ebooks

Life Signs An ebook version of my August 2007 posts on signs…and on life. (revised 12-07-07)

Making disciples (pdf) An ebook by Jon Swanson

From the Introduction

I have a friend who is building a network of people. Rather than delegating, he wants to end up with lots of people who share his values about his field. As I talked with him, I realized that he could learn from the way Jesus did the same thing. Jesus wasn’t building a structure, wasn’t creating an institution. He wanted more than that.

He was working closely with a handful of guys. Just a dozen. When he graduated them, he wanted them to do with others what he had done with them.

These followers are called disciples. A disciple, for our purposes, is a person who chooses to allow the life and teaching of someone to shape his/her own life. People shaped by life-changing relationships.

Apprentice is one of our best words for this, a person working with a master craftsman.

This book is for people who are
1. wanting to grow a movement by making disciples, and
2. willing to consider Jesus as a model.

We’re going to look at ten principles we can observe from Jesus.

Making disciples (pdf) An ebook by Jon Swanson

On Prayer

From the preface:

I have this funny thing about the word “pray”. I use it, but I don’t like it. I mean, we have a thousand words we use for interacting with other people: talk, chat, argue, laugh, cry, tease, command, apologize, beg, And then, when it comes to talking to God, we, well, we pray. And, of course, we lower our voices by an octave.

And, of course, that makes no sense.

I mean, if God is person, then shouldn’t we talk, chat, argue, laugh, cry, tease, command (okay, maybe not), apologize, beg?

During the past couple years on my website I’ve been thinking about praying, about talking with God.

Here are some of those thoughts.

Unchurchy: reflections on church and communication

Kathy Drewien sent me a tweet one day:

kdrewien @jnswanson Do you have posts on church communication? I just agreed to head team of new committee to enhance communication at church.

It was a great question. My first reaction was to say “no”, because I haven’t written or tagged any posts with “church communication.” But then I search my blog for “church” and realized that I have, completely inadvertently, written a number of posts that could be useful for church committees to use if they don’t want to sound churchy.

I spent a little time on the project and now have a new ebook: Unchurchy: reflections on communication and church.

It’s a collection of seven essays (posts) on communication, including “The Next Sentence” and one of my Emilio posts.

Here’s what I would love:

• Download it if you or someone you know needs a way to help churches think about communicating differently.
• Download it if you feel like helping me with layout and design.
• Download it if you feel like adding one more book to your reading pile.
• Don’t download it if it will add to your list of things that you want to get to but never will.

I’d love to save you 100%, but I’d love your feedback, too.

Make sense? The link for my new ebook again? Unchurchy: reflections on communication and church.

Nancy and I had a daughter that died at five weeks. This tells her story as a story: a short story for September 1.

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