This is a brief post written to commend to you Mike Breen’s new book Leading Kingdom Movements (kindle | print). Mike has been a friend and mentor to me for several years now, and this book contains some of the most inspiring and challenging stuff that Mike teaches.
Books
Redux: The Hurricane Has Become Human
I posted this last Christmas, but it’s such a good quote to get us in the right mood for the season. That mood being a revolutionary, disturbing one đ
Christmas is an easy time for Christians to get sentimental and schmaltzy, so in the interest of remembering how radically earth-shattering this event was, here are some thoughts on the Incarnation of Christ from N.T. Wright:
How can you cope with the end a world and the beginning of another one? How can you put an earthquake into a test-tube, or the sea into a bottle? How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that the fire has become flesh, that life itself came to life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the more devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world, or itâs a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful play-acting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between…
– N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth
Merry Christmas!
Multiplying Missional Leaders: A Review
Many pastors are trying to motivate the churches they lead to express “love and good works,” and would love to see a movement of discipleship and mission take off in their city. So why doesn’t it happen more often?
One of the main problems for many pastors is that the expression of the Body of Christ they lead doesn’t have a skeletal structure of leaders within it, so it’s more like a “Blob of Christ” that mostly just sits there. The best you can do is poke it with a stick (sermon) and hope for some kind of response, but you’ll never be able to build a movement unless you get a skeletal structure of missional leaders in place, so the Body of Christ can stand up and work.
You can’t build a movement without lots of leaders. This is the basic idea behind Mike Breen’s upcoming book Multiplying Missional Leaders.
The Hurricane Has Become Human
Christmas is an easy time for Christians to get sentimental and schmaltzy, so in the interest of remembering how radically earth-shattering this event was, here are some thoughts on the Incarnation of Christ from N.T. Wright:
How can you cope with the end a world and the beginning of another one? How can you put an earthquake into a test-tube, or the sea into a bottle? How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that the fire has become flesh, that life itself came to life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the more devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world, or itâs a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful play-acting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between…
– N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth
The End of Evangelicalism?
The title of David Fitch‘s latest book makes for a great blog post title, doesn’t it? Also makes for a provocative book title, which I hope makes it sell more copies, because it’s a really good book. I recently finished reading it, and while this isn’t really a proper review, per se, I wanted to offer a few reflections on the book.
I’ve known David for a few years now, and his first book, The Great Giveaway, shaped my thinking and practice in significant ways. He gave language for the vague feeling of unease I had about the way church was normally practiced, and didn’t just talk about what was wrong, but pointed a way forward! It was a breath of fresh air.