Description
This paradigm-shifting book has become a best-selling classic, translated into six languages, republished repeatedly over 30 years. It keeps upending the lifestyles of each decade of idealist seekers for genuine spirituality. Over a thousand workers have ended up in the slums of the world’s mega-cities after reading it.It is the story of a young man’s struggle in the slum of Tatalon, Manila. A struggle to find a way to live among the poor, preach good news to the poor, and transform the poverty. Entering into poverty, struggling with sickness, rejection and the many experiences of engagement in a dark place, out of it came the formation of a faith community and the birthing of a new pattern of evangelical theology of preaching grace, forming communities of faith and love, effecting economic change and doing justice. The fruit of those struggles has been a plethora of movements of incarnational workers living among the 1.3 billion urban poor of the global slums.This book encapsulates the core of new paradigms of evangelical theology – justice-oriented, while proclaiming good news, caring for those on the margins while growing communities of faith, oral theology based versus book-based, apostolic versus inward, with a spirituality of both quietness and the emotional celebratory spirituality of those who must release the pains of oppression weekly, seeking transformation on this earth as a progression to the coming reign of Christ.
When he entered the Manila squatter settlement of Tatalon, Viv Grigg knew what he wanted to do but not how to do it. The need was obvious – to establish a Christian church among Asia’s forgotten people, the impoverished slum dwellers of its vast megalopolises. The challenge was to find a way that did not treat people’s spiritual needs in isolation from their poverty, without simply becoming another economic or social relief program with no evangelistic component. This book is the enthralling story of how the author engaged this journey with his neighbors. It is an unfinished story. What has begun is but the beginning of the founding of a Christian community in a place of struggle. It is God who is working in Tatalon and urban slums like it, and giving people a hope that affects all of life. He challenges us to reexamine our strategies and design new approaches that will build Christ’s kingdom among the poor “who comprise nearly half the world.”
Vision: I am one of those people who continues to live a different kind of life that includes the poor in my circle of intimate friends rather than an objects of mission to be “helped”. Rather I have discovered that my wholeness is bound up in sharing the struggle for Justice, Mercy, and Meekness. The community that I belong to “LA InnerChange” was inspired directly by Viv Grigg, Betty Sue Brewster, John Perkins, John Hayes, and some students at Fuller Seminary who had to put into practice the things that they were learning there.
Condition: “Acceptable”, The copies here may be well worn and well loved. I would like them to be read by as many people as possible until they are worn out. I will seek to give you as satisfying a reading experience as possible.
Word to the wise: Every context needs to be understood and embraced in its own right. The Kingdom of God is not a franchise. It is important to always discern what things meaningfully transfer from one context to another… and what does not. Inspiration, encouragement, and hope have value in their own right.
