SkintightTransformation

Surrendered & Untamed

 God is involved in our lives every day.  He is in the big details and the small details.  Jason Clark, in his book, Surrendered and Untamed, gives us a chance to see how the stories that make up our lives are God calling us to live an exciting and abundant life. 

I believe you will especially relate to this book if any of the following statements are true about you: 

When it comes to living the Christian life, it seems I’m on the outside looking in.
A lot of people find it difficult to ‘fit in’ to the normal Christian life or in church ministry.  In his book, Jason recounts his journey with stories from his recent and distant past that led him to key crossroads in his life.  If you feel like you’re out on the fringe and looking in, then you don’t want to miss Jason’s honesty about his calling and ministry.

 

It is hard for me to see God at work in my daily life.

I love to listen to someone share a personal story; stories are great because they are easy to identify with and fun to listen to.  Most of us don’t really see God at work in the ‘average day’ in our lives.  In fact, I can go days and weeks with out taking the time to reflect where God is at work in my daily life.  This book will help you to see how significant our day to day lives are as Jason unpacks the big and small truths of God’s nature from his life.  This book is jam packed with story after story of how God’s truth impacts Jason’s life.

 

I think God is calling me to take new risks for His Kingdom

I can only play it safe for so long before I am chomping at the bit to take some risks in my personal, spiritual and ministry life.  I love to see God reward faith in my life and in the lives of others.  Jason does a great job of building your faith in his book to take some risks and live a Kingdom minded life!

 

There is something new for me, I just know it!

Is there something intangible about your future that you can’t quite put your finger on?  Deep down you know God is calling you to more or something new but you’re not sure what that is.  This book will challenge you to take what God has deposited in your life already and apply that in new ways.  Maybe you’ve had a few false starts or times when things didn’t go the way you wanted.  What do we do with these kind of experiences?  Through his own life, Jason demonstrates how to recover and use what seems like a set back and see how God wants to use some of our negative experiences to propel us forward.

 

Values :: Core vs Cultural

Are they written down?

Every church has values.  Most churches have these values written down.  If you don’t have yours written down then you’re not leveraging the power your values can bring to the church.  I’ve heard it over and over “Values sag”.  If you’re not revisiting your values as a church, evaluating which of your values is starting to sag, then chances are your church is off course or at least has a value for flying by the seat of your pants.  I’m being a little bit sarcastic, but if you really don’t take time for reinforcing the most important aspects of what makes your church unique, then your church will end up being very susceptible to changing winds and fads.

 

Missional Values

Thanks to this guy named, Rick Warren, most churches these days have some variation of the 5 Purposes as presented in his book, The Purpose Driven Church. Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Serving and Community are 5 solid missional values.  Your church may have more or less.  I’ve seen some churches simply state their missional values as, “Love God, Love People.”  These are examples of missional values.  They affect what we do as a church, how we disciple people, very often they end up on a wall, in our membership classes and if we’re smart, we revisit our missional values often in our teaching schedule.

 

Cultural Values

Cultural values are a little bit trickier to figure out.  Most churches haven’t figured out what their cultural values are.  Most of them are unspoken, but with the right kind of exercises, they can be brought out, celebrated and maximized for your churches benefit. 

Some examples of cultural values are: excellence, work ethic, preaching style, seeker-sensitive, recovery focused, education, social justice,  and simplicity.  The list goes on and on.

 

Two Kinds of Cultural Values

There are two kinds of cultural values: realized, aspirational.  Realized values are already apart of your churches identity.  When you talk about these values you can be proud and show specific examples of how it shows up in everyday life.  When realized values aren’t followed, everyone notices! 

Aspirational values are what you WANT to be a part of your church’s culture.  Sometimes these are revealed to you through God and you just have to work on them. 

Sometimes aspirational values are discovered when you noticed them in another church or organization.  Maybe you like something about how Starbucks treats it’s customers and you want to bring that into your church’s culture. 

Sometimes aspirational values are pipe dreams.  It’s important to do a values discovery to figure out which values are which so that you don’t waste your time on values that are counter-cultural to your church and to figure out which ones you can maximize to accomplish the vision God has given you and your church.