Forthcoming Book Launch (Dec 2023)

Friends, I am excited to announce that my latest book, Improvising Church: Scripture as a Source of Harmony, Rhythm, and Soul, will launch this December through IVP Academic!

Improvising Church is for people who are seeking a fresh vision for Christian community and who are ready to turn to Scripture for resources and imagination. This book unfolds a biblical, creative, and practical vision for churches that seek to receive and extend the healing of Christ within their local neighborhoods, and it offers some creative pathways for how to do it. It emerges from a fourteen-year journey of pastoring in urban churches that are deeply embedded in their local neighborhoods. It contains personal stories of pain, joy, and learning, interwoven with biblical theology and scholarly reflection, as well as practical suggestions, prayers, and liturgies.

As we improvise community within increasingly post-Christian contexts, the work before us requires the creativity of a jazz or a blues improvisation (the author is a professional jazz pianist). Each new jazz performance improvises fresh melodies and rhythms from within the rich and ever-creative jazz tradition. The rich inventiveness of jazz can inspire us to imagine: What fresh and beautiful sounds and rhythms can the biblical tradition birth in us? How can we rechoreograph the sounds, the time, and the harmony of scripture to display the beauty and tenderness of Jesus within our neighborhood?

Stay tuned to my blog for more updates on this and other publications

Improvising Church is published by IVP Academic and launches in December 2023