Thin Places: Six Postures for Creating and Practicing Missional Community - Softcover

Huckins, Jon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 083412887X ISBN 13: 9780834128873

Publisher: The House Studio, 2012

Synopsis

While praying for his community on the Island of Iona, the Celtic monk St. Columba described his experience as a thin place- a location where heaven and earth seemed only thinly separated.In the same way, God’s kingdom is being realized here on earth with stories of restoration and redemption. Our God moved into the neighborhood, seeking to invite us into his story of reconciliation, and commission us to missionally engage our neighborhoods with the good news of the kingdom.Joining the concepts of monasticism and mission, author Jon Huckins will walk you through six postures of missional formation: listening, submerging, inviting, contending, imagining, and entrusting. As you begin to employ these postures, become apprentices of Jesus who are committed to living in and experiencing the thin places.Through Thin Places, create a fertile soil to commune with God, live in deep community with others, and extend the good news of the kingdom in your local contexts.

About this title

About the Author

Jon Huckins lives in San Diego and is on staff with NieuCommunities, a collective of missional church communities who foster leadership and community development. After much international travel and study in the Middle East, Jon focuses much of his writing and speaking on ethics and social advocacy. He has a Master s degree from Fuller Theological Seminary and writes for numerous publications including Red Letter Christians, Burnside Writer s Collective and his book Teaching Through the Art of Storytelling.

Rob Yackley lives in San Diego and is the lead architect and director of NieuCommunities. Rob has helped birth and lead missional communities in over a dozen countries and mentors young missional leaders in diverse cultural settings across the globe. He holds a Masters of Leadership and Theology from Talbot Seminary, but has learned the most important things by trying to follow Jesus with people he loves.

Review

I thoroughly loved this book and found myself saying Amen at every page. A primer in incarnational mission by those who have lived it and taught it for well over a decade. --Michael Frost, Author of The Shaping of Things to Come and The Road to Missional

As God continues to call the church to it's most powerful essence of missional communities, Thin Places offers an inspirational look into practices and postures that forge God's people together and propel them outward. --Hugh Halter, Author of The Tangible Kingdom, AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church, and Sacrilege

Over the past decade interest in community life and neighborhood engagement have emerged as significant themes for a new generation of Christ followers who yearn for embodied and holistic spirituality. To thrive, this world-wild movement needs practical resources, born from historical awareness, thoughtful reflection and most importantly lived experience. Thin Places by Jon Huckins, is precisely this kind of storied resource, a tool that can equip groups to practice the way of Jesus and make a life together in their local contexts for the good of the world. --Mark Scandrette, Author of Practicing the Way of Jesus and Executive Director at ReIMAGINE

The terms 'missional' and 'monastic' are all too often tossed around by Christians as buzz words, an unfortunate reality given the importance of both terms. That is why Thin Places is such a gift to the church! Not only do the authors understand and protect the integrity of both concepts, but bring them together in a way that points us towards an exciting future as God's people actively living into His kingdom. --Jamie Arpin-Ricci, Pastor and Author of The Cost of Community:Jesus, St. Francis & Life in the Kingdom

The call of faith has always included living in community. The thing is, it is really hard. And there are not enough places where gritty community meets possibility. In short, these are people who know what they are doing in creating Christian community and Thin Places not only chronicles their experiences, but invites other communities to imagine how to do the same. --Doug Pagitt, Pastor of Solomon's Porch and Author of Preaching Re-Imagined and Church Re-Imagined

In the modern world of exponential speed and individual mobility, there is a growing hunger for a faith that can be lived out together... where we can be present, where there is an embodied practice, where the gospel becomes tangible in a particular place. NieuCommunities extends the rare gift of a transformative discipleship process that is full-bodied and place-based. --Paul Sparks, Founding Co-Director Parish Collective

It has become painfully obvious to many that the religious atmosphere of the West has drastically changed. Are we Christians still to be a people animated by the Gospel? If so, than more than ever, we need small bands of people like NieuCommunities that move into neighborhoods with the Gospel in their hearts and shaping how the live to change our communities for the sake of the Kingdom. --Jason Evans, Founder of the Ecclesia Collective

No one does community better than the NieuCommunities tribe who value both authentic life change as well as missional impact. For over ten years NieuCommunities has formed people who look, love, act, and live like Jesus. This new book chronicles their journey and gives those passionate to live different, for Christ, hope. I highly recommend this read. --Terry Walling, President of Leader Breakthru and Author of Stuck!

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At a time when many are talking about missional communities, NieuCommunities quietly and expertly goes about doing it--forming young men and women and transforming neighborhoods. The vitality of NieuCommunities is less about what is being said than what is being lived. You'll want to read this book and listen to their story. --John Hayes, Founder of innerCHANGE and Author of Submerge, and Living Deep in a Shallow World

As the Church is rediscovering its missional ethos within a post-Christian culture that has been saturated with religious consumerism and nominal commitment, we have needed communities that could model a new path forward for us. NieuCommunities has done just that and I excitedly anticipate a book that captures their journey. --Kyle Osland, Pastor of Icon Church, San Diego

In an age when we are so often (de)formed by default by the forces of consumerism and individualism, NieuCommunities offers an alternative formation: intentional mentoring relationships shaped by kingdom practices of community, service, cultural engagement, scripture and prayer. Surely this way of mentoring is a vital pathway for re-forming the church to participate in the mission of God. --Tim Dickau, Pastor of Grandview Church, Vancouver, B.C. and Author of Plunging Into the Kingdom Way: Practicing the Shared Strokes of Community, Hospitality, Justice, and Confession

The Christian Scriptures tells us that in the present life we will receive hundredfold in houses and for many of us that's hard to believe but at NieuCommunities you get to experience this reality come true. Where there is a NieuCommunities there you will find people with houses ready to share with all who come to find rest and it is by this commitment to hospitality that we experience the Scriptures coming alive. --Darin Petersen, of Relational Tithe and The Simple Way --Darin Petersen, of Relational Tithe and The Simple Way ----

Over the past decade interest in community life and neighborhood engagement have emerged as significant themes for a new generation of Christ followers who yearn for embodied and holistic spirituality. To thrive, this world-wild movement needs practical resources, born from historical awareness, thoughtful reflection and most importantly lived experience. Thin Places by Jon Huckins, is precisely this kind of storied resource, a tool that can equip groups to practice the way of Jesus and make a life together in their local contexts for the good of the world. --Mark Scandrette, Author of Practicing the Way of Jesus and Executive Director at ReIMAGINE

Edition details

• Publisher: The House Studio
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 083412887X
• ISBN 13: 9780834128873
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 160