Dan Yarnell – författare

It is not a changing culture, reduced resources, or a rescinding Christian memory that creates the greatest challenges for the church in the West. It is the lack of a clear commitment to the intentional, authentic, and contextual expressions of missional disciple-making, which will shape current and future generations of followers of Jesus to express the values of the Kingdom today. This book offers stimulating historical, biblical, and theological reflections on discipleship and considers some of the possibilities and opportunities afforded to us by our post-Christian context. Missional discipleship allows the missio Dei to shape us in our engagement our practices and sustain us in the lifelong journey of becoming and developing disciples that follow Jesus today.

Missio Dei by its very nature requires the church to come to terms with the exercise of power, both internally and externally, as it confronts the world. Tune in to any newscast or glance at the daily newspaper and it immediately becomes clear that the use and abuse of power is a live issue. The more we focus on the twists and turns of current events, the more it appears that uncorrupted exercise of power eludes the human race. All too often we become uneasily aware that there are powers lying behind the power that any of us wields, whether it is in the family, the classroom, on the shop floor, in the boardroom, or in churches. Effective missional leadership involves creative engagement with the powers at work in the world without being debased by them. This book sets out to address the issue of the use and misuse of power from biblical, theological, and practical perspectives. The authors bring their theological, pastoral, missionary, and personal experience to their task in order to inform, challenge, and invite readers into a responsible use of the powers that God has put into the hands of each one of us to achieve his purposes in the world.