Larry Shallenberger - Divine Intention: How Gods Work in the Early Church Empowers Us Today

What people are saying about

DIVINE INTENTION

Like a gourmet chef, Larry stirs together fiction, Scripture, his real-life vulnerabilities, and thought-provoking questions to create a healthy, hearty stew for those with a passion and angst for the church. I hunger for what God wants for churches today, so I ate it up. You will too!

Joani Schultz, chief creative officer of
Group Publishing, Inc.

The newest generation of Christians is looking more and more to the past, to the first generation of Christians, to how they lived day-to-day life and how they dealt with questions about national identity, politics, and the Christians place in this world. Larry Shallenberger has written a book that touches that nerve, and I hope the church will take his words and be reformed.

Jordan Green,
editor of burnsidewriterscollective.com

It is said that history repeats itself. In this book on the early church, Larry gives us the hope that it can. From scholars to contemporary thinkers, he provides a grounded book without being stuffy. This ancient-future look at Acts makes me want to go there in my spiritual life. Bring it on, God!

Alan Nelson, Ed.D.,
executive editor of Rev! Magazine

Having experienced the devastation of a church that fell short of divine intentions and also the healing and consolation of a church that fulfilled their role, I know the importance of this book. I hope it will reach every pastor and church worker, causing us all to conform more and more with Gods true intentions for us as a community of faith and love.

Connie Neal, author of Myspace for Moms and Dads; and Wizards, Wardrobes, and Wookiees

I sat down to skim through this bookbut couldnt do it. The story Larry weaves was my storya Christian realizing the passion is gone and only the position remains. This book took far longer to read than I expected because it asks all the right questionsand it was worth every minute. Thanks, Larry.

Mikal Keefer, Christian author and editor

DIVINE INTENTION
Published by David C Cook
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David C Cook Distribution Canada
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David C. Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications
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David C. Cook and the graphic circle C logo
are registered trademarks of Cook Communications Ministries.

All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,
no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form
without written permission from the publisher.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the Holy Bible, New
International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible
Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations
marked msg are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright by Eugene H. Peterson
1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing
Group; NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960,
1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission; and ESV are taken from
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright 2000; 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Italics in Scripture quotations have been added by the author for emphasis.

LCCN 2007925284
ISBN 978-0-7814-4389-0
eISBN 978-1-4347-6560-4

2007 Larry Shallenberger

First Edition 2007

Contents

Foreword

Christendom has developed a reputation of being against things, of which the list is quite long. Add church to the list. Its now hip to be antichurch. Often this is warranted. For too many, the experience of church has not led to deeper life in God; rather, it has become an adventure in missing the point. Which leads to the questionokay, then what is the point? Or, to put it another way, what are we for?

The conversation of whats wrong with church and how it has failed has droned on long enough for me. We can criticize and deconstruct modern church and Christianity to the nth degree, but at some point someones got to step out and assume the risk of imagining and living an alternative Christian reality. Larry Shallenberger has assumed that risk in the book you now hold, and I want to be the first to thank him.

Having been there himself, Larry understands the dilemma of being disillusioned with churchwhere people often feel they must choose between abandoning Christian community altogether or resigning themselves to the status quo. Larry offers a third choicerecovering Gods idea of church, which he finds within the story of Jesus Christ and his first followers as told in the book of Acts. It has been pointed out that a secret message of sorts may lie within the life and teachings of Jesus while on earth. Larry opens our eyes to the message in Christs resurrection relationship through the Spirit with his earliest disciples. He shifts the concept of church from a noun, something we go to, to a verb, the continuing life of Christ on earth in and through us.

We all instinctively know that our journey with God cannot be reduced to a formula, seven steps, or a fill-in-the-blank outline. The genius of these pages is not that Larry is doling out all the right answers, but that he identifies the necessary questions each of us must wrestle through in order to experience what God most deeply desires for us.

Chapter by chapter the story of the book of Acts is told alongside the fictional account of a group of friends struggling through the questions themselves, which makes the read both enlightening and engaging.

Larrys book represents in practical terms what Christian living and community could become. There is certainly no lack of people disenchanted with church or those with theories to improve it. We can scramble, poach, boil, or sunny-side up an egg; but in the end its still an egg. There are countless ways of doing church with all sorts of worship styles, church growth strategies, and cutting-edge programs or campaigns; but in the end its still church with the same underlying mentalities. Divine Intention presses deeper and offers a solid and hopeful place for reconstructing a more Christ-centered Christianity. Larry does us a favor by cutting to the chase and delving into the rough-and-tumble topics such as nationalism, cultural wars, and the conflicts Christians have among themselves.

What impacted me most about this book is the motive with which it was written. Larry writes, My prayer is that this book will be evaluated not on the number of interesting facts unearthed regarding the first-century church, but on its ability to spark small personal reformations in the quality of our love of God and our love for others. Ive come to a place on my own spiritual journey where very little, perhaps nothing, is more important than love. Quite frankly, I dont think its possible to construct or imagine a new and alternative way of being the church in the world apart from it. He was right. Divine Intention did in fact deepen within me a love for God and others. That alone gives me hope that what he articulates in the book is possible. For this I owe Larry a great debt of gratitude and will express it by giving this book to others.

Jim Palmer

Author, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the Unlikely People Who Help You)

Introduction

When a group of people practices something for two thousand years, the expectation is that they will eventually get whatever it was that they were committed to doing right. That doesnt seem to be the case with the church. Two millennia worth of spent energy should have produced answers for individual believers on how to live what Jesus called the abundant life. By now local communities of believers should have mastered some competency in corporate incarnationbeing the embodiment of Christ on earth.