PublishU EDITION TWENTY
CHURCH UNBOUND Towards a flourishing future
SPECIAL INTERVIEW WITH LESLIE NEWTON
SETTING THE MOVEMENT FREE It deepens our identity, renews confidence in our calling and offers pathways into a blended ecology where life, joy and mission can blossom
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Matt Bird is the Founder of PublishU, an international publishing house that helps first-time and serial non-fiction authors write, publish and market their books worldwide.
Welcome to this edition of the PublishU Magazine featuring Leslie Newton and his challenging book, Church Unbound. Drawing on years of ministry, Leslie addresses how modern churches often get weighed down by administrative tasks and institutional routines. His book serves as a practical guide to help communities move from running a machine back to being a dynamic movement. This special feature invites you to discover how local groups can move past restrictive routines and build a vibrant future. We are proud to share Leslie's practical insights and thoughtful perspective with you.
Matt Bird Founder of PublishU.com
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
FINDING THE MOVEMENT AGAIN
Interview with Leslie Newton, author of Church Unbound and Revive Us Again. Leslie, tell us about your current work.
I continue to be a Methodist minister, one of the historic denominations, and I've been that now for 25-26 years. My role at the moment is kind of an oversight role of an area of Yorkshire in England, trying to encourage the mission and ministry
ministry of the church. What led me to write my first book was really looking back to the roots of the Methodist movement in the 18th century. That got me really energised and really excited about some of that sense of movement we had long ago, that somehow had become a bit institutional, bound up. Your first book took you to some interesting places. Tell us about it.
I kind of wrote the book to try and
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and get it out of my system at one level, but then having it, putting it out there, it was really amazingly humbling, but also wonderful. People were gathering together in various conferences and saying, “Can you come and unpack some of the stuff in the book?” That was happening in England. Then I got an invitation to Oslo, Latvia and Helsinki. It's really interesting, really humbling, but marvellous. So this new book, Church Unbound, what's it about? So, as I reflected on the conversations I was having in the first book, it became clear that people were saying, “Oh yeah, we really want to recover what it is to be that movement.” And yet people feel bound. Hence the title of the book is Church Unbound. People feel bound by the institutional stuff that has just become part and parcel of being the church in the 21st century. We talk about church as a building or church as a charity or church as an institution, and our thinking becomes framed by church as a people in whom God is doing a new thing, pouring out his grace and enabling those people to be dynamic and transformative. This book is really me trying to say that we buy into that
the fact that we were founded as a movement of transformation, spiritual and social transformation. This is how we can try and make sure we are clear about how we can move forward as that unbound, living into what God really has for us. So what are you hoping for this book, Leslie? I'm really hoping that this book can be a book that the churches and circuits will be able to take hold of it and they'll be able to say, "Aha!" And I hope that the aha moment can then lead to us starting to reshape things, and there is a different future ahead. I really hope that the book can just help to set some people free to be able to live the future that I believe God has for them.
I really hope that the book can just help to set some people free to be able to live the future that I believe God has for them. Leslie Newton Author of Church Unbound
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Available in paperback, eBook and audiobook Click here to get your copy now!
Published by PublishU
Available in paperback, eBook and audiobook Click here to get your copy now!
Published by PublishU
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