February 25, 2009See the Movie; Don't Wait for the BookSome of our books have been turned into movies! Well, not really, but we’ve created videos to profile a number of our books. They’re all viewable from our website, but many of them are also available on YouTube. Here’s the top ten, according to the number of times they’ve been viewed on that site as of this morning. Check them out to get a feel for the books and their authors. 1. Evil and the Justice of God 2. Basic Christianity, 50th Anniversary Edition 6 (Tie). Strengthen the Soul of Your Leadership 9. Too Busy Not to Pray, 10th Anniversary Edition There are plenty others, along with videos related to the books but not posted by us, including James Choung’s two-part video describing his True Story. So if you find yourself thinking, I wonder what Love Is an Orientation author Andrew Marin’s voice sounds like, truck on over to YouTube and wonder no more. Posted by Dave Zimmerman
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February 20, 2009Why I Wrote My BookWhy does an author decide to undertake writing a book? In this blog Todd Hunter talks about his motives for writing. I wrote Christianity Beyond Belief for two important reasons. First, I am convinced the low level of discipleship in the American church is not in spite of the gospel Christian leaders have been teaching and preaching, but precisely because of it. I know that may be a counterintuitive, even subversive thought—so let me explain. A gospel that has only to do with sins being forgiven so that one can go to heaven when they die cannot produce and sustain and life of spiritual transformation for the sake of being God’s people. We need a larger view of the Good News of what God is up to in and through human beings. We need Jesus’ Gospel: the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus’ Gospel includes forgiveness of sins and eternal life, but—and this is crucial—it cannot be reduced to it. The gospel of the Kingdom has to do with becoming, through grace and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the cooperative friends of Jesus, who live constant lives of creative goodness for the sake of others through the power of the Holy Spirit. That story, unlike the story of going to heaven when you die, can produce a new life—which is of course an eternal kind of life. Second, my decades long practice as a pastor tells me that we Christians tend to misunderstand the nature of community and its essential connection to both evangelism and serving others. Driving 20 to 30 minutes across town to go to church for an hour or so does not constitute community. Neither does adding a drive 20 to 30 minutes in the other direction mid-week to attend a home group. Community, by definition, means unplanned, routine contact. Community is what you have at work, school, recreation or neighborhood. Those are the places in which we learn to follow Jesus for the sake of others. My Three is Enough groups are a way to help get going with a vision for discipleship and mission within the already existing rhythms and routines of your life. Posted by Cindy Bunch
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February 16, 2009Meet Todd HunterMeet Todd Hunter, author of the just-released book Christianity Beyond Belief. Todd is a well-traveled speaker and leader (he recently stepped down from leading Alpha USA to start his own ministry), and this is his first book. In honor of his release we have asked him to write a few blogs to introduce his book. From Todd Hunter: “Discipleship is not something you learn. A disciple is someone you become.” My response to this quote from Jim Griffith and Bill Easum in *Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Plants *(Chalice Press, 2008) is yes and no—but mostly yes. We tend to think of discipleship as only content—subject matter found in a curriculum guide or a book; content that can be reduced to words that fill in the blanks on an outline we keep in a notebook. In actuality, discipleship is a whole-life, embodied and social reality. This is the major, true and useful idea from the quote above: discipleship has a conceptual, cognitive component. At the same time it cannot be reduced to just that. To use a $45 word, but one perfectly suited for our use here, we could say that discipleship is not coterminous with content. Discipleship includes learning doctrine, Christian history, theology and so on, but it also goes way beyond it. It has to do mainly with following Jesus—learning to live our lives as he would live them if he were in our particular place. Obviously to follow Jesus well we have to know enough right things about him—his worldview, values, way-of-life—to actually imitate his model in our lives. Having thought about this with me for a couple minutes, I’ll bet you can see where this is going: learning is not just content. Learning, in the sense of the ability to imitate and embody worldview and value system has to do with our whole being—body, soul, mind, heart and social self. So thanks Jim and Bill. It is true: Discipleship is not something you learn. A disciple is someone you become. Posted by Cindy Bunch
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