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Jesus the Fool: A mission of uncovential truth.

“While conventional saints renounce the profane world in order to devote their lives to God through chastity, poverty, and humility, the saintly fools prefer life out in the open in the secular world.  They tend to be conspicuously public figures, encounter more readily on the street than in a church or monastery.”
Jesus the Fool: Michael Frost, 1994 Isbn 978-14412-3280-9

Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post Christian Culture

So, this book is written to those who feel like exiles in a post-Christendom era. If you are like me, you have no stomach for calling the church back to the old ways that were developed during Christendom. … How will we practice our critical distance from our context? How will we express our radical promises to this world? As mentioned earlier, we must begin by casting ourselves back to our most wonderful, but dangerous, memories. We must begin with the example of Jesus himself. Before we begin strategizing or scheming, we twenty-first century Christians most reposition ourselves chiefly, first and foremost, as people of the way of Christ.”

Michael Frost : Baker Academic, Div of Baker Publishing Group (Aug 2006)  ISBN-10: 192120284X

Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens

Churches have tried all kinds of ways to attract new and younger members - revised vision statements, hipper worship, contemporary music, livelier sermons, bigger and better auditoriums. But there are still so many people who aren't being reached, who don't want to come to church. And the truth is that attendance at church on Sundays does not necessarily transform lives; God's presence in our hearts is what changes us. Leaders and laypeople everywhere are realizing that they need new and more powerful ways to help them spread God's Word. According to international church starter and pastor Neil Cole, if we want to connect with young people and those who are not coming to church, we must go where people congregate. Cole shows readers how to plant the seeds of the Kingdom of God in the places where life happens and where culture is formed - restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, parks, locker rooms, and neighborhoods. Organic Church offers a hands-on guide for demystifying this new model of church and shows the practical aspects of implementing it.

Neil Cole: John Wiley & Sons (7 Oct 2005) ISBN-10: 078798129X

Finding Organic Church: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Sustaining Authentic Christian Communities

Publisher's Description

From the bestselling author of Reimagining Church comes an essential guide that provides practical, effective tools for finding vibrant Christian communities. Driven by a passion for the body of Christ, Frank Viola has written some of today's most authoritative and celebrated works on the growing home, organic, and missional church movements.  Now Viola shares practical keys to a healthy and successful church plant.

Viola contends that many congregations today are struggling to survive, not because of bad planning, but poor planting.  He presents an essential guide for starting and nourishing organic churches in any culture.  Drawing from both Scripture and a wealth of experience, Viola offers real-world tools, insights, and practical suggestions so churches won't just grow, but thrive.

Frank Viola: David C Cook Publishing Company; New edition (29 May 2009) ISBN-10: 143476866X

IRRESISTIBLE REVOLUTION: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Living as an Ordinary RadicalMany of us find ourselves caught somewhere between unbelieving activists and inactive believers. We can write a check to feed starving children or hold signs in the streets and feel like we've made a difference without ever encountering the faces of the suffering masses. In this book, Shane Claiborne describes an authentic faith rooted in belief, action, and love, inviting us into a movement of the Spirit that begins inside each of us and extends into a broken world. Shane's faith led him to dress the wounds of lepers with Mother Teresa, visit families in Iraq amidst bombings, and dump $10,000 in coins and bills on Wall Street to redistribute wealth. Shane lives out this revolution each day in his local neighborhood, an impoverished community in North Philadelphia, by living among the homeless, helping local kids with homework, and 'practicing resurrection' in the forgotten places of our world. Shane's message will comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable . . . but will also invite us into an irresistible revolution. His is a vision for ordinary radicals ready to change the world with little acts of love.

Shane Claiborne: Zondervan; Soft Cover edition (31 Mar 2006) ISBN-10: 0310266300

ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

ReJesus asks the following questions:
* What ongoing role does Jesus the Messiah play in shaping the ethos and self understanding of the movement that originated in him?
* How is the Christian religion informed and shaped by the Jesus that we meet in the Gospels?
* How do we assess the continuity required between the life and example of Jesus and the subsequent religion called Christianity?
* In how many ways do we domesticate the radical Revolutionary in order to sustain our religion and religiosity?
* How can a rediscovery of Jesus renew our discipleship, the Christian community, and the ongoing mission of the church?
These questions take us to the core of what the church is all about. Rather than reformation, the authors call their task re-founding the church because it raises the issue of the Church's true Founder or Foundation. This theme is of particular importance at the dawn of the twenty-first century as many attempt to address Christianity's endemic and long trended decline in the West. The authors feel that a spiritual, theological, missional, and existential crisis looms in the West.

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch: Hendrickson Publishers Inc (1 Feb 2009) ISBN-10: 1598562282

The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church

Christendom is dying and needs to be removed from its life-support system. Starting with this frank assessment of the current church, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch present an alternative model for ministry in today’s postmodern world. Instead of mourning the demise of the Western church as the center of society, the authors explain how the church can be reborn through incarnational mission, messianic spirituality, and apostolic structure. Church leaders who heed the authors’ call will see death turned into new life through the creation of a vital, missional church.

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch: Baker Academic, Div of Baker Publishing Group; Reprint edition (1 Jan 2004) ISBN-10: 0801046300

The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church

Alan Hirsch is convinced that the inherited formulas for growing the Body of Christ do not work anymore. And rather than relying on slightly revised solutions from the past, he sees a vision of the future growth of the church coming about by harnessing the power of the early church, which grew from as few as 25,000 adherents in AD 100 to up to 20 million in AD 310. Such incredible growth is also being experienced today in the church in China and other parts of the world. How do they do it? "The Forgotten Ways" explores the concept of Apostolic Genius as a way to understand what caused the church to expand at various times in history, interpreting it for use in our own time and place. From the theological underpinnings to the practical application, Hirsch takes the reader through this dynamic mixture of passion, prayer, and incarnational practice to rediscover the dormant potential of the modern church in the West.

Alan Hirsch: Brazos Press, Div of Baker Publishing Group (1 Jan 2007) ISBN-10: 1587431645

Right Here, Right Now: Everyday Mission for Everyday People

People in all walks of life are discovering what it means to be involved, concerned, missional Christians. But simply having block parties or spending more time downtown is not enough to describe what it means to be a missional people. What is needed is a reformation of the way we actually live our lives as Jesus followers. We need to see a way of living faithfully to God's mission in the world, right here, right now. In this inspiring yet practical book, Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford equip believers to live missionally regardless of situation, vocation, or location, making the concept of being missional accessible to the whole body of Christ. Touching on issues of discipleship, spirituality, and church at every level of experience, Right Here, Right Now calls readers to be the people God has made them to be.

Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford: Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group (1 Feb 2011) ISBN-10: 0801072239