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Australian Christian Resources |
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This book is a resounding call to Christian discipleship. Ashley Barker shows compellingly that we don't have to add "radical" to discipleship because Jesus' call is deeply radical.
In these pages you will find a passionate and personal call to be counter cultural. Ashley Barker is gripped by the vision of God's transforming presence working itself out in the lives of the poor. He calls us to dive below the shallowness of our culture, to gain our lives by losing them and to take up a socially "downward journey" to complement our inward and outward journeys.
He honours the call of the radicals of my generation for a triple conversionto Jesus Christ, to the poor and to intentional communitybut takes far more seriously the sustainability of mission amongst the poor and powerless. It's for this reason that his community, Urban Neighbours of Hope (UNOH), has retrieved and renewed the ancient tradition of a "gospel order", requiring commitment to community practices that nourish our journeys. We need each other if we are to embody the Good News in fractured and exploited communities.
Here you will find stories, illustrations, a bubbling biblical spring, acknowledgement of failure, humour and gems of insightall united by a grand vision of co-operating with God in developing "villages centred on Christ", particularly among the urban poor.
This book is a totally rewritten and expanded "cousin" of Ashley Barker's earlier book (co-written with John Hayes) Sub-Merge: Living Deep in a Shallow World (2002).
