, really, “creation regained”, to cite our friend Al Wolter’s book of that name. The ICS in Toronto was a big inspiration for many of us who tasted their distinctively Christian philosophy that called forth a serious critique of the idols of the age. The story and imagination of the CCO when Beth and I were working for them led them to create (with just a tiny bit of help from Beth and me) the legendary Pittsburgh Jubilee Conference, holding its 50th anniversary gathering this February. That event, as you surely know if you follow my rambles and our book curating here, is dedicated to helping young adults (and anybody else who may show up) see their calling as learners and their eventual vocations in the work-world, as central to their spirituality and the meaning of their lives. We walk with God, in the power of the Spirit, together, in such a way as to bear witness to what NT Wright would call “God’s new creation project.” A few years ago they started doing a pre-conference for adults, too, called Jubilee Professional. You should get yourself to Pittsburgh next February. Anyway, it was all of that that inspired us to start Hearts & Minds in the way that we did.
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I’ve been teaching a small adult ed class at First Presbyterian Church in York about the implications of the resurrection. For weeks I’ve been citing N.T. Wright, affirming the reality of God’s Kingdom breaking into our lives with the resurrected Jesus as the pioneer, the first fruits, the One whose very risen body vindicates his upside-down ways of bringing in the Kingdom. (I’m looking at the second chapter of Ron Sider’s Christ and Violence next week, by the way, that also dwells on the cross and bodily resurrection as we live as Easter people.) Jesus’s post-resurrection meals are nice reminders of the ordinariness of Easter spirituality, aren’t they? We affirm this life and the next, celebrating now how they are overlapping, in Christ, the New Man, inviting us to get on board His radical gospel train.
Again, this “all of life redeemed” Kingdom vision and the ethics of living as Easter living is what motivated us to create Hearts & Minds in Dallastown so many years ago. They were breathy days, agitating around MLK Day and trying to stop the nuclear arms race and encouraging Christian artists to make a difference with redemptive aesthetics.
I love that the year-long devotional collection of short pieces from Wright’s many books (Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, The Day the Revolution Began, etc.) starts with Easter! [See On Earth As In Heaven: Daily Wisdom for Twenty-First Century Christians by N.T. Wright (Harper) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19.] In one excerpt Wright draws some distinctions between Lent and Eastertide; if Lent is for pulling up some weeds and cleaning up the garden, Easter is surely the time for planting, bearing fruit, making something of the goodness God has given. We should be taking up new creation projects, wherever we find ourselves.
Which is a long way of saying that we stock books on business and law, art and politics, science and psychology, agriculture and medicine, recreation and ecology. We carry Christian (or at least wise) books on urban planning and human sexuality and architecture and criminal justice, economics and sports, police work and education. We’ve got so much to help public school teachers and health care workers and business people and artists not to mention parents, citizens, and shoppers.
We explain this breadth of our inventory of relevant Christian books by saying that Christ is Lord and Redeemer of every zone of life so we need to offer helpful resources for Christians living out their faith in the complicated social settings where they find ourselves. But we also use terms of what Andy Crouch calls “culture-making.” Indeed, he wrote one of the foundational books for our whole book ministry, Culture-Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (IVP; $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59.) Most of the best books on a Christian view of work start with this essential orientation, as well, reflecting on our human calling, to be humans made in the image of God and to be responsible, in our spheres of influence, for helping develop — or to “tend and keep” in the language of Genesis 2 — the worlds of creation and cultures.
All of this, I must say, is how I understand the Kingdom of God, the very heart of the gospel, the meaning of our faith as agents of God’s new creation project.
None of it sounds very churchy, does it?
And yet, the local church is, in many ways, the very hub of Christian action in the world. As a gospel-centered, Kingdom-preaching faith is proclaimed and nurtured among the gathered, worshipping, people of God, we are transformed and sent out. It is simplistic, I suppose, but I like the lingo many congregations use — we are gathered and scattered. The local church is the central hub of the Kingdom of God. Yes we all need a very tender and intimate gospel that frees us from guilt and shame. And, yes, we all need a vision for our lives, a sense that we matter, that our work matters, that God will “confirm the works of our hands: (Psalm 90:17.) And church is where we get that deep down in our bones.
But, truly, desperately, even, we all need the church. And while the Kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurated is not only about forming a worshipping body — it’s a bigger story than that, the trajectory towards the renewal of all things — but it is certainly nothing less. In our day and age, the local church is more important than ever. Regardless of your denomination, you congregation’s size, or style of worship, your congregation needs to — urgently needs to —be vibrant and good, beautiful, healthy.
Maybe you need some books to inspire you towards congregational health, refreshing you about this essential aspect of Christian life.
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10 NEW BOOKS ON THE CHURCH
The Church: A Guide for the People of God Brad East (LexhamPress) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19
This is another small, handsomely crafted and nicely printed hardback in the “”Christian Essentials” series that include little books such as The Apostles Creed, The Lord’s Prayer, and more. The black pages between chapters with distinctive graphics make this a very cool book to hold and study. It is not a practical study about congregational health or revitalization but a foundational exploration of God, God’s people, and how the entire scope of the Bible’s redemptive story points us not only to Christ (of course) but finally to His church. Naturally, it is not a building but a body. As it says on the back cover, the church “is not peripheral or optional in the life of faith. Rather, it is the very beating heart of God’s story where our needs and hopes are found.”
“…the church is not peripheral or optional in the life of faith. Rather, it is the very beating heart of God’s story where our needs and hopes are found.”
The important Catholic Biblical scholar Matthew Levering says that “this book is pure delight!” He calls it “inspiring, instructive, enriching, beautifully-written.” He is not the first to have said that “this book makes one want to be a Christian.” Stanley Hauerwas says “the theology in this book is at once scriptural and creative.”
By the way, Brad East is the author of the recent book for youth by Eerdmans called Letters to a Future Saint which I really liked and which you may recall us promoting here. He’s ecumenical, and a young, vibrant prof teaching theology at Abilene Christian University in West Texas.
Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact Missy Wallace & Lauren Gill (Redeemer City-to-City) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19
I’ve mentioned this before but have to list it here. These two authors are acquaintances and fans of Hearts & Minds and they really get what I’ve said in my preamble to this column. I noted that many of the books we curate for your consideration here at BookNotes are about Christian cultural engagement, personal discipleship for the life of the world, books about the spirituality of human flourishing and artful studies of beauty and goodness. Of course we need a Biblically-guided Kingdom vision for all of that, placing our human endeavors for social renewal and cultural reformation within a full gospel context. Which is to say, we need the church, we need preaching and sacraments, hymns and Sunday school classes, pot-lucks and fellowship hours. We need pastors to disciple us and spiritual directors to walk with us. We need worship. We need Christian community. We need the church.
If we are going to live out this full-orbed vision of cultural relevance and savvy discipleship, harmless as doves and sneaky as snakes, we will need to hear the history of redemption preached faithfully from the Scriptures in a way that applies the Bible to life. Forgive the old, dying categories, but it seems fair to say that neither old, liberal churches that want social reform without gospel clarity nor conservative churches that want evangelical revival without any social transformation have cultivated a movement of Christian people serving God gently in all of life, seeing the redemptive links between good worship and graceful work, between liturgy and labor. Somehow most congregations — mainline denomination and evangelical, megachurches and wee kirks — have promulgated a sort of congregational life that doesn’t robustly equip people for thinking Christianly about life and times, culture and work, callings and vocations. For many, such intregal connections are incidental and haphazard, at best.
No more! Redeemer’s Global Faith & Work Initiative has been at it for a while, now, helping congregations all over the world create spaces for professionals and other work-a-day Christians to develop — as this book promises to offer — “theological foundations of faith and work”, “practical frameworks for understanding and addressing brokenness in individuals and systems” and seeing “roadmaps for implementing the principles of faith and work within their own church and city.” Do you want to offer your congregation a bigger picture of who God is and how GOd’s redemptive work in the world night impact their daily grind? Can you help your congregants flourish as they serve as citizens, workers, volunteers, artists, philanthropists? Here are “tools and resources to build faith and work into your church.”
Listen to Abe Cho, pastor and vice-president of “Thought Leadership” at Redeemer City to City in New York. He applauds his friends and this book:
Every sentence, every framework, every tool and case study are the hard-won fruit of decades of ministry tests, cross-cultural, cross-sector work, reflection, and distillation.
Or, listen to Michaela O’Donnell of the esteemed Max DePress Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological seminary (and co-author of Life in Flux, which she wrote with our Pittsburgh friend, Lisa Slayton) who says,
This book should be required reading for eery church leader who believes the people of God are called to live out their faith in eery sphere of life — including their work.
In Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact you will find 13 fabulously thoughtful and yet “on-the-ground useful chapters followed by 17 different helpful appendices. Holy smokes, this book should be really well known and widely used.
The back cover asks about the opportunity the people of your church have to serve God “right where they are” and what it would look like if their church saw their work as an opportunity. “What if the call to love their neighbors started with the place they spend forty hours a week?” This book will help you answer that question.
The Reason for Church: Why the Body of Christ Still Matters in an Age of Anxiety, Division, and Radical Individualism Brad Edwards (Zondervan) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39
Remember last week I suggested some books that were both culturally savvy and quite practical for daily discipleship, books that combine a bit of social analysis with the call to faithful Christian living? This could have been on that list, but I was holding it for this week’s list. As you can tell from the subtitle, it explores why the church “still matters” in this particular age. He mentions the growing crisis of anxiety, our cultural and social and racial divisions, and the radical individualism that haunts us more than ever. Can we “rediscover the goodness and beauty of the body of Chris” in a time when so many folks are unchurched and de-churched? You know it — if you care at al about the local faith community of which you are apart (assume you are a part of such a community you know you’ve lost members.
This pastor — founder of The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado and host of the lively podcast PostEverything — is convinced that much of our distrust and dysfunction in the the church is rooted in a debilitating individualism. He, of course, is not the first to say this, and it has been discussed by cultural and social and theological commentators for decades. This has been explored by social scientists and astute pastors and leaders have followed this — from “Shiela-ism” (the name of the religion that a woman named Shiela told Robert Bellah that she practices as described in the 1980s Habits of the Heart) to “bowling alone” (the phenomenon described by Robert Putnam about how even while the sport of bowling is on the rise, participation in bowling leagues is down, pointing to the individualism that hinders all kinds of voluntary associations, including churches and ministries. The subtitle of the 2000 Bowling Alone is “The Collapse and Revival of American Community.)
In any case, this book shows how church must rethink the nature of church and it’s point for people. Lonely and skeptical exiles — some who have been hurt by the church, some who have not been, but have an existential dread about it all — must be re-connected to friends in the family of faith. With radical individualism tearing us apart, we have to offer a better story about what the church is all about.
The first half of this book (five good chapters) is called “Babel’s Brick and Mortar” which is a very clever way of getting at the cultural context and social setting of the un and de-churched. The second great half is called “The Body and Bride of Christ” which has five chapters.
There are thoughtful reflection questions that will be good for anyone to process this material but ideal for thoughtful study groups or book clubs.
The forward to this book is by Presbytery pastor Michael Keller, a sophisticated New York pastor like his late father. Keller notes,
Brad’s book is a love letter to the church and a call to recognize how, in a world of commodification and dehumanization, the covenant community found in Christ offers a way forward.
Invisible Jesus: A Book About Leaving the Church and Looking for Christ Scot McKnight & Tommy Person Phillips (Zondervan) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39
The above-mentioned book mentions the cultural motives and trends and that huge American trouble-spot, individualism and how all that mitigates against folks being happily involved in a healthy local church. It’s important to understand. But if we are wanting to learn about those who have left the church in part to find a better, deeper way to live then we need narratives that give voice to those sorts of real people and we need to hear them well. There really are quite a lot of thoughtful folks who have left church not because they’d just rather golf or go out to brunch on Sunday, or because they are superficially hurt and turned off to church. No, there are people with real intellectual questions and significant hurts and who recoil from bad stuff in church. This book tells some of those kinds of stories, firstly with the two authors themselves. Wow.
This is a book about the church and we stock in in our room full of books about congregational life and church stuff. But it is more about what some these days call deconstruction (so we keep it with those books as well.) It asks a vital question — it is on the back cover in colored print that fades, so it is hard to read: “Is deconstruction a problem or a prophetic voice?” Maybe this look is cleverly intentional since even the question is sometimes “invisible.”
There has been an increase in recent years of Christians who are critical of the faith they were raised in and as they’ve deconstructed their simplistic cliches or toxic beliefs to uncover more healthy ways of thinking about faith and practicing faithfulness, they’ve uncovered lots of bad stuff in the church (among other things, at least, a “renewed fundamentalism, toxic leadership, and legalistic thinking.”
Invisible Thinking shares the results of some of the most recent studies on this topic (it’s nicely written but there are some graphs and charts.) It’s a look at those who are deconstructing and how their new attitudes effects your local congregation.
The book doesn’t validate every complaint that every person makes but it doesn’t dismiss these critiques, either. And it doesn’t just try to give solutions to reverse deconstruction and the great dechurching. Rather the authors offer a posture of listening and fair evaluation as if — get this! — todays movement of deconstruction isn’t a problem to be solved but an important voice to listen to. Could it be, as they say, a “prophetic voice resisting a distorted gospel?”
Chapter by chapter these astute evangelical writers — McKnight is, of course, one of the most prolific and intersting NT guys working today and Philips is a pastor in Tampa — share stories of those who have walked the path of deconstruction without losing their faith. Each chapter has a different theme. It provides a major challenge to local churches to be self-aware and honest about what they believe (and how it gets said), what they teach, how they practice their life together, and how their spirituality shapes their community on the ground.
Ryan Burge (one of the best researchers out there on this topic) affirms the book saying it is a “balm… for those who are worried by the number of people who seem to be leaving the church behind.”
And, of course, the point of this is Jesus. Can our churches stand with Jesus and invite those who are following Him back to their communities. In other words, it may be that we value our congregational traditions, our theological legacies, our doctrines, our practices, all more than we value Jesus. Can it be? This book names some very important stuff. Whew.
In their sympathetic and insightful book, Scot McKnight and Tommy Phillips helpfully point out that when a sensitive Christian soul realizes that a consumerist, politicized, fundamentalist, scandal-ridden Christianity looks nothing like the enduring beauty of Christ, deconstruction is conversion. — Brian Zahnd, author of When Everything’s on Fire
The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in The Underground of Disillusionment Aimee Byrd (Zondervan) $22.99 // // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39
Here is another of the many books o deconstruction and the experience of disillusionment with faith, with discipleship, or with the church. Aimee Byrd is an author we’ve admired, having started on conservative Reformed publishing houses, writing for women, inviting them to read widely and think deeply about theology. As she experienced ugly feedback from nasty online voices and lost speaking engagements and faced real discrimination from those who didn’t want to have such a woman speaking, she wrote a push back against culturally defined ideologies of what a man or a woman who is Biblical might look like; Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was a critique of patriarchy and other ugly nonsense and it was moderate, thoughtful, exquisitely evangelical in conventional theological where it matters most. I couldn’t believe she had so many haters.
Now she offers hope after the experience of harm in the church and while this isn’t a tell-all expose, she doesn’t know what she is talking about. It invites the questions that hurting people are asking and —as Kristin Kobes Du Mez has written about it, it is “a book for the bruised ones, for the smoldering wicks, for the disillusioned.”
“A book for the bruised ones, for the smoldering wicks, for the disillusioned.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Byrd helps us “cultivate healthier forms of trust” by understanding how power structures work. She invites folks to understand the “limits of authority and free ourselves from tribe and celebrity culture.” Can we rediscover (or maybe discover for the first time) that our hurts matter to God and can we “take appropriate risks by speaking up when we are uncomfortable?”
The Hope in Our Scars, not unlike the Invisible Jesus one listed above (that she endorses, by the way), points us firstly to Jesus. She knows something about what the theologians call “our covenantal union with Christ” and she helps us work through hurts and frustrations by focusing on what is true and beautiful about Jesus.
But, as you can see, the subtitle mentions “the bride of Christ” which we all know is lingo for the church. Aimee Byrd may be discouraged but she has not given up on the church. This book is written gentle for those who have be wounded by toxic faith or egotistical church leaders or dumb practices that have alienated them. But she hasn’t given up on the Church.
This passionate and beautifully written book is divided into three parts, with a couple chapters under each heading. The first part is “Partners in Affliction” and the second is “Partners in Kingdom” and the third is “Partners in Endurance.”
I bet some of our BookNotes readers know somebody who needs this book, who may be, as the book puts it, “fighting to love Christ’s Bride.” Who could you give it to? Or maybe you need it yourself…
Remissioning Church: A Field Guide to Bringing a Congregation Back to Life Josh Hayden (IVP) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00
We have many books like this but this rand new one seems as thorough and practical and up-to-date as any I’ve seen in quite a while. I’ve not worked through it all but I can assure you that in its 235 pages there are more ideas, plans, suggestions, guidelines, advice and theological discernment than in many similar resources. I am very, very excited to promote this among most ordinary churches I know.
I like the promotional blurb about this — “If your church feels like it’s dying, take heart — God can raise the dead.” Indeed. Many established churches really are facing decline and they struggle to minister to their communities today. But we can have hope.
So as I skim this it seems like there are at least three things boing on. One is the theology of hope, the upbeat faith that things can turn around. In this sense it is about revitalization and renewal It isn’t the first book to suggest this, but it shows that remissioning is a gift and it happens “through descent.” This is more than “creative destruction” but that may be one way of saying it, even though the Biblical/theological point is “from death to life” As we shift from “ownership to stewardship” we can develop fresh eyes, and “prune for growth” as we “practice resurrection” This is edgy, vital stuff and older churches may not be up for it, but many of us will need to shake things up, and this is as good of a guide as I think I’ve seen.
The next portion is wisely called “Traditional Innovation.” Wow. This invites us to thing of the goal, to remember and — well, I don’t know what they mean, but I’m ager to read “Everything Is Liturgical (So Remission on Purpose!)” I think I’ll love the chapter about “The Four Spaces of Belonging in a Remissioning Context” and appreciate their guidance towards creating shared experiments (!) for “remissioning imagination.”
There is a lot going on here — including an astute chapter on race and class in the Kingdom of God. The missional task of naming the story we are a part of. Stuff on “new metrics.” A chapter on “burying preferences” for the sake of our mission. Good leaders will be needed for this audacious renewal work and they’ve got five or six chapters on the sorts of leaders the task of remissioning will require. Wow. Spread the word…
The Shape of Our Lives: A Field Guide for Congregational Formation Philip Kenneson, Debra Dean Murphy, Stephen Fowl & James Lewis (Englewood Press) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79
The Virtue of Dialogue: Becoming a Thriving Church Through Conversation C. Christopher Smith (Englewood Press) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79
I list these together and recommend both (but you can order either one separately.) They are both really small books, a cool size, actually, very well doe, and ideal for small groups or adult education classes or church leadership teams. I’m a big fan of these thoughtful resources and hope you’ll consider them.
Here’s just a tiny bit of backstory. C. Christopher Smith is one of the leaders at the Englewood Review of Books — big kudos to their online work! — and the “Cultivating Communities” initiative (funded in part by a “Thriving Congregations” grant from Lily) of which Chris and his pastor (from Englewood Christian Church) are a part. They do a newsletter called “A Deeper Life” and they serve cohorts of congregational leaders who want help focusing on being a community shaped by the ways of Jesus. They partner with Misso Alliance and do really substantial formational work.
Anyway, these two books emerged from their years of conversations and experience in helping a variety of missional faith communities learn to be healthier as a congregation and more faithful in their presence in the neighborhood.
The best introduction to their vision of congregational formation is in the first volume, The Shape of Our Lives. This really is a roadmap (as Lisa Rodriguez-Watson, National Director of Missio Alliance puts it) “for engaging with the complexities of our time, urging us to embrace a vision of intentional formation, rooted in a deep understanding of who we are and what we are called to be as the body of Christ.”
There are seven short chapters with inviting and reflective questions to enhance dialogue and further the learning process in your church. I very highly recommend it.
The Virtue of Dialogue is a key little resource, new content, but drawn somewhat from the great book Chris wrote called How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church. That is a amazing book, rich and intersting, but maybe a bit much for some small groups or leadership teams. The Virtue of Dialogue is concise and succinct and really is, in the words of Scot McKnight, “revolutionary for your own faith community.” There are five chapters and good discussion questions. There is a fascinating little appendix which emerged from their own struggles at Englewood to be a “talking together” church focused on how they saw themselves in the story of God’s redemptive work in the world. Those few “Questions to Engage in Conversation” are really interesting, pointed and fun.
I trust my friend Mandy Smith so much. She is the author (most recently) of Confessions of an Amateur Saint: The Christian Leader’s Journey from Self-Sufficiency to Reliance on God. She nicely says:
For years I’ve been deeply encouraged by the story of Englewood Christian Church and their capacity for the mess and mystery of community life in this fractious culture. As I read this book, I’m anticipating a future where hard conversations can happen in positive ways, where we’re not so worried about that old bullying culture that we avoid the important conversations. Hear their story, learn their practices and receive their hope that ‘churches can still mature into the full stature of a body that bears a striking resemblance to Jesus. — Mandy Smith, Pastor and
I haven’t seen it yet but we’re taking PRE-ORDERS for the third in the little “Cultivating Communities Series” which is due in JUNE 2025. It will be called Form of the Word: Making Sense of Scripture in the Body of Christ (Englewood Press; $15.99 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE – $12.79.)
If this were a listing of older books on the nature of the church, you know I’d name one of my all times favorites, also co-authored by C. Christopher Smith, called Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus (IVP; $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19.) Yes, you saw what I did there. Yay.
Beyond the Church and Parachurch: From Competition to Missional Extension Angie Ward (IVP) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00
Do people use these terms — “church” and “parachurch” anymore? I guess so, since this book is brand new, good stuff from one of our favorite publishers. It sure was a hot debate when we were working for a parachurch mission and nobody had written much on this vexing matter. What is a para church organization, a non-church-related nonprofit ministry and what is its relationship to the local body? The author of this great-looking new study, Angie Ward, has her PhD and is the director of the Doctor of Ministry program (and professor of leadership studies) at Denver Seminary. (Her book I Am a Leader: When Women Discover the Joy of Their Calling is published by NavPress; $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79 is also published by IVP and is excellent.)
Dr. Ward is also the adept organizer and editor of three volumes of fabulous essays, creative writing, and messages called “Kingdom Conversations.” To hard to read and only a bit provocative, we’ve promoted all three: When the Universe Cracks: Living as God’s People in Times of Crisis, Kingdom and Country: Following Jesus in the Land that You Love, and The Least of These: Practicing a Faith without Margins.
If you or anybody you financially support is involved in an unconventional ministry, a mission agency, a church-planting network, a social service nonprofit, even a faith-based school or college, that perhaps is sometimes referred to as a para-church group, this book is for you. She gives a history and a theology of the church and of parachurch groups and “forges a new paradigm of missional extensions. Rather than focusing on structures and institution, Ward focuses on apostolic function, calling the church in all its forms to flow in networks that grow in missional witness.”
That is a mouthful but for those with ears to hear, it does place her in a particular stream of thinking about networks and church planting and Kingdom collaboration. And I’m very eager to read it as I think I will agree with her multi-faceted view of Kingdom institutions that may or may not be connected to a particular congregation but are nonetheless forging faith communities on mission for particular needs. This will help us re-think our ecclesiology, less in terms of denominational loyalties and more shaped by the big picture of God’s work in the world. Hooray for that.
Angie Ward might just have resolved the long debate about the divide between the church and the parachurch. She sees their differences not so much in terms of purpose, personnel, or geography but in terms of specialization. Angie says the church must be missional in its role as a community, servant, and messenger in the world, while parachurches are missional extensions into one or other of those areas. That kind of thinking just might break the logjam in this discussion. Angie Ward’s book is a winsome mix of solid ecclesiology, excellent missiology, and a deep love for God’s people. — Michael Frost, founder of the Tinsley Institute at Morling College in Sydney, Australia, and coauthor with Christiana Rice of To Alter Your World
Heather Karls Chaniott, CEO and president of Missions Development International says it is a “must read.” She exclaims that: “This book will challenge and inspire you to reclaim your ecclesiology, reframe your perspective on ministry, and revolutionize your understanding of God’s kingdom work. In a world shaped by siloed ministry models, it asks: What if the Lord is calling us to something better? Discover how God designed the body of Christ as a connected ecosystem and find your unique role within it. A must-read for ministry leaders seeking deeper kingdom impact!” Man, I like that quote. This is good stuff, eh?
The Nine Asks: Creating Safer and More Courageous Spaces Kimberly Danielle (WJK) $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00
This is not an overtly religious book, even if published by a denominational publishing house. It could be that for some congregations you might need to supplement each of its nine points with Biblical insight. I think that would be easy to do.
This book isn’t even about church or congregational life, but about creating spaces and organizations and places which are safe for a diversity of people. It asks us to practice nine specific things, “asks” as she calls them, to create an ethos of safety, honor and respect as people tell their stories.
(In a way, it reminds me of another secular book I recommend for church use, a book on literal (physical) space design, called The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker…)
Kimberly Danielle — who has worked in higher education with college students — is a born storyteller, it seems, a strong black woman with a certain cadence and power and whimsy and sternest in her writing voice. She also thinks others are storytellers and this book is premised on the notion that people want to be authentic, vulnerable, even, but can only really do so in a safe space. This is a book about creating trusting relationships by following certain vital habits.
The Nine Asks is not only about creating multi-ethnic spaces where people of color and other minorities feel welcomed and can rely on the group’s participants to be decent, although it is, it seems to me, at least useful for those wanting to nurture multi-racial faith communities. It is, however, larger in scope, and invites us to think about what kind of practices create welcoming demeanors and relationships for anyone is worried about sharing. You don’t have to think to hard about the many sorts of folks who might be timid or fearful to be honest about who they really are. Can we create spaces that are — in Kimberly Danielle’s colorful phrase — both safe and courageous?
Her nine asks are opened up with lots of social psychology and even a tiny bit of neuroscience. She tells stories and offers anecdotes alongside teachers and facilitators in the emerging science of group dynamics She’s done a few TED talks, if you want to check her out.
The “asks” are usually pretty clear-headed stuff, although some are surprising, and what she does to unpack them may strike you as provocative and thought-provoking. She looks at being honest, respecting boundaries (“and thresholds” which she explains), taking time to listen. One is “Grant Permission to Go Deeper or Decline” A few of these asks are allusive but she explains them well — “Come Back to Me” and “Stay in Your Seat.”
One that follows the Biblical teaching about refraining from gossip is nicely explained — “Honor Confidentiality.” Ms Danielle offers some great in-you-face reminders about sharing other people’s business (and why some personality types are likely to do that, even if inadvertently.)
Ask #6 is fascinating. It is “Respect the Process of Learning “Right” Language. Not everyone will agree with all of her insight here but you surely should consider this.
And don’t forget the big one about not judging others. My, my, I’ve jumped in to quickly to give an opinion (or even rebuke) and I’ve regretted it. Haven’t you? The Ask 3, “Practice No Judgement” is going to be tricky for some, I bet.
After the first couple chapters on the nature of stories and why they matter and creating a “container” as she calls it, and then the nine asks which help create a safer container which can nurture courage, she has six more chapters about “practicing the asks.” This is challenging stuff, good for any social setting, and it seems to me some church groups — at least those who have read and studied the Englewood book about the virtue of dialogue and who know well some basic principles about hospitality and welcome and generous postures of conversation — will want to explore this energetic volume.
Her bio says a lot: Kimberly Danielle is CEO of KiMISTRY, a consulting firm specializing in storytelling to address justice, generational healing, and trauma-informed wellness. She supports youth resilience initiatives and cofounded the ADAMH-funded Black Community Ambassadors Support Program, focusing on mental wellness for Black helpers.
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