The Scattering: Imagining a Church that Connects Faith and Life

The Scattering: Imagining a Church that Connects Faith and Life by Dwight Dubois
 
Imagine being able to connect everything you do in life with God's dream of shalom. Imagine all God's people seeing their family responsibilities, work, and community involvement as ministry. Imagine congregations that equip and empower people for ministry-not just in the church, but in all they do. Imagine leaders and members finding a renewed sense of joy, purpose, and vitality as they give themselves away for the sake of the Gospel. Dwight DuBois not only imagines these life-giving outcomes in fresh and powerful ways, he shows readers how to create an environment that equips everyday saints to connect their faith with all of life. Based on the real life struggles of pastors and members, The Scattering lays bare our preoccupation with the health of the institution and offers powerful new language for the church as being both gathered and scattered. This language breaks down unhelpful stereotypes, and provides readers with hopeful and rewarding ways to interpret who we are and what we do as the church of Jesus Christ.
 

Reviews

"Dwight DuBois not only diagnoses the debilitating auto-immune disease from which the church is currently suffering failing to see the various dimensions of our everyday lives as ready-made arenas for God s activity and mission but also offers a prescription as significant as it simple: transform our congregations into those places that equip us to live our faith every single day. Traversing biblical, theological, and historical terrain with both ease and grace, DuBois offers a compelling vision of congregational life that supports a daily life infused by the holy purpose of serving others in the name of Christ. "The Scattering" is, in short, the book we should read in order create the congregations we and the world God loves need."
Dr. David Lose, President, The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia --Wipf and Stock Publishers
 

"As kids, all of us played that game with folded hands, Here s the church, here s the steeple, the punchline involving all the people who naturally were to be found inside. But as Dwight DuBois reminds us, the church not only gathers but scatters, doing some of its most important work in the world. What an imaginative and important book, calling us to redefine what it means to be church; a real game changer."

Mike Graves, Wm. K. McElvaney Professor of Preaching and Worship, Saint Paul School of Theology, Kansas City --Wipf and Stock Publishers
 

''In these times of change in the culture, anxiety in the church, and the temptation to turn inward on our life inside the walls of the church building, the author Dwight DuBois helps us reclaim our role as support staff to God's people in their daily lives. This book is a welcome invitation to refocus our attention, that we might help unleash the power of our congregations beyond our walls as God's people live faithfully in all of the places they are called to be during the week.''
--Janice Kibler, Pastor, Grace Lutheran Church, Boulder, Colorado --Wipf and Stock Publishers

About the Author
Dwight L. DuBois is a parish pastor, congregational renewal professional, and instructor at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. In recent years he has worked extensively on making the connection between faith and life, in congregations, with college students, and at the seminary level.