You Are What You Love (copy 3)

by James K. A. Smith

Hardcover, 2016

Status

Available

Call number

264.001

Publication

Brazos Press (2016), Edition: 1, 224 pages

Description

You are what you love. But you might not love what you think. In this book, award-winning author James K.A. Smith shows that who and what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. And while we desire to shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us. We might not realize the ways our hearts are being taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. Smith helps readers recognize the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of Christian practices. He explains that worship is the "imagination station" that incubates our loves and longings so that our cultural endeavors are indexed toward God and his kingdom. This is why the church and worshiping in a local community of believers should be the hub and heart of Christian formation and discipleship. Following the publication of his influential work Desiring the Kingdom, Smith received numerous requests from pastors and leaders for a more accessible version of that book's content. No mere abridgment, this new book draws on years of Smith's popular presentations on the ideas in Desiring the Kingdom to offer a fresh, bottom-up rearticulation. The author creatively uses film, literature, and music illustrations to engage readers and includes new material on marriage, family, youth ministry, and faith and work. He also suggests individual and communal practices for shaping the Christian life.… (more)

Language

Original language

English

Physical description

224 p.; 9 inches

ISBN

158743380X / 9781587433801

User reviews

LibraryThing member jonlands
Easy read with a simple premise based Matthew 15:19. Truly a spiritual investigation of the individual heart. Worth your time to read.
LibraryThing member WaterMillChurch
In this book, James K. A. Smith seems to me to be focusing on 3 main words: love, worship, & liturgy. The main idea I took from this book is that what we love, we worship and it forms us into who we are and what we do. It is not our knowledge & thinking that guide our lives but the liturgies or (in
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Mr. Smith's use) the habits or practices that we repeat. These subconsciously form our loves. They are all around us not only in our Christian assemblies but in all of our everyday living. The liturgies of our assemblies are thus of utmost importance in regularly recentering us in God's story of reconciling all things to Himself and not letting the liturgies of success in this world become our center.
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LibraryThing member wvlibrarydude
I would have rated higher if it had been less academic philosophical discussion. Smith should have taken his own point in this book, and spent more time on stories to bring his philosophy across. Instead he discussed the ideas with emphasis on terms familiar to the academic reader. Narrative is
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what he wants the church to focus on with spiritual formation.
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