Underground Church: A Living Example of the Church in Its Most Potent Form

Description

What If the Church Truly Empowered People to Engage in God's Mission Something extraordinary has been happening in Tampa, Florida. A new expression of the church has been quietly growing. It's something of an experiment, but over the last ten years the church has been validating its ideas with sustained and growing results. At The Underground, being the church is not focused around a weekly gathering or church programs. It's about empowering individuals to respond to God's call to ministry and mission, especially to the poor and disadvantaged in our midst. While many churches talk about discerning calling and engaging in mission, very few are structured to make this their ministry focus. Underground Church is a new vision for the church rooted in its biblical mission to share the love of God and serve the poor. Sanders explores how to make structural changes, how to think about leadership, how to fund ministries, and how to truly engage people in God's mission. Filled with creative insights, he explains what it means to center the mission of the church around the callings of individuals to outward ministry - whether that involves leading Bible studies in the workplace, feeding the homeless, or working to free women and children from sex trafficking. This book will both tell the inspiring story of a church that is rethinking what church looks like while also outlining and uncovering the principles that transfer for every church and Christian community that hopes for more. It's the true story of a 10-year experiment that unpacks the possibilities of a church structured and streamlined for mission.

Brian Sanders is founder and Executive Director of the Underground Network. He holds an MA in Religious Studies from the University of South Florida, and an MTh in Applied Theology awarded by the University of Wales and Spurgeon's College (London). He is the former State Director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Florida and the author of Life After Church. Brian has lived with his wife and 6 children in intentional community in the same inner city neighborhood for 20 years, embodying the ideas that drive him.

If I lived in Tampa I'd join the Underground. Seriously. It's the most exciting and thoroughly missional church I've encountered on my travels. The whole missional thing isn't a theory or a conversation or even a paradigm for those guys. It's a way of life! * MICHAEL FROST, author of The Shaping of Things to Come * What the church in the West needs more than any single thing are brave stories. Theories, methods, and old church metrics run amok, but stories blow through the paralysis of paradigms and give us practices for a new day and a new church. Whenever anyone asks me what I've seen in America that is truly missional church, I always point them to the story in Tampa called the Underground. For years, I've been trying to get Brian to share their story and am thrilled that they have tried, tested, and now are willing to extend their story into the national conversation. * HUGH HALTER, author, founder of Missio, and US director of Forge America * In Underground Church, Brian Sanders brings above ground valuable lessons learned from leading a church that is solely focused on mobilizing people to reach the lost and serve the poor. If you want to discover a new framework for church that doesn't focus on running programs but on equipping people---this book is a must-read! * DAVE FERGUSON, author of Hero Maker * The Underground is proof that being led by the Spirit has always looked and felt like creative, innovative experimentation throughout church history. As the Spirit weaves in and out of people's gifting and calling, the result is a diverse, empowered church that becomes an underground city transforming network. * PEYTON JONES, author of Reaching the Unreached and Church Zero * This is not your everyday blustery, grandiloquent, church planter saga. Honestly, I have heard too many of those. The UNDERGROUND story is raw and honest---the real deal. Brian Sanders eloquently teaches the reader what it means to plant a church, to flail, flounder, and then to forge a beautiful new narrative of what it can mean become the church. * LINDA BERGQUIST, NAMB church planting catalyst, coauthor of Church Turned Inside Out and The Wholehearted Church Planter *