Finally finished the last chapter of this book - I had slacked off on it along with my blogging endeavors.

This was a great book, packed full of challenging and thought provoking concepts. The biggest take away for me was that we often enter spiritual conversations trying to convince people they're wrong and sinful by sharing with them an abbreviated version of the gospel. One of the main challenges of the book is to start the narrative of the bible where God starts it, not in Genesis 3 (the fall), but rather with creation and the wholeness God created all of us for. Ron Martoia suggests that instead of trying to convince people they are sinful and therefore need Jesus, we should start spiritual conversations where there is no argument - the innate things God built into all of us. He calls these core yearnings. The yearning to believe in something greater than yourself, the yearning to hope for a better tomorrow, the yearning to have purpose in life, etc - things that regardless of time, language and culture these yearnings are a part of every person. He suggested, and I believe he is right, that we can better point people to Jesus through relationship and spiritual conversations that allow for process and time.

He also spent a lot of time focusing in on what being created in the image of God really means and what being kicked out of Eden has done to that image. I highly recomend the read.

I also did an interview with Ron a few months back, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.