Here are a few new book releases from this week that are worth checking out:
(Where possible, we have also tried to include a review/interview related to each of the new book releases …)
The Sacred Overlap: Learning to Live Faithfully in the Space Between
J.R. Briggs
The widening of political, racial, generational, and religious differences often leads to an “us vs. them” mentality all too common today. In The Sacred Overlap, author J.R. Briggs communicates a refreshing vision that embraces tension and calls us to live in radical love and faithfulness between the extremes that isolate and divide people.
Read the gospels and you’ll see how Jesus was committed to crossing cultural, social, political and religious either/or waters, engaging in many and/also activities. He comforted the disturbed and also disturbed the comfortable. He was too religious for the pagans and also too pagan for the religious elites. He hung out with filthy lepers and also dined with the filthy rich. He was alarming and disarming at the same time.
This is not a spineless embrace of religious syncretism where we take bits from world religions, personal preferences, and ideologies and throw them into a cosmic blender for a tasty theological smoothie. Instead, Briggs offers a fresh understanding of evangelism and discipleship, showing how we need to be engaged in both of these at the same time. He shares creative ways to engage with God’s mission with those who are intrigued about Jesus, but turned off by church. He explores what it means to be joyful in the midst of heart wrenching pain and suffering in the world. And he models what it means to maintain a posture of convicted civility which emphasizes equally both grace and truth.
The Sacred Overlap helps readers see that Christians are called to live with their feet firmly planted in two different worlds–in both heaven and earth–living naturally with grace and truth. Only then can a Christian be a faithful witness in the way of Jesus.
*** LISTEN to a podcast interview with the author …
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 Reading for the Common Good From ERB Editor Christopher Smith "This book will inspire, motivate and challenge anyone who cares a whit about the written word, the world of ideas, the shape of our communities and the life of the church." -Karen Swallow Prior Enter your email below to sign up for our weekly newsletter & download your FREE copy of this ebook! |
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