Book Update
Yesterday I wrapped up a round of edits on the new book, which has a new title: Centering Jesus: How the Lamb of God Transforms our Communities, Ethics, and Spiritual Lives. I finished the first draft on Good Friday this year. It went through a round of content editing which I worked through and I finished up the second draft yesterday. I have enjoyed working with the team at NavPress! We are still looking at a Summer 2023 release date.
Concept
The book’s primary concept remains the same—centering Jesus as the Lamb of God in our Christian experience.
The seed for this book came in the form of a phrase in Revelation 7:17: “…for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd….” I’m convinced that a renewed vision of Jesus as the Lamb is what we need in these unsettled days. We need the Lamb at the center of our faith and spirituality.
With all the hostility boiling just under the surface of our world we need a renewed vision of Jesus as the Lamb of God who can shepherd us in the peaceable ways of the kingdom. We need renewed practices of centering Jesus in our hearts and minds. With the deep divide in American culture and the polarization that continues to grow, we need a renewed focus on the Lamb that we might blaze a path forward into civility and kindness.
Structure
Centering Jesus imagines keeping Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of three key areas of our lives—our spiritual formation, our moral lives, and our common life together.
Spiritual formation is the work the Holy Spirit to form us into the image of Jesus. We participate with the Spirit by walking down certain spiritual pathways, particularly for Evangelical Christians those pathways have been Scripture reading and prayer. Centering Jesus in our reading of Scripture and in our life of prayer have become indispensable to healthy Christian spirituality and growth.
Our moral lives form the foundation from which we make ethical decisions. We choose what we do and what we say (both in conversation and on social media) based on who we are. If we are to be Christlike people then we need a moral center endowed by the virtues of faith, hope, and love. While much of modern evangelicalism structures moral authority around divine command theory and consequentialism, I offer virtue ethics as a healthy alternative.
Our common life together underscores God’s design for us to live in community—both Christian community and in civic society. We need Jesus at the center of our life of congregational worship together if church is to be an alternative society distinct from the division we see in the world. Finally, if we are to advocate for justice and participate in the topsy-turvy world of political discourse when need a perspective grounded and centered on King Jesus.
Chapter 1 describes the problems we experience when the Lamb is obscured from our view.
Chapter 2 walks us through some of the key biblical descriptions of the Lamb. From there we walk through the Lamb at the center of those three key areas.
Chapters 3-5 walk us through imagining the Lamb at the center of our life of spiritual formation whereby we discover the Lamb at the center of our prayer life, our lives devoted to Scripture, and our lived spirituality.
Chapters 6-8 describe a Lamb-shaped and Jesus-centered approach to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, the foundation of our moral lives.
Chapters 9-11 lead us through an exploration of the Lamb at the center of our common life together, specifically our worship life, our participation in acts of justice, and our political life.
Chapter 12 returns to where we started by envisioning the reigning Lamb in John’s revelation.
Next steps include copy editing, cover design, and then hopefully, by the beginning of 2023, the preordering process! I will be forming a launch team next year ahead of the books release. Follow me on social media. I will announce the launch of the launch team Spring 2023!
In the meantime, check out this new book from NavPress: Kingdom and Country: Following Jesus in the Land that You Love. This book is a collaborative project discussing topics like patriotism, nationalism, and Christian identity. I wrote Chapter 4, “Under the Authority of Another.”
Two other contributors and I are chatting on a live webinar next week on themes from the book. This free event will be Thursday, August 25, 2022 @ 3:30PM ET. Details are registration information is www.missioalliance.org/kingdomcitizens.