Tangible Kingdom Primer

by Hugh Halter Matt Smay

Everyone is talking about community. Everyone seems to want it, but most struggle to find it. Matt and Hugh have written The Tangible Kingdom Primer with two specific purposes. First, to be a spiritual formation tool to prepare your heart for mission. We want you to grab a few friends to go through this with, there is no big commitment required to becoming an incarnational community. You can simply be friends going through an 8 week spiritual exercise together. You can challenge each other as you build a community, and you will have a much better experience as you process your struggles together. The second purpose is to be a field guide for starting mission together. Some of you are ready to go and have friends that want to go with you. If that is you, then dive right into the Primer as both spiritual formation and missional practice. In either case, at the end of the eight weeks, you will have the opportunity to decide what to do next. Remember, this is just a Primer to begin building lifelong habits. Some of you will just thank each other and move on. Others will decide to formalize your missional community as you go on mission together. There is no failure here, just a chance to create your own incarnational community. The Tangible Kingdom Primer is an 8 week, daily Workbook/Journal that will help you define new terminology, inspire the imagination with full-color graphic design work, and provoke new missional practices naturally. A great resource for existing churches, small groups, or new communities.

Genres: Discipleship, Faith, Church

205 pages, Spiral-bound

Published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Bob Ayres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent guide for small group discussion on the topic. I actually read this before reading the book it is based on because someone gave me this primer. Content is rock-solid. I now turn to reading the Tangible Kingdom book with positive anticipation.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest I would recommend the actual book. This could be a helpful companion, especially for a small group to use.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Tangible Kingdom Primer is a good introduction to incarnational community. if you're brand new to the ideas of missional communities and missional living, you'll probably get much more out of this book than if you're already familiar with the concepts, in which case you'll find it repetitious. I haven't read the Tangible Kingdom book, so i can't speak to whether or not this is a good continuation or summary of that work. Halter & Smay do an effective job laying the groundwork for missional community living, and they offer many helpful insights, posing a few genuinely thought-provoking questions, but mostly the built-in reflections are common-sense, simple answer activities. lastly, i hated the format of this book. constant font changes from page to page, dark fonts on dark backgrounds, over-italicized cursive fonts that were almost impossible to read... the attempted stylishness merely became an irritation and a hindrance to the content.

[Amanda Cook]

Reading through this book with my missional community. A lot to be learned from it. Helpful enough to me, that I decided to pick up the book as well (this is more a workbook sort, though it stands alone). The spiral binding and sturdy covers are great for something like this. A lot of the community days involve food though... great for building community, but not so good if you need to watch what you eat :D

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think his approach to looking as "God's Kingdom" outside the walls of the church is healthy and needs to be grappled with by many Christians and Christian leaders. I don't think, however, his lifestyle is quite as healthy as his ideology. He describes his home as "Grand Central Station", people living in his home all the time. How can you expect people to follow you to Jesus if you take away a sanctuary for your family? I wonder how his kids feel about there home being open to the world?

[Kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very easy and interesting book to go through with my regroup. We learned so much about each other, and even though our regroup has grown and we don't spend as much time together, I feel as if I still have the closeness with those few people. I wish I could go through the primer again with some of the new people I have met over the past year.

[Roxanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are doing this 8 week study at my church. It is an awesome learning book about being a part of your community, The book gives you tools to prepare your heart for mission. The second mission is to be a field guide for starting misson together. This is a primer to build lifelong habits. It is very good and it has homework and projects to do and questions to answer.

[Rachel Potts · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have it for stars for its thought provoking questions but more for the eight weeks of community it created. It feels good to be a part of something amazing. I look forward to what our community will continue to do as it continues to grow.

[Maja · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an awesome workbook. I can't wait to read the book it was developed from.

[Catherine Mullaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think you have to already be in love with the LORD JESUS CHRIST and be willing to do it with a group of friends in order to get the most of this "call to action" book.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this book so far, but am only in week 1