James Choung's Blog, page 3

Real Life in print!

My new book, Real Life: A Christianity Worth Living Out , has just been published by InterVarsity Press! If my first book attempted to answer the question, “What is the Gospel and how do we share it today?” then Real Life asks the follow-up question, “Once someone begins to follow Jesus, then what? How do you help someone mature as a follower of Jesus?”

Here’s a two-and-a-half minutes video summarizing the main disciple-making model of the book:

As for practical takeaways, Real Life offers generational insights — particularly the differences between Generation Xers, Boomers and Millennials — and how it shapes our disciple-making. It also describes a disciple-making model that attempts to incorporate many values into one helpful flow. One endorsement summarizes this well:

“Real Life turns disciplemaking on its head, fusing together elements that have normally been separate — evangelism, spiritual formation, community and mission — into one great model that could easily be applied and multiplied. To make disciples today, this book is a valuable resource to get us started,” shares Alan Hirsch.

It’s been four and a half years since True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In was released, and I’ve been humbled by the immense response to four hand-drawn circles. A huge thanks to everyone who helped to get that book out.

I know that I might risk sounding a bit brazen, but I hope that you hear only my excitement about what God has done so far. Starting back in 2005, those of us in San Diego InterVarsity created the material to reach Southern California college students, and did extensive field-testing and multiple drafts before the book was released in 2008. Since then, I’ve been surprised by its international appeal. It’s been used to introduce people to Jesus and His message on every inhabited continent. (I don’t know, nor think it probably, that anyone has taken it to Antarctica.) And so far, it has been translated into Korean, Mongolian, Polish, Thai, Mandarin, German and Spanish.

It’s also spread to the evangelism curricula for denominations and national campus ministries, and has been reported on by Christian media outlets such as Christianity Today, Leadership Journal and JCTV. It’s been shared with seminary students in New England, lakeside villagers in Malawi, college students in Texas, house churches in China, youth in Australia, megachurches in Orange County, inmates in Fresno, slum dwellers in Thailand, and gang-bangers in Boston — one even tattooed the fourth circle on his bicep! One chaplain of a county jail thought it would help reduce the recidivism rate, giving inmates not only a vision of what they’re forgiven from, but what they’re forgiven for.

I’m thankful to God. It’s been His doing.

Now, four and a half years later, Real Life is finally out. From this vantage point, I see that both books are about disciple-making: if True Story communicated a vision of faith for people who don’t yet follow Jesus, then Real Life does the same with those who have already started. Real Life seeks to help people become like Jesus, as I learned from folks at 3DM, “to do the things he did for the reasons he did them.”

True Story and Real Life actually share a common lineage: they are popularized versions of first and second halves of my dissertation on postmodern leadership development. True Story gave the theological ground for Real Life’s disciple-making model. A bit like Lord of the Rings, the two books actually came from the same unified source!

It’s available for pre-order at Amazon — both in paperback and Kindle formats — but you can get it shipped to you immediately from InterVarsity Press if you can’t wait. And if you liked it, please consider offering a short review at Amazon. It might not seem like much, but every review was is enormously helpful in persuading others to see what this book is all about.

In the future, look for the blog categories of future posts. Many of them will line up with the Real Life Continuum: skeptic, seeker, follower, leader, and world-changer. A couple of the previous posts have already started down that line, and I hope to have it continue.

So, I hope that you enjoy reading Real Life, and that it gives you the tools necessary to help empower others to do what Jesus did for the reasons he did them.

A previous version of this post was also published at releasetheape.com

When preaching fails

Contributing to Release the APE is the only rhythm right now that is getting me to post. That being said, here’s an excerpt of what I wrote:

I’ve been thinking again about John Wesley lately.

That might normally be weird. But I find myself going back to this European believer from the 18th century. For one, he was a premier evangelist, and would take his message to the mines to make sure the miners, who wouldn’t normally step into a church, would hear about the message of Jesus. In a time when it was often considered wrong to preach outside of a church building, it was a courageous step.

At the same time, and perhaps more importantly, he thought preaching alone wasn’t enough. Here’s a quote that I took from James Bryan Smith’s The Good and Beautiful God:

In one stark entry in Wesley’s journal, he commented on a time when he failed to establish societies and classes in a region where he had preached. He returned twenty years after a great revival in a region called Pembrokeshire and was grieved to see that no evidence of their evangelistic success remained. He concluded:

“I was more convinced than ever that the preaching like an apostle, without joining together those that are awakened and training them up in the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer. How much preaching has there been for these twenty years all over Pembrokeshire! But no regular societies, no discipline, no order or connection. And the consequence is that nine in ten of those once awakened are now faster asleep than ever.”

…

You can read the rest of the article at releasetheape.com.

Coming to terms

My first post for releasetheape.com:

I’m supposed to tell a coming-of-age story. Not about becoming a man, though. (There’s actually not too much to tell there, anyway.) Or even about becoming an apprentice of Jesus. (I do have a little more to tell on that one.) But instead, I’m supposed to write about when I knew I was an Apostle, Prophet or Evangelist.

It’s not an easy assignment.

First of all, any story I might write will sound self-congratulatory. Imagine me in an ornate robe, curved pipe in hand, slinking back into a velvet armchair, and I start to speak in a slow, cultivated accent: “In a time when boys sought to be men, and men dared to dream, I looked down at my already gnarled hands, pondering the futility of life. That is, until a voice from heaven cracked through my thoughts like a thunderclap: ‘James, from this day forward, you shall be called … Apostle!’” It assails against my Korean upbringing to crown myself like that. Even Lebron received much derision for tattooing “Chosen1” on his back, even though, whether you like him or not, he can play ball. How much less have I accomplished? …

To finish reading this post about my unease with these kinds of titles, head on over to Release the APE. I’m excited about all who are contributing: Beau Crosetto‘s leading the charge, but other monthly contributors include me, Dave Ferguson, JR Woodward, Grace Biskee, Sarah Carter, Shawn Young, Jon Heitbrink, and Eric & Stacy Rafferty. I’m digging all the InterVarsity love!

Check it out!