(Can’t see the video? Watch it here)

Radical. Revolutionary. Emergent. Explosive Breakthrough.

This is the language of the modern church. Some connect such language to the early church. They wonder, Why should we strive for ordinary when it seems like they didn’t?

Recently through Twitter this question was posed to Michael Horton, author of Ordinary. In the above video he suggests the times when the Church has been most effective has been when it’s been most ordinary.

Horton explores two ordinary ways of early Christians:

Everyday Living: “They were set apart by their godliness, their devotion to their family, their unwillingness to participate in pagan rites.” Christian Living: “They gathered regularly on the Lord’s Day for the Word of God, preaching, prayers, singing the Psalms, and eating bread and drinking wine.”

Watch Horton’s…

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Is there a connection between celebrity Christianity and the rejection of Christianity as ordinary?

Michael Horton thinks so, addressing such ambition and super-apostleship in his new book Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World. He also addresses it in an interview.

“In our culture we love to make idols and break idols. We’re fascinated with celebrity,” which he says has crept into the church.

In Ordinary he writes, “Ambition is a focal point for something that creates within us…a tension between self and community.” (99) In the interview he distinguishes between being popular and aspiring to popularity—which he humorously describes as “smelling your own feet.” He also points to the rivalries is of the New Testament based on popularity to remind us what…

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Last month Michael Horton released a new book inviting readers to recover their sense of joy in the ordinary. Ordinary is your guide to a sustainable discipleship that happens over the long haul.

Yet Horton makes it clear that “ordinary” doesn’t mean passive—as if we’re called to trade in our activism, campaigns, and movements for a quiet life on the sidelines. Instead, we need to ask ourselves what kind of action are we called to take, why are we to take it, and to what end?

“There is a difference between frenetic activism and faithful activity in the daily struggles of and joys of life.” (39)

In the excerpt below Horton turns our attention to the gospel to help answer those questions in order to help…

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Sixty years ago H. Richard Niebuhr addressed what he called Christianity’s “enduring problem”: the two “complex realities” of Christ and culture. He insisted “an infinite dialogue must develop in the Christian conscience and the Christian community” regarding their interplay. (Christ and Culture, 39)

To foster such dialogue, Niebuhr suggested five possible answers: Christ against, of, above, transforming, and in tension with culture. He argued Christians tended to fit into one of these five categories when engaging our world.

According to Michael Horton, at least one of these categories is to blame for our current fascination with living radical, revolutionary lives at the expense of ordinary callings.

In his new book Ordinary: Sustaining Faith in a Radical, Restless World, Horton makes a compelling, convincing case that recent movements to transform culture for Christ are a problem.

…

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Radical. Epic. Revolutionary.

Transformative. Impactful. Life-Changing.

Emergent. Alternative. Innovative.

The Next Big Thing.

Sound familiar? They should. Because as Michael Horton explains in his new book Ordinary, they are influencing a “frantic search for ‘something more’” in the Christian life. (125)

At root in our quest for The Next Big Thing is “a basic discontent with God’s Word. We begin to look for programs and personalities that will make us winners in a sprint, instead of running the long-distance race with the assurance that Christ has already won the prize for us.” (125-126)

What’s a Christian to do?

In the excerpt below Horton argues we need to turn to an unlikely source in order to shift our attention from “something more” to “something more…

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Several years ago when I was still safely a young adult (I’m 34 now), I briefly entertained the idea of forming a New Monastic community in the heart of Grand Rapids. Having read popular evangelical books that encouraged radical, revolutionary living, a few friends of mine and I were inspired to live an alternative, extreme, impactful life for Christ and His kingdom.

To live radically, as those books encouraged us to live.

But what if living a radical life isn’t what Christ desires for us? What if He’s far more interested in how we approach the mundane, the everydayness of life?

The ordinary?

That’s the premise of Michael Horton’s balancing new book Ordinary: Sustaining Faith in a Radical, Restless World. Horton believes we need to question “false values, expectations, and habits that we have absorbed,…

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This fall sees the release of several informative, engaging, challenging titles that will enhance and equip your teaching and ministry.

Four of those titles release today. Here’s a quick overview:

1) Ordinary

In recent years several books have urged Christians to live a radical, crazy, transformative faith. But what if the Christian life was more mundane and…ordinary? That’s the premise of Michael Horton’s new book. He believes that our attempts to measure our spiritual growth by our experiences, constantly seeking after the next big breakthrough, have left many Christians disillusioned and disappointed. Far from a call to low expectations and passivity, Horton invites readers to recover their sense of joy in the ordinary. This book is your people’s guide to a sustainable discipleship that happens over the long haul—not a quick fix that leaves them empty with unfulfilled promises. Using this book in…

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