Upside-Down Spirituality: The 9 Essential Failures of a Faithful Life, Paperback

In our age when the church can too often seem like a poor copy of the world, Chad Bird challenges us to reclaim the astounding originality of our ancient, backward faith. Where the world stresses the importance of success, Bird invites readers to embrace nine specific failures in the areas of our personal lives, our relationships, and the church. Why? Because what human wisdom deems indispensable is so often an impediment to our spiritual growth, and what it deems insignificant is so often essential to it.

With compelling examples from the Bible and today, Bird paints an enticing picture of the counterintuitive, countercultural life that God wants for us. He helps readers delight in all of the ways that Jesus turned the world upside-down, allowing us to experience true freedom, not from our weaknesses but in the midst of them.

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. He is the author of several books, including Your God Is Too Glorious, and has contributed articles to Lutheran Witness, Gottesdienst, The Gospel Coalition, Concordia Theological Quarterly, Modern Reformation, Mockingbird, Logia, Higher Things, and The Federalist. In addition to hosting chadbird.com, he is a regular contributor to christholdfast.org and 1517legacy.com. He lives in Texas.