In the adult Go Deeper class I teach, we will be going through Good and Beautiful Community by James Bryan Smith in the next month. It is book 3 of the Apprentice series. The first two books look at who God is and how we live. Book 3 focuses on us as the body of Christ. Below are some quotes from the introduction: When we move into this area, it is easy to lose the main focus (the heart) and put all of the emphasis on the wrong thing (the activity itself). Living faith is trust and confidence in God expressed in acts of love in our human relations and encounters with one another. Personal piety without social action can also become self-righteous and insensitive and lead to burnout. The problems are, ironically, identical. Both tend to see their actions (service or prayer) as they way to earn the favor of God and humans...And both lead to burnout because they are not empowered by the Spirit, only by the flesh. We are prone, he said, to put the emphasis on the a...
