Brady Boyd - Extravagant: Discovering a Life of Dangerous Generosity

ALSO BY BRADY BOYD

Remarkable: Living a Faith Worth Talking About

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2020 by Brady Boyd

Published in association with The Bindery Agency, www.TheBinderyAgency.com

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Howard Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Howard Books/Atria Books hardcover edition December 2020

and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Dana Sloan

Jacket design by Min Choi

Jacket photograph by iStockphoto/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-9821-0140-4

ISBN 978-1-9821-0142-8 (ebook)

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scriptures quotations marked ERV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: EASY-TO-READ VERSION 2014 by Bible League International. Used by permission.

Scriptures quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) Copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked HCSB are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, Used by Permission HCSB 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 Holman Bible Publishers. Holman Christian Standard Bible, Holman CSB, and HCSB are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.

Scriptures quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB), Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org.

Scriptures quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For Pam, my best friend and the most generous person I know

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one anotherand all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Author of the Book of Hebrews

We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.

Jennie Jerome Churchill, mother of Sir Winston Churchill

W HEN I RECEIVED THE typeset pages of this book from my publisher, along with a request to provide my final input on its content, like 90 percent of people the world over, my family and I were under stay-at-home orders from our local officials, self-quarantining to subdue the spread of the novel coronavirus that showed up in late 2019. As I reviewed the chapters youre about to read, I shook my head in awe over how fast everything has changed. What was considered ordinary life a few weeks ago I now consider outright dreams: holding staff meetings, going out to dinner with my wife, taking my kids to see a movie, getting on an airplane to go somewhere just for fun let alone worshipping with my brothers and sisters at New Lifein person, on a Sunday morning, all in one room. In a flash, life was upended, and as of this writing, it remains upside down.

There was another thought that kept occurring to me, though, as I reviewed this book you hold: regardless of these wild, unforeseen circumstances, the message remains steadfastly true. Maybe more than ever, it is during times of crisis when those of us who have devoted ourselves to Gods will and ways get to pray up and show up and shine. We get to trust God in new and perhaps deeper ways. We get to come alongside those who are sufferingin this case from the loss of loved ones, the loss of businesses they started with their own two hands, the loss of key events on their spring schedule, the loss of their dreamsto bring them food, and funding, and hope. We get to work through the challenges that something like a pandemic introduces, while knowing with absolute certainty that God is not caught off guard, that God remains on his throne, and that God has the victory in the end. In a word, we get to live extravagantly, believing that all we have comes from God, and that the best way to invest the resources he has given us is to let him preside over it all.

O NE OF THE REAL PERKS of pastoring the same church for a dozen years (and counting) is that I get to see what people are like not just for a few minutes here and there, but over the long haulacross months and years and, if all goes well, decades. And while spiritual maturity has dictated that I learn to appreciate all sorts of people, there is one type of person Im drawn to more than any other, and unapologetically so. People in this category have yes faces. They are calm but energetic, present but still purposeful with their time. They are curious. They ask questions. They draw you out, genuine in their desire to know how youre doing, what youre up to, what youre learning, how you feel. They are tuned in to their surroundings, aware of hurts, of gaps, of need. They have a knack for always making sure that people are being tended to: the overwhelmed single mom, the local shop owner who had to go out of business, the worship leader whose wife just suffered a stroke.

These are women and men who have full-to-the-brim lives and are running their own firms, hitting their own corporate objectives, raising their own families, paying their own bills, and making their own lives workyet, somehow, they still have bandwidth to inquire about someone else. Not occasionally. Not even frequently. But rather all the time.

These are the givers. They are the fighters. The supporters. The advocates. The ones who love and serve and care. They step forward and offer to help; they stay until the work is done. They are generous with their resources, sometimes lavishly so. Their time, talent, and treasurethey give of these things reflexively without expecting anything in return.

Astoundingly, despite these characteristics being exceptional, we have not a few or a handful of these people around New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but rather scores upon scores of them. Ive been watching them. Ive been studying them. Ive been culling lessons from their lives. This book? Its a manual for this kind of exceptional living, for becoming the