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The Ministry of Ordinary Places

Waking Up to God's Goodness Around You

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Find your life and true calling by losing yourself in the ordinary rhythms of life with the people God has placed around you.

Popular blogger, Shannan Martin offers Christians who are longing for a more meaningful life a simple starting point: learn what it is to love and be loved right where God has placed you.

What does it look like to live lives of meaning?
And how do we do it between loads of laundry and reimagining leftovers?
Where do we even begin?

For Christ-followers living in an increasingly complicated world, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure of how to live a life of intention and meaning.

But in The Ministry of Ordinary Places, speaker and writer Shannan Martin offers a surprisingly simple answer: it's about being with people, the ones right next door. As she walks you through her own story she challenges you to see your community through a wider lens of love, following in the footsteps of a Savior who came as an everyday man and spent his life circled up with regular folks just like us. Along the way, she shares discoveries about the vital importance of showing up and committing for the long haul, despite the inevitable encounters with brokenness and uncertainty.

With transparency, humor, heart-tugging storytelling, and more than a little personal confession, Martin shows us that no matter where we live or how much we have, as we learn what it is to be with people as Jesus was, we'll find our very lives. The details will look quiet and ordinary, and the call will both exhaust and exhilarate us. But it will be the most worth-it adventure we will ever take and The Ministry of Ordinary Places will help guide you along the path.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 27, 2018
      In this nonlinear collection of musings, blogger and Christian author Martin (Falling Free) offers thoughtful reflections about how to be a faithful Christian in the particular, everyday context in which one finds oneself. After unexpectedly losing their jobs, Martin and her husband, a prison chaplain, along with their four children, swapped their nature-filled small-town life for an urban “neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks.” This change led Martin to engage in “the overlooked spiritual practice of paying attention to wherever God has placed us.” Presuming readers share her sense of Christian mission, church involvement, and spiritual challenges, Martin confesses her own resistance to getting to know her non-white neighbors and relates both painful and heartwarming stories of her experiences when she made the effort. Though readers may find Martin’s vague chronology frustrating (stories frequently begin “Just last week” or “Three nights ago”), some stories pack a powerful punch, as when two neighborhood girls gasp with shock at the sight of her full refrigerator. “There is no faster track to humility than being blessed by those who have less,” Martin writes. In a conversational tone, Martin critiques traditional approaches to evangelism and provides insightful lessons for how more privileged Christians can truly practice being good neighbors.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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