A popular pastor and speaker shows that Western culture is in a tailspin and Christian faith is entangled in it: we do kingdom things in empire ways. This book invites us to detox from the deeply ingrained habits of Western culture, helping us reimagine how to follow God with our whole selves again and join with God's mission in the world.
Western culture is in a tailspin, and Christian faith is entangled in it: we do kingdom things in empire ways.
Author, pastor, and speaker Mandy Smith invites us to be unfettered from the deeply ingrained habits of Western culture and embrace Jesus's surprising invitation to the kingdom through childlikeness.
Unfettered will help you rediscover childlike habits, reimagine how to follow God with your whole self again, and join with God's mission in the world.
"Mandy Smith is one of the great pastoral voices of our time. If you are untangling and reconstructing how you engage with God, you simply must read this book."
--Tim Soerens, author of Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church Right Where You Are
"Even Christian ministry has been fettered by modern Western ideals and presumptions: control, success, calculative thinking, and--fundamentally--reality-dismissing acedia. What is a passionate, caring, supposedly sophisticated pastor to do? Follow Smith's journeying in search of God and reality, away from this 'adultishness' to become like a child. And don't just read it; undertake such a journey yourself."
--Esther Lightcap Meek, professor, Geneva College; author of Longing to Know, Loving to Know, and A Little Manual for Knowing
"It is past time to unfetter the church from the grip of Western culture. Smith reminds us where to start: with Jesus's call to childlikeness. That call (and this book) is an invitation to more exploration, more adventure, more trust, a deeper relationship with God, and a more profound witness to the watching world. For the sake of the church--and the West--let's say yes."
--John Pattison, coauthor of Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus
"Do not, dear reader, take up this book unless you intend to be changed, because this book concerns emancipatory transformation. . . . [It] is a powerfully compelling good word to the church in our society--evangelical and liberal--that has largely exhausted its old endowments."
--Walter Brueggemann (from the foreword)
