This year at the Praxis Gathering we’re submerging into a theology and practice of Loving our Neighborhood. We’ll explore the unique possibilities in the urban, suburban and rural contexts.
Meet Mike Frost
Mike is a 20-year veteran of the academy, but doesn’t consider himself an academic, but rather a teacher.
He taught at Morling College in Sydney during those years and currently holds the office of the head of the missiology department there.
Mike’s doctorate examined a mission-shaped approach to being and doing church, a subject he has written a several books on, including To Alter Your World: Partnering with God to Rebirth Our Communities, Surprise the World: The Five Habits of Highly Missional People and The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, which he coauthored with Alan Hirsch.
Mike credits much of his success to the support of his wife of over 30 years, Caz.
If you’d like to follow along with Mike, you can find his Twitter here, and his website here.
About His Books
To Alter Your World
In Christ, a new world is being born and the new creation is unfurling all around us. God is directing history toward the future restoration, repair, and renewal of all creation. And our job is to cooperate with God in being a sign and foretaste of that coming world.
Renowned missional leaders Michael Frost and Christiana Rice introduce the bold metaphor of a midwife to depict us as God’s birthing attendants as the kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.
Surprise the World
Christianity is a surprising religion. It has changed the world in remarkable ways throughout history simply through Christians living out their faith. More recently, we’ve become afraid of a habituated Christianity, thinking that routines will rob our faith of its vitality. The net effect is that we’ve replaced the habits that surprise the world with habits that mimic the world―and both we and the world suffer for it.
Integrating the five habits in the BELLS model―Bless others, Eat together, Listen to the Spirit, Learn Christ, and understand yourself as Sent by God into others’ lives―will help you spread the gospel organically, graciously, and surprisingly.
Incarnate: The Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement
12th Annual Outreach Resource of the Year Recommendation (Missional Church) 2014 Best Book of Missional Theology, from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore The story of Christianity is a story of incarnation―God taking on flesh and dwelling among the people he created. God appointing and sending people as his body, his hands and feet. Disciples of Jesus bearing the good news even as they bear the marks of his passion.
Whatever Christianity is, it is at least a matter of flesh and blood and the ends of the earth. And yet so much of contemporary Christian culture is rooted not in incarnation but in escape―escape from the earth to heaven, escape from the suffering of this world, escape even from one another. Christianity is increasingly understood as something personal, conceptual, interior, private, neighborless. If Jesus was God incarnate, the church is in danger of being excarnate.
Michael Frost expertly and prophetically exposes the gap between the faith we profess and the faith we practice. And he offers new hope for how the church can fulfill its vocation: to be the hands and feet of Christ to one another and to our neighbors, to the ends of the earth and to the end of the age.
The Shaping of Things to Come
If ever there was a time for an innovative missionary effort in the West, it is now.
The great paradox of our age is that while the need for the gospel has seldom been greater, the relevance of the church to the culture at large has seldom been less. With keen insight, thought leadrs Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost explore why the church needs to recalibrate itself and present present us with a clear understanding of how the church can adapt to face the unique challenges of the twenty-first century. Now thoroughly revised and updated with current case studies, this missional classic still shows us the way ahead.
Follow Mike on Twitter here, and don’t wait to sign up for Praxis 2017!
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