Chad Bird: Upside-Down Spirituality

Upside-Down Spirituality
(Baker, 2019)

WHO: Chad Bird, assistant professor of Hebrew and exegetical theology at Concordia Theological Seminary.

THE BOOK: Upside-Down Spirituality: The 9 Essential Failures of a Faithful Life (Baker Publishing Group/Baker Books, 2019)

HE SAYS: “What we need is blessed failure. Failure to believe in ourselves. Failure to make a name for ourselves. Failure to be supermoms and superdads. In these ‘failures’ is the success of the Spirit in our lives. He turns our world upside down so that we rediscover in Christ a life right side up with God.”

THE BIG IDEA: In our personal lives, our relationships and in our life as a church, our hearts are easily duped by the world’s version of success. We can discover in our “failures” the God who will never fail us.

WHY CHURCH LEADERS SHOULD READ IT: Upside-Down Spirituality provides a practical, biblically based approach to communicating the countercultural message to the church. We are inundated with how-to and self-help books, all of which direct us back to ourselves. This book points us to Christ.

WHY CONGREGANTS SHOULD READ IT: If we are faithful and Christ-centered we will always be failures in the eyes of the world—and that’s a great place to be. For it means we are in Jesus, suffused with his grace.

QUOTABLE: “In Jesus our worlds are turned upside down. But we find, to our utter amazement, that upside down in him is actually right side up.”

Order this book from Amazon.com »
Read an excerpt from this book »

Chad Bird
Chad Bird

Chad Bird has served as a pastor in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, as assistant professor of Hebrew and exegetical theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and as a guest lecturer at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

A Sanctifying Space

The local church does not simply occupy space. Rather, it makes place.

Beyond Burnout: Finding God in the Ashes

Where you are burned out, and you’re just desperately craving some real comfort, Jesus breaks himself into a feast for you, so that you can savor and taste and see that the Lord is good, and your heart can burn with hope within you again.

Merry and Bright Family Golf Night Attracts a Crowd

Sunday school classes and other groups “adopted” a hole and decorated it for Christmas, and with average Sunday attendance at around 260 at the church, there was a good pool of potential volunteers to staff the event.