Impossible People (Paperback)

• ECPA 2017 Christian Book Award Finalist

The church in the West is at a critical moment. While the gospel is exploding throughout the global south, Western civilization faces militant assaults from aggressive secularism and radical Islam. Will the church resist the seductive shaping power of advanced modernity?

More than ever, Christians must resist the negative cultural forces of our day with fortitude and winsomeness. What is needed is followers of Christ who are willing to face reality without flinching and respond with a faithfulness that is unwavering. Os Guinness describes these Christians as "impossible people," those who have "hearts that can melt with compassion, but with faces like flint and backbones of steel who are unmanipulable, unbribable, undeterrable and unclubbable, without ever losing the gentleness, the mercy, the grace and the compassion of our Lord."

Few accounts of the challenge of today are more realistic, and few calls to Christian courage are more timely, resolute―and hopeful. Guinness argues that we must engage secularism and atheism in new ways, confronting competing ideas with discernment and fresh articulation of the faith. Christians are called to be impossible people, full of courage and mercy in challenging times.

Os Guinness (DPhil, Oxford) is the author or editor of more than thirty-five books, including The Dust of Death, The Call, Fool's Talk, Carpe Diem Redeemed, The Magna Carta of Humanity, Last Call for Liberty, Impossible People, Unspeakable, and Time for Truth. He is the founder of the Trinity Forum, a prominent social critic, and a frequent speaker who has addressed audiences worldwide. Guinness has a lifelong passion to make sense of our extraordinary modern world and stand between the worlds of scholarship and ordinary life, helping each to understand the other―particularly when advanced modern life touches on the profound issues of faith. A passionate advocate of freedom of religion and conscience for people of all faiths and none, he was the lead drafter for both the Williamsburg Charter and the Global Charter of Conscience. He lives with his wife, Jenny, in the Washington, DC, area.