Keith Wasserman - Good Works: Hospitality and Faithful Discipleship

Good Works offers a profound paradigm for ministry whereby work with those at the margins is only good to the extent that our own character and relationships with God and others are good. Turning the usual metrics upside down with refreshing power, Good Works illuminates the profound difference between ministry and social service agency.

Chris Rice

coauthor, with Emmanuel Katongole, of Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing

Regardless of ones ministry context, this book about Good Works, Inc., will spiritually challenge yet profoundly reward anyone earnestly seeking to embody Christian hospitality. This account of Keith Wassermans forty years of leadership, articulated and arranged by Christine Pohls rich and warm theological mind, displays in the most concrete of terms what it takes to truly receive, and be received by, the other as a gift.

Michael Gulker

president of The Colossian Forum

As theorists and practitioners of Christs radical hospitality, Keith Wasserman and Christine Pohl draw on their years of experience writing about and living in community to animate the relationship between good works, hospitality, and Gods justice-making mission. This is crucial reading for pastors, organizers, and all who desire to build heroic communities of Gods peace on earth.

Drew J. Strait

assistant professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary

Good Works is an inspiring and beautiful book full of wisdom. It weaves together Christine Pohls decades of insightful scholarship with the practical, lived wisdom of Keith Wasserman and the community of Good Works, Inc. This book helps us all go deeper into Jesuss call to hospitality and faithful discipleship and to be inspired to live more faithfully ourselves.

L. Gregory Jones

president of Belmont University

Wasserman and Pohl invite us to pull up a seat at the table of friendship where laughter and tears flow freely and where people who are counted as little in the eyes of the world discover they are seen and known. Good Works welcomes us into their home and introduces us to a family where all are embraced.

Michael Mather

author of Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places

As a pastor in Chicago, I have heard of Good Works for years. Without hoopla, fame, or a megachurch behind them, this community of Jesus just does the work of the gospel. Keith Wasserman has followed Gods invitation to live in community with those closest to Gods heart: the poor, the lonely, the homeless, and the forgotten. Doing so has made Wasserman one of the richest men alive. Let his experience and teaching serve as your own invitation to a life rich in good works, alive with the goodness of God, and awake to the gifts of each day.

Laura Sumner Truax

coauthor, with Amalya Campbell, of Love Let Go: Radical Generosity for the Real World

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

2021 Keith Wasserman and Christine D. Pohl

All rights reserved

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

ISBN 978-0-8028-7701-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wasserman, Keith, 1958 author. | Pohl, Christine D., author.

Title: Good works : hospitality and faithful discipleship / Keith Wasserman, Christine D. Pohl.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: A book about Christian mission, hospitality, and discipleship within local community, with insights drawn from Good Works, Inc., a ministry in rural southeastern OhioProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020056102 | ISBN 9780802877017 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Good Works, Inc. (Athens, Ohio) | Church workUnited States. | Christian lifeUnited States. | Worship. | HospitalityReligious aspectsChristianity. | Christian communitiesOhioAthens.

Classification: LCC BV4403 .W37 2021 | DDC 261.8/30977197dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056102

Unless otherwise noted, biblical quotations are taken from The Holy Bible: Todays New International Version.

From Keith: Each of us is shaped by the friends in our lives and by the communities of people that surround us. The community of Good Worksstaff, volunteers, board members, supporters, and guestshas shaped my life, thinking, and initiatives for more than forty years. Words fall very short in expressing my deep gratitude for the friendships and godly influences that have contributed to my theology, practices, and, ultimately, this book.

Over the years, individual staff members helped to write and refine the key documents of Good Works, including Vision of Hope, and we have incorporated some of those materials directly into the book. Although their insights have often been used anonymously, I am deeply grateful for their wise and crucial contributions.

I am so very grateful for my wife Darlene, who has walked with me in risky and innovative ways of loving people since before Good Works was established. Her companionship and steadiness have brought enormous stability into my life, enabling me to become the person that I am. She also became a major help to Christine and me during the season of the final book edits. I am also grateful for the immeasurable contribution to my life from our son Timothy, who has shaped me as a follower of Jesus more than he will ever know.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to Christine. Without her friendship, encouragement, and perseverance, this book would not have been written.

From Christine: I am very grateful to the current and former staff members of Good Works and for the gifts they have brought into my lifegifts of friendship, practical wisdom, and exemplary faithfulness. Their influence on my thinking and writing has been very significant. In particular, Keith and Darlene have been precious friends and models of hospitality and generosity. I am thankful for the privilege of helping to share their insights with a broader community.

From both of us: We invited a number of former staff and board members to respond to a draft of the book and to share their comments in writing and in a Zoom call. We are so grateful for the ways they improved the manuscript. Special thanks to Andrew Bissell, Frances Garrett Bissell, Cory Blackwell, Emily Axe Blackwell, Abigail Carter Fields, Patrick Filipiak, Craig Garrison, Mark Leeman, Chris Linscott, Seth Lundeen, George Pickens, and Todd Tatum for their work. We deeply appreciate others from outside the community of Good Works who also read and responded to the manuscript: Louise Harding, Dorothy Pohl, Ron Pohl, Dylan Pohl, and Julie Tennent.

Heartfelt thanks to Asbury Theological Seminary and its community for the ways it has influenced and sustained both of our lives. The numerous sabbaticals Keith was able to spend at Asbury allowed for the years of conversation between Christine and Keith that ultimately resulted in the collaboration for this book.

Thanks also to the folks at Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, and especially to James Ernest and Jenny Hoffman. We are grateful!