Book Review...

I've been preparing my courses for the fall semester at CTS. I will be teaching Spiritual Leadership Development from October to January, and then in November, will teach an intensive course on the subject of Mentoring. I'm looking forward to teaching these courses, but have a lot of work to do!

My reading has led me to a book by Dr. Earl Creps (www.earlcreps.com), former coordinator of the DMin program at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, and now a church-planting pastor in Berkeley, California. Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders. (Thanks, Dr. Creps, for sending me the book.) I've been challenged by all of my reading on the emerging and missional churches, and the leaders that move in this direction. For the Assemblies of God, Creps has helped to move our fellowship in this direction.

Off-Road takes us through a journey of thinking differently: about the church, about how we lead, about how to reach a world and generation that think differently than those before. Off-Road Disciplines has reinforced my thinking that if we (Christians of today) continue to evangelize and "do" church as we have always known it to be (not stepping out of the proverbial box built around us), we may actually miss opportunities to share the greatest message ever told, with people that are eager to build relationships - albeit perhaps in a bit different way than we are accustom to.

I'll be using Creps thoughts about "Reverse Mentoring" for my course this fall, and am hopeful that I will also put this discipline into practice as I disciple and train students - to learn from them, to think differently, to see the world around me through a different set of lenses.

Thanks, Dr. Creps, for taking us off-road, so that we can be relevant and purposeful in our mission of preaching Christ!