You opened your best-selling book Crazy Love by saying “something is wrong with the American church.”  More than a million copies have sold to date, so do you think American church members agree.

At first I thought it was just me. Then I stood before twenty thousand Christian college students and asked, “How many of you have read the New Testament and wondered if we in the Church are missing it?” When almost every hand went up, I felt comforted. At least I’m not crazy. And I think those reading Crazy Love find this message resonating.

I think it’s far too easy to blame the American church without acknowledging that we are each part of the church and therefore responsible. But I think we all feel deeply, even if we haven’t voiced it, that the church in many ways is not doing well.

We give many reasons for not making God a priority in our lives. But most of them seem like things we can’t control. We are almost fatalistic about our self-absorption. But in reality, we are able to choose whether to focus on Christ or on ourselves. And our self-focus leads to worry and stress as we try to manage our lives and live them out under our control.

This really hit home to me when I was reading chapter 2 of Crazy Love. On pg. 42, Francis says “Both worry and stress reek of arrogance.” I had never thought of it that way. I had always seen worry and stress as signs of weakness and lack of trust, but to think that I am arrogantly holding on to my agenda and pushing God out of the way. Wow. What an indictment on my sin nature and my unwillingness to trust every day to Christ.

By Jon Hirst

I have heard about the magnitude of God many times. But most of the time the words become collections of letters that don’t really sink into my mind or change my heart’s perspective. So as I read Chapter 1 of the Enhanced Edition of Crazy Love, I almost lost the incredible meaning in the words that were so familiar to me.
But at the moment when I almost discounted what Francis was saying, he challenged me to watch the video of the galaxies. I clicked on the link on my iPad and I was there . . . captured. Stopping to follow that first link jolted me from my “reading mode” and forced me to think about what he was saying in a deeper way.

As I interacted with the video, I was truly amazing to see how God used it in my thinking. I hadn’t ever really stopped to think about the size of our universe and to then imagine what that means about our God. But as I did it helped me to stay focused and get ready to jump into the descriptions of God that Francis provided.

By Jon Hirst

Our team at Novo Ink is very excited to share some news with the Conversant Life community. This morning we launched the enhanced eBook version of Crazy Love by Francis Chan. This is a collaborative project with Francis’ publisher David C. Cook.

To find out more about the book click here.

We are very excited about this enhanced eBook because it takes a unique approach to this new medium. As you know we have been blogging about how eBooks can be tools of incarnational ministry among us. That lens is how we look at projects like this.

So when we sat down with David C. Cook and brainstormed this project, our goal was to create an intentional and incarnational resource that allows you to jump into the idea along with Francis Chan and learn new things as you hear from him and interact with the many other resources. And we are so excited with how the team at Cook brought the project together!

The tendency out there is to create a book with “extras” but that is simply more information overload. Instead we believe an enhanced eBook needs to be an organic experience where audio, video, and support web resources make the reading experience richer and more meaningful.

Our hope is that as you read this enhanced book, you will connect with the author and his passion, but more importantly, that you will get new insights into how you can grow in your love for Jesus.

In order to model that, I will be reading the enhanced book, one chapter a week, and blogging on conversant life about the total experience and what I am learning. I challenge you to join me in that journey and read along. I would love to hear your comments as we read it together.

When it came to writing a book on the social gospel and Christian humanitarianism, Ryan Dobson and I decided that it would be important to engage people who were active in the work and ideas -- people who were living out the notion that God has called us to invest in His world for His glory and His mission.

That led me on a journey last year during which I interviewed thirteen passionate, interesting, and highly invested servants.  Some of them you will know (like Tony Campolo, Francis Chan, Franklin Graham) and some of them you might not (like Jim Moriarty, Gilbert Lennox, Brad Corrigan) but all are worth the read.

This series is an effort to introduce them to you.  The full interviews are in the book, but I hope these passages will be engaging and uplifting as you consider what it means to follow the Humanitarian Jesus.