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The Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto against the Status Quo
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About The Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto Against The
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Prodigal Church A Gentle Manifesto against the Status Quo By Jared C. Wilson Good News PublishersCopyright © 2015 Jared C. Wilson All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4335-4461-3 Contents Copyright, Introduction: The Parable of the Prodigal Church, 1 What This Book Is Not, 2 What If the System's Broken?, 3 What Works?, 4 The Bible Is Not an Instruction Manual, 5 From Watching to Beholding, 6 Biting Off More Than You Can Chew, 7 Pastoring Hearts, 8 A Way Forward, 9 The Prodigal Church Comes Home, 10 A Portrait of the Author as a Young Man, Conclusion: A Call to the Gospel Renaissance, Recommended Reading, General Index, Scripture Index, CHAPTER 1 What This Book Is Not I dare you to read this book. I don't dare you as someone who aims to make you mad (or sad), but as someone who himself has been dared to read things that have challenged his own assumptions and presumptions — which benefited him greatly in the long run. I just want to appeal to your desire as a leader to stretch and grow and be thoughtful and have firmer convictions than ever before. I just want to ask you some questions. I want to show you some things. I want you to consider some different lines of thinking, even if they end up leading you right back to affirming what you already thought. If you don't like the book, return it and ask for a refund. Tell them I'm an idiot and these pages should line birdcages. But please give me the chance to earn your rejection. And if you will make the commitment to hear me out to the very end, I make these promises to you: This Book Is Not a Rant I'm pretty good at rants. Or at least, I feel pretty good when I rant. But this book will not be a grand venting. Who wants that? Not you. Not me. We've all had enough yelling in the Christian world, I think, or at least enough yelling about things that don't need yelling about. I don't know about you, but I've got LOUD NOISES fatigue. When someone who disagrees with me thinks the only way to convince me is to trigger the All Caps button and lay heavy hands on the Exclamation Point key, I tune them out right-quick. When I came up with the idea for this book, it began as an extension of things I've been thinking, writing, and preaching about for nearly ten years now, but this project is really the culmination of twenty years of life and ministry. I'm not writing purely from theory but from experience. But I also knew that some of the ways I've written about issues related to church models and methodology in the past would not be suitable for this book. Not because those previous ways were wrong, necessarily, but because they were often for different audiences, perhaps too often for the already convinced. Like many of you, I have that "spiritual gift" of sarcasm, but too often that kind of humor is used in harmful, cutting ways, in ways that are counterproductive. Like lots of people, I can too often vent my frustrations rather than plead my case. I want to take the Bible seriously when it says that venting is foolish (Prov. 29:11). There's definitely a place for harsh words. We see them used in a variety of ways in the Bible, including to correct wrong belief and wrong action. But what I want you to read here isn't intended as a rebuke. I don't want to appall you; I want to appeal to you. I won't snip at you or nag you. I might pester you, but I definitely don't want to pick on you. I'm also not writing this book to preach to the choir, which is all that ranting really ends up accomplishing. Preaching to the choir can be fine and good (the choir needs the preaching, too), but I know that if we expect others to not just hear what we're saying but also to actually consider it, we have to be kind, respectful, and affirming of all that we can affirm. So I won't lie and say this isn't a manifesto. It is. But hopefully it will be a gentle one. You can be the judge of whether I succeed or not. This Book Is Not an Argument for a
