We are super pumped to try out two new things for our community that we believe will add value and help us grow as men of God in amazing ways, together! Though the ideas came up as separate questions, they compliment each other nicely… Funny how that works, huh?
So let’s get right to it:
We Are Reading A Book Together As A Community And Want You To Join Us!
We have some avid book worms in our community, as well as some guys who simply enjoy a good read as they can. So recently in our behind-the-scenes communications app, we began discussing the idea of reading a book together! When Gerald White mentioned he was just beginning Sensing Jesus: Life and Ministry as a Human, and multiple other guys said they loved it or have it on the list to read asap, it was decided. We’re doing this!
So… will you join us!?
You can support TheMajestysMen.com by using our affiliate code when you buy:
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How This Reading Will Work
Sensing Jesus is not a theology book from long ago. This is a new and fairly easy-reading type of book — though highly challenging (and encouraging) to your soul! You can read more about the book at the end of this post!
Our bro, Gerald, will be heading up our weekly reading plan and we’ll adapt as we go. Gerald, like others, is a busy young man with work, a wife, and kids. So we won’t be storming through this at an unreasonable rate! We will take it and estimated 50 pages per week, which we believe you’ll find easy to do with this book! This should finish it in about a month.
You’ll then be invited to write some brief thoughts for a blog post, published here, as a recap on what we learned as a group. Of course, at any point in the process, you’re welcome to write a whole post on something about it yourself!
This brings us to our next big new idea! Each week we will be discussing this book together in our Slack communications app!
We Are Opening Up Our Private Community To More Like-Minded Brothers!
Our “chat community” app has been only for contributors on the blog for the past year, but we’ve contemplated opening it up to more guys who perhaps are not interested in contributing to the blog but wouldn’t mind knowing some strong guys to walk through life and develop with!
This book reading plan gives us a great opportunity to try it out! So, if you’re interested in either joining us as we read through the book and discussing it in our #reading channel, or you’re simply interested in chatting and growing with access to like-minded brothers, then…
Request Your Invite!
[contact-form-7 id=”4016″ title=”Slack Signup”]
About Sensing Jesus, by Zack Eswine
From Crossway, the publisher:
This is a book about the behind-the-scenes reality of a life in ministry. It tells you what Zack Eswine wishes somebody else would’ve told him.
With over 20 years of experience in ministry, Zack shares with incredible honesty about his own failures, burnout, and pain, all the while addressing the complexities of leadership decisions, church discipline, family dynamics, and so on.
Presenting sound pastoral theology couched in autobiographical musings and powerful prose, this book offers a fresh and biblically faithful approach to the care of souls, including your own.
About the author, Zack Eswine:
Zack Eswine (Ph.D.), is an award winning author who writes about the significance of an ordinary life and ministry in Jesus. With a poetic and personal style Zack seeks to pay attention to the questions, desires and circumstances of the human heart as we wrestle with who Jesus is and discern what his life has to do with ours. Zack serves as a pastor in Webster Groves Missouri where he and his family live. Check out his website at www.zackeswine.com
Editorial Reviews:
“C. S. Lewis wrote that friendship is born when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . . ‘ Many pastors will find a new friend in this remarkable book. What makes this book both approachable and powerful is its honesty—that rare treasure we pastors are sometimes afraid to make our own. Zack Eswine gives us a front row seat to his heart. In seeing him, we see ourselves. But far better, we also see Jesus in his all-sufficiency for us. To everyone who wants to serve the Lord with a heart set free from pretense, I commend Sensing Jesus.”
—Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Lead Pastor, Immanuel Church, Nashville, Tennessee
“This is one of the finest books on being a pastor written in this generation. I plan to use Sensing Jesus as required read for our pastoral theology students here at Covenant Seminary. The book is heart-wrenchingly honest about Zack’s own hopes and dreams and about the challenges of dealing with the praise that is heaped on a gifted young communicator of God’s Word. It is this rare honesty that makes the book a must read for anyone called to a life of ministry. Along with this painful and necessary openness, Zack has written not only with a practical helpfulness but also with a kindness of spirit about the follies, sins, and troubles that anyone engaged in serving others is constantly encountering. His careful exposition of Scripture is interwoven with unforgettable stories that bind the points he makes to the hearts of his readers. This will be an outstanding addition to the library of every pastor and teacher, indeed of anyone committed to ministry.”
—Jerram Barrs, Resident Scholar of the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Theological Seminary; author, Freedom and Discipleship and The Heart of Prayer
“This book is simultaneously deeply distressing and profoundly comforting. The rhythmic interchange between these two seemingly opposite impacts surprisingly convinced me that this is one of the most helpful books on pastoring that I have read since my ordination in 1978. Ruthless self-address and unvarnished vulnerability are here wed to searching exegesis and an obvious purposed submission to the text of Holy Scripture. . The reader of this work will likely find remaining neutral and numb to their own mediocrity a difficult task!”
—Joseph V. Novenson, Pastor, Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee
“After marinating in Sensing Jesus, I have two responses—one of lament and one of joy. Where was this book when I was stuck in the unrelenting grind of performance-based pastoring; the spiritual schizophrenia of preaching the gospel of grace with a frozen heart; the lonely pedestal of a pulpit surrounded by thousands of people? But joy fills my heart as I realize what a great book I now have with which to mentor young pastors and preachers. Zack, thank you for stewarding your pain and God’s gospel.”
—Scotty Smith, Teacher in Residence, West End Community Church, Nashville, Tennessee
“In prose that is warmly authentic and deeply rooted in the wisdom of Scripture and a life well examined, Zack Eswine invites those who minister to pause and reflect. Eswine unfolds a lovely biblical vision of ministry that embraces the localities, limits, physicality, and margins of our finiteness that God deems good. Devotional, rich in insight, gentle in teaching, Sensing Jesus is also profoundly convicting in challenging us to embody what we profess to believe. This is not abstract pastoral theology; it is an understanding of ministry for all ministers, lay or professional, who find, perhaps to their surprise or disappointment, that they are human beings, body and soul. If you do ministry, please believe me: Sensing Jesus is must reading.”
—Denis Haack, Director, Ransom Fellowship; Visiting Instructor in practical theology, Covenant Seminary
Again, You Can Support TheMajestysMen.com When You Buy The Book:
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