Authors JR Woodward and Tim Morey discuss and sign their books
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04/29/10
On Wednesday, April 28, a book signing event sponsored by the Lowell Berry Center for Lifelong Learning and the Office of Alumni/ae and Church Relations celebrated the recent releases of ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and Everything in Between) and Embodying Our Faith: Becoming a Living, Sharing, Practicing Church, both published by members of the Fuller community.
DMin alumnus Tim Morey, author of Embodying Our Faith, described how, as his call developed, he found himself asking, “What does it look like to be a community of Jesus followers who are passionate about the Bible as it is relevant in our cultural context?” He shared, “It became clear that God would have me start something new,” and answers his own question in Embodying Our Faith, drawing from his experience planting Life Covenant Church in Torrance, California.
For Morey, a church community’s cultivation of an “embodied apologetic” is key. “The best apologetic is one that people see lived out in our lives and our communities,” he stated. In his book, Morey seeks to flesh out what a community with an embodied apologetic looks like, emphasizing that such a community is experiential, communal, and enacted. At Life Covenant, the worship gathering is an experiential time where “God’s people worshiping well together become a powerful apologetic.” The communal aspect manifests itself in hospitality, which Morey identifies as a key ministry of spiritual formation and outreach. As an enacted community, 20 percent of Life Covenant became members after first working with one of their many social justice ministries.
MAGL student JR Woodward, editor of ViralHope and cofounder of Kairos Los Angeles, planted his first church at Virginia Tech and in 2002 led a group to plant churches in the Los Angeles area. For ViralHope, Woodward gave a simple assignment to 50 different professors, authors, bloggers, and practitioners: “If your city newspaper asked for a 300- to 500-word article addressing ‘What is the good news?’ what would you write?” The result is a collection of testimonies to the gospel, contextualized for major cities like London, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as suburbs and even small towns.
Regarding the diversity of the contributors, Woodward said, “One of my hopes is to expose people to practitioners with their noses to the grind, who will probably never write books but have rich insights to offer.” Essentially, ViralHope attempts to “get people thinking about the ‘good news’ without reverting to the four spiritual laws.”
For more information or to buy Tim Morey’s Embodying Our Faith from the Fuller Seminary Bookstore, click here. For more information about JR Woodward and ViralHope, visit his blog.