Mandy Smith - Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture

Mandy Smiths Unfettered helps us discard our Westernized baggage so we can be formed all over again as children in awe of God. With lively prose and a profound wisdom, she teaches us how to dance with God. Open these pages and allow yourself to be drawn in to this childlike way of life with God. Learn the postures of resting, receiving, and responding. Explore knowing God.

David Fitch , professor, Northern Seminary; author of Faithful Presence

Few writers are able to combine cultural criticism and hopeful imagination for the future in the manner that Mandy Smith does. Unfettered is essential reading, a wise guide to tiptoeing into a vibrant, post-Christendom faith. It is a much-needed book, and at the same time a dangerous one, for one cannot read it and remain unchanged.

C. Christopher Smith , founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books ; author of How the Body of Christ Talks

This rare book on childlikeness is written by someone who is herself charmingly childlike in her approach to God, people, and the world. Mandy is a well-informed writer, and she is also a profoundly enchanting one as she pens what could prove to be the manifesto for the always-possible, ever-resurgent, Order of the Eternal Child. Viva!

Alan Hirsch , founder of Forge Missional Training Network and the Movement Leaders Collective; author of The Forgotten Ways

When it comes to getting at the core of the problem of the fractured self, Smith strikes at the heart of the dualism of Western culture with her analysis in Unfettered . Unwavering in her commitment to unravel the quandary that Christianity in the West has trapped itself in and unflinching in her determination to tell the narrative of one who would gather all creation into wholeness, Smith makes a clear case for seeing with renewed eyes and hearing with unclogged ears. Unfettered provides space for reflection where we can find our full humanity and abandon the need to fix our lives. It is an invitation to lean into the uncomfortable void and therefore create room where we can exist, grow, and flourish.

Phuc Luu , author of Jesus of the East: Reclaiming the Gospel for the Wounded

We have pastor-practitioners and pastor-scholars, but we need pastor-artists because they help us encounter God as Mystery. Mandy Smith is a pastor-artist. In Unfettered , Mandy invites us to dance a three-step of rest, receive, and respond. She shows us what we can be: human beings deeply connected to God, self, and others. Mandy doesnt make it sound easy; she just makes it sound so very worth it. She invites us to a dance that lives fully into the goodness of God. Ive been grateful for Mandys voice for a long time now, and Unfettered is an overdue guide for those of us wanting another way.

Steve Cuss , lead pastor of Discovery Christian Church, Broomfield, Colorado

Being quite skilled at the controlling, adultish ways of exegeting Scripture, I was deeply confronted by Mandy Smiths rest-receive-respond approach. She invites us to divest ourselves of our need to be masters of the text and, like children, allow our senses, our instincts, even our bodies, to contribute to hearing from God. Like Nicodemus asking Jesus how one becomes born again, I found myself regularly resisting, questioning, and doubting Mandys new method before being won over by her approach. If you want to contend with the Good News in your heart, mind, and body, read this book!

Michael Frost , Morling College, Sydney