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The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love

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Product Highlights

• Includes questions for individual reflection and processing embedded in the text
• Includes content for small group discussion and a companion spiritual practice to try at the end of each chapter.
• More resources available for Apprentice Group leaders at the Apprentice of Jesus website, www.apprenticeofjesus.org
• This book completes the three volume Apprentice Series

"'The Apprentice Series is a treasure. Dr. Smith has thought long and hard about the process of human transformation into the likeness of Jesus. I urge you to buy these books immediately! Read them and apply them. Then live them out in the context of a loving community. You will not regret doing so.'"

——Richard J. Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline and coauthor of Longing for God

"'Jim Smith is the most articulate, accurate and helpful writer of spiritual formation of my generation. I give this series my highest recommendation.'"

——Todd Hunter, author of Giving Church Another Chance

"'The Apprentice Series is the best practice I have seen in Christian spiritual formation.'"

——Dallas Willard, author of The Divine Conspiracy

"'The Good and Beautiful Community is very readable, relatable, and practical. Recommend it to pastors, adult Sunday school teachers, small-group leaders, fans of Dallas Willard and Richard Foster, and customers interested in spiritual formation and disciplines.'"

——Daniel Johnson, CBA Retailers & Resources, September 2010

In this third book in the Apprentice Series, James Bryan Smith helps us know how to live in relationship with others as apprentices of Jesus. “Apprentices of Jesus are not part-time do-gooders,” he writes. “They live in continuous contact with the kingdom of God, and are constantly men and women in whom Christ dwells. They do not sometimes tell the truth, sometimes live sacrificially or sometimes forgive. There are myriad opportunities for us to impact the world in which we live.”

Yet many times we've gotten it wrong, tending to emphasize personal faith over social justice or vice versa. In these pages Jim Smith shows us how to bring spiritual formation and community engagement together, and then once again offers spiritual practices that root new, true narratives about God and the world in our souls. His insight and humility as a fellow learner with us will lead us to live in authentic ways as a good and beautiful community of Christ-followers, shining the light of the Spirit into every relationship.

About the Author
James Bryan Smith (M.Div., Yale University Divinity School, D.Min., Fuller Seminary) is a theology professor at Friends University in Wichita, KS and a writer and speaker in the area of Christian spiritual formation. He also serves as the director of the Christian Spiritual Formation Institute at Friends University.

A founding member of Richard J. Foster's spiritual renewal ministry, Renovaré, Smith is an ordained United Methodist Church minister and has served in various capacities in local churches. Smith is also the author of A Spiritual Formation Workbook, Devotional Classics (with Richard Foster), Embracing the Love of God, Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven and Room of Marvels.