Hugh Halter

I was just sitting here this morning looking out my office window preparing for a trip to Philly, when the UPS dude rolled up. I was hoping it was a bunch of boxes with our new book, The Tangible Kingdom. I hopped up and yelled, “that’s what I’m talking about!” But Hank only walked up to my door with one envelope. I was bummed, but it was a letter from our publishers congragulating us, and included was ONE copy of the book. Not quite what I was looking for but still a nice suprise to finally see 20 years of ministry misery pay off!

Over the last year, we’ve had quite a few people ask us, “so why did you write the book?” Most who asked were friends and knew that we despised writing, so we understood what they were asking. Others, who didn’t know us, simply wanted to know what motivated our aim with this work.

We mentioned in the book, that our primary reason was due to the overwhelming request we received by people who were going through our training. Usually, the inquiry sounded something like this. “I wish I could just remember all the stories you told.” “I wish I could retell your training to my friends.” “You seem to make pretty complex issues simple so I could get it, I just don’t want to forget.”

At first, Matt and I didn’t take it too seriously, but after a while, we even felt responsible to provide an easier way for people to transfer some of our thoughts to other people. We were also beginning to feel more pressure to stay local as Adullam was growing. The book therefore became the best option to allow us to remain in our missional context while helping others traverse the immense pitfalls and opportunites of our non-christendom world.

Now that enough leaders have read and commented on the TK, we feel we can be more forthright in how you can benefit from the book.

First, if you’re in any type of existing church environment, but you’ve been secretly sneaking off to Starbucks to read those “dangerous emerging church” books (whatever that means), then you already know the tension of trying to help a good hearted Christian “get it.” Getting it means, understanding why the church is jacked up so bad and identifying what the subtle but all important changes are that must happen. Even church planters we coach, don’t always know how to hold their initial launch team together. If that’s you, we think this book will help you immensely. It’s not written too lofty, but does help them understand the systemic issues related to mission, church, and their own discipleship. If you’re a church planter or pastor who is wanting to start some good healthy dialogue to get people moving together, this book can be a great primer.

Secondly, we wrote it to hold the body of Christ together instead of pointing a finger of blame. Splinters, factions, fights and quarrels are inevitable when we’re dealing with such important issues, but we think many of the fights can be averted with some sensible guidelines. So if you’re a young gun and about ready to leave your grandpa’s church because the pastor has his head in the sand, this book may give you a less offensive way to start the dialogue. All pastors pick books based on the endorsements and you’ve probably noticed that we have both conservative, emerging, contemporary, missionary, national, international, and underground church leaders who have found our work to be helpful. We hope our friends will give you the credibility to start the dialogue and practice the missional way of life in any context, in any church, or denomination.

Third, we wrote it in hopes that a grass roots movement of incarnational communities might emerge anywhere in the world. Obviously, you don’t need an existing church to begin your missional story. For church planters, our story may finally give you a picture of how to start a church without the conventional “launch a church service” methodology. Others, who take this seriously, may just find that a church emerges like a flower surfacing in the springtime. We’ve set up the Tangible Kingdom website to catch such stories. So if you decide to grab some friends and start incarnating together, and something cool happens, please share your story through video or text on our site. You’ll probably find friends you never knew you had.