Worth Celebrating: A Biography of Richard J. Foster's Celebration of Discipline - Hardcover

Dixon, Miriam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594981132 ISBN 13: 9781594981135

Publisher: Barclay Press, 2024

Synopsis

An unknown author writes an unlikely book and inadvertently sparks an improbable global movement.

The manuscript was written longhand on a yellow pad in a small Oregon town by a Quaker pastor describing twelve ancient Christian disciplines (the very definition of the term "unlikely"). But publishers at Harper & Row saw something special in what Richard Foster had written and took a risk.

The movement kindled by the book developed slowly, almost imperceptibly. But once it caught hold, it exploded into flame.

Celebration of Discipline was conceived during a period in history that Charles Dickens might describe as being the best of times and the worst of times. From its inception, American culture had been linked to Christian faith and values. We were "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The 1950s and early '60s saw the peak years of American churchgoing, when 70 percent of citizens attended church. But as the decade of the '60s stretched on, values and perspectives that had long been accepted as foundational to American faith and life began to come into question.

When Celebration of Discipline spotlighted the superficiality that had come to characterize Christianity, it ignited the spiritual formation movement by prescribing the ancient spiritual practices as the necessary corrective. Michael Maudlin, religion publisher at HarperCollins, acknowledges, "People do not remember how Christians thought about spiritual formation in Christ before Celebration of Discipline was published. Most everybody now thinks it is natural for evangelicals to practice spiritual Disciplines. But it was not always so. Celebration of Discipline serves as a wonderful window into how a book can change a subculture."

This is the story of that book.

About this title

About the Author

Miriam (Mimi) Dixon began her ministry in 1979 as an associate pastor at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington. From April of 1985 to May of 2019, she served as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Golden, Colorado. She earned both her MDiv and DMin degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary. Mimi is on the Renovaré Board of Directors and teaches for the Renovaré Institute. She is faculty for Next Frontiers, a ministry to pastors in transition, and actively promotes Christian Spiritual Formation, crediting Richard Foster and Dallas Willard for their influence in her life and ministry.

Edition details

• Publisher: Barclay Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594981132
• ISBN 13: 9781594981135
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 236