Book Review: Off-Road Disciplines
Subtitle: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders
By: Earl Creps
Amazon Page
Note: I received this book for free, with the understanding that I would provide a review of it on my blog.
Quote: "Are we participating in expanding the Kingdom of God, or just rearranging it?"
The disciplines that Creps covers are not the traditional ones (fasting, prayer, mediation, etc), but rather they are 12 practices that he views as necessary for those who wish to be missional leaders. He takes a chapter to cover each one. Briefly, they are:
Death - dying to self and selfish desires. It is not asking, "How we should do our worship services," but rather "How can I be changed so that others will find me worth following in mission?"
Truth (sacred realism) - finding and facing the facts, especially unpleasant ones, about our churches and our lives.
Perspective - the need to interpret culture to arrive at a strategy for mission, and the recognition that different people hear the same message differently.
Learning (reverse mentoring) - friendship wherein the junior instructs the senior, especially in the cultural and technological areas.
Witness (spiritual friendship) - "internal change catalyzed by spending time with the people God reaches out to through us."
Humility - decreasing of yourself, so that God can increase.
Assessment (missional efficiency) - learning to measure what we want to happen. The idea is that you tend to strive for what you measure, in the academic world for instance, many colleges say they want great teachers, but want they measure and reward is academic publishing. Guess what they get?
Harmony - Organizing around shared devotion to God's mission rather than causing division over non-essentials.
Reflection - "thinking theologically in ways that enable us to listen to God, discerning how to root our lives and ministries in the person of Christ and the mission of God."
Opportunity - creating environments where God calls the sought (Creps' preferred terminology for non-Christians) to himself. We can no longer depend (if we ever good) on the sought coming to us; we must find ways to go to them.
Sacrifice - surrendering preferences in order to keep unity of mission. Creps' focus here is on the need for younger people to accept that change may not come as fast as wanted, and to respect the preference of their elders.
Legacy - training up the next generation of leaders, including giving them significant responsibility now, and the recognition that they will be different from you.
Throughout the book Creps talks about changes in culture both within and outside the church. I'd say that it's a pretty solid book that makes some good points.
Technorati tags: Book Review Off-Road Disciplines Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders Earl Creps
By: Earl Creps
Amazon Page
Note: I received this book for free, with the understanding that I would provide a review of it on my blog.
Quote: "Are we participating in expanding the Kingdom of God, or just rearranging it?"
The disciplines that Creps covers are not the traditional ones (fasting, prayer, mediation, etc), but rather they are 12 practices that he views as necessary for those who wish to be missional leaders. He takes a chapter to cover each one. Briefly, they are:
Death - dying to self and selfish desires. It is not asking, "How we should do our worship services," but rather "How can I be changed so that others will find me worth following in mission?"
Truth (sacred realism) - finding and facing the facts, especially unpleasant ones, about our churches and our lives.
Perspective - the need to interpret culture to arrive at a strategy for mission, and the recognition that different people hear the same message differently.
Learning (reverse mentoring) - friendship wherein the junior instructs the senior, especially in the cultural and technological areas.
Witness (spiritual friendship) - "internal change catalyzed by spending time with the people God reaches out to through us."
Humility - decreasing of yourself, so that God can increase.
Assessment (missional efficiency) - learning to measure what we want to happen. The idea is that you tend to strive for what you measure, in the academic world for instance, many colleges say they want great teachers, but want they measure and reward is academic publishing. Guess what they get?
Harmony - Organizing around shared devotion to God's mission rather than causing division over non-essentials.
Reflection - "thinking theologically in ways that enable us to listen to God, discerning how to root our lives and ministries in the person of Christ and the mission of God."
Opportunity - creating environments where God calls the sought (Creps' preferred terminology for non-Christians) to himself. We can no longer depend (if we ever good) on the sought coming to us; we must find ways to go to them.
Sacrifice - surrendering preferences in order to keep unity of mission. Creps' focus here is on the need for younger people to accept that change may not come as fast as wanted, and to respect the preference of their elders.
Legacy - training up the next generation of leaders, including giving them significant responsibility now, and the recognition that they will be different from you.
Throughout the book Creps talks about changes in culture both within and outside the church. I'd say that it's a pretty solid book that makes some good points.
Technorati tags: Book Review Off-Road Disciplines Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders Earl Creps
posted by Freethinker at 4:01:00 PM
2 Comments:
Hmm, but did you really learn anything new from this book, or did it just try to categorize everything that makes up an effective missional-type person? Was it any good?
I thought it was ok, but not great. There wasn't really anything new in it for me. His idea did seem to be mainly explaining needed qualities.
Post a Comment
<< Home