At Invite, we exist to build a like-hearted community of influencers who are high on Jesus, low on politics, biased toward innovation, and serious about discipleship.

But what does it mean to be “Serious About Discipleship”?

Have you ever asked a room of lifelong churchgoers to define the word disciple? Invite author Roger Ross did and then wrote a book, Kinda Christian, after watching a church struggle for seven months to define the word.

Many of us in church are full of information about Jesus. We can name the books of the Bible and how to volunteer at the food bank.

But the word disciple?

No idea.

In spite of the fact that this is supposed to be the raison d’être!

We have information but lack formation.

The problem goes back to our definition of knowledge, which is cognitive and conceptual not embodied or relational. I address this in an article on my Substack, More Like Jesus. We are full of dialogismos, like the Pharisees, but lack epignosis, like Jesus.

The word “disciple” comes from the Greek mathetes, which means a learner or apprentice. To understand it, you need to know the style of education in the day, which was rooted in imitation. A student moves into a workshop and picks up the trade by standing at the master’s elbow, day after day, until his own hands begin to move the way the master’s hands move.

Jesus said as much: “The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.” (Luke 6:40)

A disciple often begins with imitation (Paul says, “imitate me as I imitate Christ”), then moves from imitation to “withness” (a deeper level of intimacy than imitation, which centers on quality time spent together), then from withness to indwelling.

This by the way is the layered meaning of More Like Jesus. The “like” is narrative in nature. It is not a static declaration but a reference to a journey. It captures the spoken desire of people curious about following Jesus, moves to abiding in God’s presence, and ultimately to union with God.

Notice what Jesus commanded when he handed his followers their commission. He did not say, go and make converts. He did not say make believers, or attenders, or donors. He said,

The verb is singular and stubborn. Every other thing a church does—the building, the budget, the lights, the coffee in the lobby—exists to serve that one command, or it is useless or even worse a poor use of valuable resources.

The problem is that the modern church has grown very good at information and very shy about formation. We will teach you what the Council of Nicaea settled in 325 and never once ask whether you have forgiven your brother.

We grade discipleship the way a school grades a pupil, by what he can recall on the test, when Jesus graded it by whether the branch bore fruit. A person can know everything about Jesus and not host him or even resemble him whatsoever.

The demons, James notes dryly, have airtight theology. They believe, and they shudder. (James 2:19)

So let’s dismiss with this nonsense that information about Jesus constitutes following Jesus.

To be serious about discipleship is to keep our eyes on the goal Jesus set—likeness to himself—and to refuse the cheaper substitutes that keep offering themselves in its place. Paul called it a slow work of the Spirit: “we all… are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory.” (2 Cor 3:18) Elsewhere he sounds less like a theologian than a mother in hard labor: “my dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” (Gal 4:19) Formed.

The fathers had a word for the destination. They called it union with God.

Christ in you.

And why serious? Because for a generation we made discipleship sound easy, when it is not.

We took the lifelong journey of following Jesus and shrank it to a single transaction at the front of a sanctuary—a raised hand, a repeated prayer, a signed card—then stood back, puzzled, as the pews filled with people who had decided and then did nothing about it.

Theologian and Nazi-resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a name for this. He called it cheap grace: grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace as a doctrine you affirm instead of a life you lose.

The cost has always been clear. Jesus put it in three-inch type above the fold. Take up your cross. Count the cost. The gate is narrow and few find it, not because God is stingy, but because the road asks for everything you carry.

Discipleship is why Invite exists, and why we make what we make. A trade book can inform you, and a good one will. But formation happens in the doing—in the practice, in the reflection, in the return week after week to the same table with the same stubborn people and the same patient Lord. It is why our workbooks put a pen in your hand and ask you to write. It is why we pay less attention to how many books leave the warehouse than to whether one reader, a year from now, looks a little more like Jesus than she does today.

So we return to the churchgoers who could not quite say what a disciple is. The answer was never a definition to memorize for the quiz. It was an invitation to move into the workshop, to bind our hours to the Master’s, and to stand at his elbow long enough that on some ordinary morning, we catch our own hands moving like his. To be serious about discipleship is to want it more than we want to be comfortable, or right, or safe.

It is to want, above everything else a life can want, to become like Jesus.

Image: Duccio, “The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew” (1308–11), public domain.

At Invite, we exist to build a like-hearted community of Jesus followers who are high on Jesus, low on politics, biased toward innovation, and serious about discipleship. But what does it mean to be “Biased Toward Innovation”?

While Christians today are known for retreat, rule, and self-reliance, historically one of the greatest assets to culture has been the church—the body of believers—who, having heard Christ’s call to go, responds to the needs of the world with brilliant new ideas that save lives. Consider for example that health insurance came from a group of church people. While in challenging times such as we face now, the temptation may be to go backward, God calls us forward.

Christian innovation is about being Spirit-mended and solution-minded.

Christian innovation is in many ways just like secular innovation. In Greater Things: The Work of the New Creation, I define innovation using four terms: a true innovation is an invention; it is an instrument; it is intuitive; and it is influential.

But we cannot stop here. In addition to these characteristics, Christian innovation is something greater: Christian innovation is how we participate in the emergence of God’s New Creation. Dean of Duke Divinity School Greg Jones describes “Christian social innovation” as activity that helps reveal a transformed creation. But how do we avoid falling into the trap of the social gospel? Let us look at this word new in more depth.

The New Testament contains two Greek words commonly translated into the English as new: neos and kainos. The first is about time; the second is about substance. Neos connotes change: something recently created, not previously known or used. It is closer to our current understanding of innovation as “new and improved.” This has a strong implication of time; it is a comparison of something new to something old.

Kainos, however, is more than a question of time. It is a type of new defined by a quality. Both definitions are critical to understanding Christ’s New Creation.

There is the one story in the Gospels in which Jesus uses both definitions. Here it is (I’ve inserted which Greek word for new Jesus uses throughout):

The question posed to Jesus compared his disciples to the disciples of his cousin, John the Baptist. Jesus declared John to be the greatest prophet. John’s disciples ask Jesus about John’s methods. Shouldn’t people fast and pray, like John did? It would make sense to follow in John’s footsteps, right?

No, Jesus says. John obeyed the rules of the Law, which is the old wine, but Jesus himself is the new wine. (Consider: the first public image he uses for himself is wine, at Cana; and the last image he uses for himself is wine, in the Upper Room.)

The key is the phrase “new wineskins,” which is the only use of kainos in his parable. The new wineskins are not just newer in age, but a qualitatively different kind of material. Kainos means unprecedented, both fresh and superior to that which came before. In other words, Jesus is not just another teacher in a line of teachers or prophets, including his cousin John. Jesus is new wine; when we believe in him, we become part of a New Creation. While the promised kingdom of God exists in time, it refers not just to the future but points us toward a substantially different, greater reality—one in which we already participate because of our faith. The New Testament refers to this reality as the New Creation.

The New Creation is a qualitatively different reality, happening in our present time.

If Jesus is the new wine, what is the wineskin? Old wineskins are practices and habits, such as fasting, which become ways of thinking and being that made sense to those who once obeyed the Law and waited for the Messiah to come. Now that the Messiah has come, though, those who seek God no longer need those practices; in fact, they may inhibit us from knowing God.

When Jesus says new wine must be poured into new wineskins, he means that believing in him introduces an entirely new reality, and with it, entirely different ways of living. If you try to follow Jesus using the practices of the old covenant, everything bursts. Jesus is telling John’s disciples that to follow him means to no longer worry about ascetic living or about the Roman occupation.

Thus, the word kainos is synonymous with innovation: the old religious practices that preceded Jesus are not going to work for following Jesus.

According to Jesus, Christian and innovation are redundant.

While we seek fresh solutions for the problems we face, as Christian innovators, our best new innovations will not work if they are built into the same old contexts—systems of communication, turns of phrase, ideas and activities—the sum of exchanges that compose the seamless web of our culture.

The New Creation is synonymous with innovation: the old religious practices that preceded Jesus are not going to work for following Jesus.

To be sure, you can have innovations that are not Christian, and you can have Christian practices that are not innovative. But the work of the new creation—creative work that happens as part of the kainos creation—is by definition innovative.

As all innovators and change agents know, when confronted with the old world, our efforts to create new solutions often burst, atrophy, and encounter rejection. Many creative, talented people have tried to bring fresh thinking to the church, only to give up in frustration at the forces of stasis and resistance that prevent new growth from happening. Lasting innovation needs qualitatively different contexts to thrive. This may happen only with the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit, which introduces the kainos kingdom.

The apostle Paul describes this in my favorite Bible verse when he writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ—new creation! The old has gone, the new is come” (2 Cor 5:17, my translation).

The Greek for this verse is tricky and belies simple English translation. A direct, word-for-word translation reveals a present tense emphasis on not just a new person in time but a qualitatively different person. Paul is describing a sense of time that is beyond one tense—to be a kainos creation is both present reality and future hope.

Another way of saying this is that Christian innovation is both rooted in time (neos) and out of time (kainos). Or, to use innovation scholar Clayton Christensen’s term “value”, innovation becomes Christian when new includes both incarnate value and eternal value. Our work is of the Spirit; it is Christian innovation when it includes both these attributes.

Christian innovation includes both incarnate value and eternal value.

What does this mean for the work of Christian innovation? It means our work is relevant to the present and is oriented toward the future.

At Invite, our mission is to leverage innovative methods of publishing and platforming, help authors and influencers share the promise of the New Creation, and invite all people to discover a deeper faith and relationship with Christ. Rather than argue, our preference is to keep Jesus high and focus on the work of the New Creation.

At Invite, we exist to build a like-hearted community of Jesus followers who are high on Jesus, low on politics, biased toward innovation, and serious about discipleship. But what does it mean to be “Low on Politics”?

Politics is about the exercise of power.

There’s an old hymn that goes, “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it / prone to leave the God I love.” It’s an apt and elegant way to describe the ugliness that lives in us, and as true a statement of human nature as I know.

Enlightenment utopianism notwithstanding, we are not improving our way out of our own nature, and we cannot build the kingdom of God via our own effort. On the contrary, our human condition is the desire to leave the presence and authority of God and to establish our own fiefdoms, east of Eden. We don’t want the power of the Almighty God; we want our own power.

The 19th century English politician Lord John Dalberg-Acton is famous for his remark that power corrupts. Whether this is causal—the acquisition of power is a corrupting influence—or correlational—power and corruption tend to go hand in hand—is irrelevant.

Perhaps corruption is even a prerequisite for power.

Either way, evidence is plentiful that if you give a person power over other people, that person tends to make the maintenance of power their number one priority. This is known as “looking out for number one.”

One of my favorite films is Michael Mann’s The Insider, the retelling of the whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand’s testimony that took down Big Tobacco. The protagonist of the film isn’t Wigand, however; it is Lowell Bergman, the 60 Minutes producer who stood up not only to the tobacco industry but to his own corporate overseers to speak truth to power on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves. In the film, Bergman represents the highest and best of American journalism. The best of journalism, and yes journalism is prone to corruption, is the realization that truth is imperiled by power, and the calling of the journalist is to continually opt for truth, even in the presence of money.

Human systems reflect human sin.

What is the response of the Christian, then? Does Jesus call us to go to work to create an uncorrupt system? This was the idea of the Zealots of Jesus’ day, as so many prior and since, who have risen up in the name of righteousness to overthrow compromised authority. Some claim Jesus was political because he engaged in politically subversive activities or that Christianity is necessarily political because it favors the least.

But the problem is the end. To what end is our work? God’s kingdom is not a state built or maintained by human hands. And what is the end result of political revolution? “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Or to quote Sting, “there is no political solution.”

As it is commonly understood, the word “politics” is shorthand not just for the work of governing society, but for the exercise of power by one person or group of people over another. Policy is a reflection of power, and power in human hands is the problem. The 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, no stranger to state authority, recognized that politics is essentially a zero-sum game. Any person or political system built by or governed by human hands is, in the end, a perpetuation of the problem of power.

Jesus knew the true source of the problem and thus did not act against pagan power; he in fact encouraged his disciples to pay their due taxes to Caesar. He told Peter to put away his sword. He refused to take Judas’ zealous bait. He never engaged in the politics of power.

Instead, Jesus reserved his harshest words for the Pharisees and Sadducees, those who manipulated God’s words in the pursuit of personal gain. He called them “a brood of vipers.”

Politics begets power, and power corrupts, because it reflects our own fear and desire to be in control. The Pharisees and Sadducees sought signs of the consummation of their vision of a new kingdom, but Jesus rejected their idea of power (Matt 16:4), and then warned his people to beware of their leaven, their gluttonous vision of human authority which slowly grows and takes over (Matt 16:6).

Jesus is clear: the Kingdom of God is not found in the formation of political systems and in the exercise of human power, no matter how noble the intent; the kingdom of God is only found in the presence of God and is only built by Jesus (Matt 16:18).

Jesus is the only good, true, and beautiful source of authority.

It is a question of the end. Any condition short of the telos of God inexorably falls short. The end of our systems, no matter how noble our intent, is just another corrupt structure. The end Jesus fulfilled was indeed a “kingdom”, but not the sort of kingdom we envision.

The kingdom of heaven is the presence of God, and it exists now.

What happens when we place party over people.

Acts 15 tells the story of the first recorded conflict of the early church. While sharing the story of Jesus, the apostle Paul and Barnabas had found an audience with some Gentiles in the far-flung community of Antioch. “Certain believers” from the home office got wind of what they were doing, and sent a posse out to make sure the rules were being enforced. They said, “unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 15:1)

One can imagine this may not have gone over well with the adult men in the local Gentile population.

As Luke tells the story, the declaration brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute. “So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.” (v2) The stage was set for a serious disagreement—one that went beyond a few customs to the very question of identity. Who are you, and who do you become when you decide to follow Jesus?

The first question of church policy was on the table. This inexorably led to a question of power. Whose opinion would win?

Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem. They were received well, with one major exception: “Some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.’” (Acts 15:5) Notice the phrase indicating those “who belonged to the party.”

This critical little phrase gets to the heart of the issue then, and the relentless issue of politics and faith today. Those who opposed Paul and Barnabas did so on the basis of their party affiliation, and with it their expectation that everyone should adhere to the party’s specific set of rules. From their viewpoint, they had it all figured out. They had an ideology and an identity, and both needed to be enforced.

One of the most attractive aspects of Jesus is his unique ability to bring people together, including coteries and cliques who normally can’t get along. In Jerusalem, a diverse set of people found themselves in the difficult position of navigating community, united by the Messiah but by little else.

What is the least helpful thing to do when you are reaching across cultural divides? According to this story, lead with your party affiliation. And yet this is exactly what we do today, in the public square and in church alike.

When your ideology demands hegemony, conflict is inevitable. This is not the Jesus way, because it lacks humility. Jesus knew who he was and never shied from naming it to others, yet he did not demand nor enforce compliance. He was humble, to the point of allowing his own murder (Phil 2:8). Now, we don’t even allow unfavorable opinions, on both the political left and right.

A recent article detailed how several influential American church leaders met with potential presidential candidates for an endorsement audition. These leaders perhaps saw their work as a means of defending the faith, but the world sees it differently. The way of the world is defined by power: dog eat dog, kill or be killed, winners and losers. When the church adopts the mechanisms of power, we become just another ideology to an unbelieving and unbelievable world, one of many menu options on the philosophers’ plate at the Areopagus. When we attempt to leverage power, even for righteous aims, we harm our witness, and the world dismisses the good news as a ruse, except even worse, because of its veneer of hypocritical piety.

As Carey Nieuwhof writes,

“Jesus spent about zero time asking the government to change during his ministry. In fact, people asked him to become the government, and he replied that his Kingdom is not of this world. The Apostle Paul appeared before government officials regularly. Not once did he ask them to change the laws of the land. He did, however, invite government officials to have Jesus personally change them.”1

The message of Jesus is unique precisely because it is not of this world, which is not a reference to an “I’ll fly away” theology but a very practical strategic sign that Jesus does not adopt the ways and means of Rome.

The problem with politics is the problem with power, which is that there are winners and losers. For one opinion to hold sway, the other must acquiesce. This is not the Jesus way. Humility is the antonym of power.

The Jesus way is invitational.

The journey of following Jesus is invitational. It is not an argument on the floor of parliament but a smile and a warm welcome to a better life. Enforcement belies the very nature of the abundant life we as his followers believe is possible in the kingdom of heaven. A focus on “party” eschews the values to which we aspire. While the call to follow Jesus is not a call to lose our identity but enhance the things that make us unique, the challenge is what others see in us—do they see the attractive Jesus, or do they see a posse of party compliance officers?

To be clear, Jesus was not apolitical. He

undercut zealotry with the warning that violence breeds violence (Matt 26:52). He warned his disciples of Gentile “great ones” who dominate their lessers (Matt 20:25). He unmasked the Roman system of benefaction as a “corrupt power-game” of gift, graft, and domination. He ridiculed Herod as a “fox” (Luke 13:32).2

To say “low on politics” is not to say that we do not have political opinions or engage in political activity, nor is it to say that we do not work with people who possess political opinions or engage in activity. Rather, it means that to be “high on Jesus, low on politics” is to be of the same ilk as Acton and Bergman. It is the acknowledgment that not only does power corrupt, but that corruption is in the human heart. The end of the conflict in Acts 15 indeed resulted in some rules for the locals. But notice: the rules did not include circumcision. There were four, and all of them related to habits of food and sex. They did not challenge anyone on the basis of party or identity, but they gave much simpler guidelines for kingdom living. The letter they sent included a final, grace-filled line: “You will do well to avoid these things.”

No enforcement.

No organization, not even a faith-based one, has the corner on the truth, and any political system—any system of power formed by men and women—is prone to “leave the God I love.” We may only find power in metanoia, in turning away from the world, in humbling ourselves, in surrendering to Jesus, who has been given all authority on heaven and earth (Matt 28:20), and by receiving the authority of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, we welcome Jesus-seekers from a wide variety of faith traditions. We lift up Jesus as the ultimate authority on heaven and earth. And we tend to eschew activity which trends too closely toward any specific, partisan political platform.

At Invite, we exist to build a like-hearted community of Jesus followers who are high on Jesus, low on politics, biased toward innovation, and serious about discipleship.

But what does it mean to be “High on Jesus”?

On what is the foundation of our faith built? On nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. On Christ the solid rock we stand. The unique claim of Christianity in world history is the person of Jesus Christ. Ours is the only religion that worships a person, not a set of principles or ideas. As the apostle Paul wrote, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Cor 15:3) This single event—the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ—is the hinge of history.

But what is it about Jesus that is unique?

A proper understanding of Jesus is what theologians call a “high Christology.” The old hymns teach us to lift high the cross. When we keep Jesus elevated, the Christian faith makes sense, even in its mystery and lament. But when we allow Jesus to be lowered, all sorts of sanctimony and social unrest take their place in the thrones of our hearts and our communities.

Scripture has several images that illuminate the person of Jesus Christ. Some use his famous “I Am” statements, signifying like the great “I AM” that Jesus is the Lord God.

Here are seven images to explain what we mean by being “high Christology” or “high on Jesus.” By better understanding who Jesus is, we may rightly place him high on the thrones of our lives, become better followers, and discover life in abundance.

The Alpha and Omega

Jesus is eternal (John 1), the agent of all creation (Col 1:16), and through his life, death, and resurrection, inaugurates the end or telos (John 19:30), now (Matt 12:28) and forever (Matt 24:44). When we follow Jesus, we can be confident that he is God and one with God.

The Lamb of God

Jesus is the last lamb who came into Jerusalem as a lamb to be slaughtered (Ex 29:38-42), shed his blood on behalf of all humankind, and was the completion of Passover and the fulfillment and resolution (the telos) and reconciliation of people to God (1 Cor 5:7). He was perfect as lambs were required to be (Ex 12:1-6), and thus he died without deserving it. But he was no weak lamb; instead he was a warrior lamb who, though he was one with God (Phil 2), took on the weight of the world’s sins because of his all-encompassing love for the world, and thus demonstrated once and for all that love conquers death. In this way, Jesus demonstrates for us how through our own willingness to die (to self and even unto life), we show what true love is, and thus overcome evil with good.

The Good Shepherd

Jesus describes himself using shepherd imagery, saying he is the good shepherd. A bad shepherd snoozes while wolves come, or allows a stray sheep to wander off. A good shepherd does his job well. He chases after the one (Luke 15:3-7). He puts his own life in danger in order to protect us. When we understand ourselves as sheep, we see that we are prone to wander. We are basically dumb. We make bad decisions. We need someone to protect us from harm. Jesus is our shepherd.

The True Vine

Jesus is the source of all life. When we, as branches, are connected well to the vine, we bear fruit. When we become disconnected, we wither and die. This is one of my favorite images because it is a clear image of how Jesus is the giver of life. When we are connected, we flourish. When we become disconnected—by disease, by outside forces that harm us—we wither. Another great aspect of this image is that we can be grafted onto the vine, so even if we were connected to the wrong vine, when we become attached to the true vine, we flourish.

The Way, The Truth and The Life

He is the way—a way of living, a rhythm of life, the practical decisions of daily existence.

He is the truth—truth is not a proposition or a philosophy, but only found in the person of Jesus Christ.

He is the life—Jesus is clear that the life abundantly lived (John 10:10) only comes through him.

The King of Kings and Lord of Lords

We talk a lot about kingdoms. But you cannot have a kingdom without a king. Who is the king, not just of our private hearts, but the entire world? From the beginning, God’s design was to be the people’s king. There is no other solution; no other authority is worthy. With the resurrection, this problem is solved: Jesus is the king. This means that he has been given all authority over creation, in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). Jesus is the authority—not the past (tradition) or the future (progress) or a strongman leader who will save us. Only Jesus can save us, and he has already done so through the cross. It is only when we stop looking to other authorities, and even to ourselves as authorities, and recognize Jesus as the authority of our lives, that the problems of the world abate and we discover peace. Jesus is clear: the kingdom of God is not found in the formation of political systems and in the exercise of human power, no matter how noble the intent; the kingdom of God is only found in the presence of God and is only built by Jesus (Matt 16:18). Jesus is the only good, true, and beautiful source of authority.

The Author and Finisher of our Faith

Jesus is more than a distant ruler or authority in a castle. Authority is authorship. To whomever you give authority in your life, you give the ability to write your life’s story. For example, if your authority is a politician, you allow a politician to write your story. Hebrews is clear: when we follow Jesus, Jesus becomes our author. When we allow Jesus to author our lives, we become a new creation. Consider one of many transfigurations that happen through Scripture when we submit to the authority of the Lord. Gideon said, “Forget it, unless you send me better brothers, I’m not doing anything!” But Gideon the Timid became the greatest judge of all of Israel. This may happen to us as well, when we allow Jesus to be our author.

Image: The Transfiguration (1516–1520) by Raphael. Public domain.

When the world pressed pause, we pressed play.

It was March 13, 2020—the first day of shelter in place. While the rest of the world was hoarding toilet paper and learning to spell quarantine, we rubbed two nickels together and started a Christian publishing company.

It was the ultimate zig-when-others-zag move.

Why then, of all moments?

The plain truth is almost embarrassingly simple. The state of Christian publishing was abysmal, and co-founder Arthur Jones and I wanted to make it better. That was the whole plan.

Invite Ministries exists to help people learn to live more like Jesus, and we believe publishing is a good place to do that.

Why publishing at all? Because we believe in the ministry of the written word. The New Testament has a term for the church’s central task—kerygma, the command to proclaim. Proclamation comes in two forms.

One is preaching: to voice the good news of Jesus in a particular time and place.

The other is publishing: to carry that same news across time and place, to a reader you will never meet, on some Tuesday years from now, in a chair you will never see.

The need became evident faster than we expected. Across our pan-Wesleyan tradition and its many tribes, leaders and thinkers began sending me manuscripts and proposals—more than I knew what to do with. Within five years we had published over a hundred titles. Forty more are scheduled for the coming year.

But it has not been easy. We have faced headwinds, and still do.

First was launching during COVID. As it turned out, the timing was a strange gift. When everyone else’s plans and agendas got dialed back to nothing, a window opened, quiet and unhurried, to do the hard and unglamorous work of learning what on earth we were doing. A startup needs low expectations, yet many never get it. We got a longer season than normal to tinker with little expectation.

The second challenge was closer to home. Our legacy denomination, the United Methodist Church, had entered its long season of disaffiliation. I am irenic by nature, and I had no appetite for the skirmishes. So I said early, and out loud, that Invite would run on three simple values.

We would be high on Jesus, low on politics, and biased toward innovation.

High on Jesus speaks mostly for itself. A strong Christology sits at the center of how I understand the faith. Things like church growth and social justice are features of the kingdom; they do not inaugurate it. Put the cart before the horse and you get much of the trouble the modern church is in right now, so I wanted to name the horse first.

Low on politics follows from the first, and it comes down to a question of power. Lift Christ high—all authority in heaven and on earth—and everything else settles into its proper size. The other issues still matter. They simply stop being ultimate. Lower Christ, though, and something has to rush in to fill the authority vacuum, which is precisely why politics becomes a life-or-death religion for so many people. In practice this is straightforward. We gladly work with authors who sit left and right of center. What they cannot do is turn our shared work into a partisan weapon. If we can agree on the lordship of Jesus, and keep the majors and the minors straight, maybe we can recover a little of the civility that once marked both the church and a healthy society.

Biased toward innovation is both a theological claim and a practical one. Theologically, I happen to think Jesus loves innovation. How do I know? For one, he was a tekton—a builder, a technologist. For another, the incarnation itself is God’s announcement that he loves us enough to inhabit a specific time and place—a specific culture. Cultures shift. Generations turn over. So the calling of anyone who carries Christ is to keep incarnating him for the people actually alive right now, because our faith lifts up a person, not a set of period customs. I had no idea in 2020 how much I would come to lean on this one. Publishing has been a moving target every day since.

And now a fourth value—new, and one I am proud to announce. We are serious about discipleship. The longer I do this work, the more urgent it becomes to me that we publish resources built for one purpose: helping followers of Jesus become more like him. There was a day when a Christian publisher could happily print an endless catalog—biblical studies, theology, devotionals, books on growth and relationships, age-graded curriculum, and on and on. I have nothing against any of these categories. But I have grown convinced that the most important thing we can do is stay stubbornly specific about the core work of the church, which is discipleship: the slow, lifelong business of becoming like Jesus.

Over the next four Sundays, I’ll take these values one at a time and give each the fuller treatment it deserves. After that, we’ll turn to what they mean for the church right now—on the ground, this year.

That is what The Sunday Read is for. Glad you’re here.

I own several shelves of books I’ve purchased. Many I have read. Some I even agree with.

They’re mostly good books. Some of them I edited. A few, I wrote. Almost always, I reflected on chapters and underlined parts that stung. In the end, I closed the cover and went on living exactly as I had before I’d begun.

The information landed fine. But few books on my shelf are dog-eared, and even fewer of them have actually fostered change in my life.

A book that dislodges the inertia in our hearts is a rare and beautiful thing.

What makes them so powerful and effective?

We’re swimming in information. My first twenty-five years in ministry, most of which I also spent writing, editing, and publishing my own stuff and other people’s stuff, convinced me that that the Church’s problem today is rarely ignorance or, as I used to think, poor communication.

We are not under-informed. Especially now. We have podcasts, study Bibles, and a smartphone with AI that will explain Romans on our morning commute. What we lack is that special something that unsettles our heart and mind, something that connects the page and screen to our hands and feet.

What we need isn’t information, but formation.

That’s what Invite Press is about. We publish in the Wesleyan tradition, which means that we believe grace forgives, and then keeps going. It works on the appetites. It goes after the habits a person is embarrassed by. Over years, it produces someone their kids can tell has changed. That’s the whole promise, and it isn’t ours — Wesley got it from the New Testament and we’re reflecting it back.

Our books are high on Jesus and low on politics. There is no shortage of people willing to tell you who to be furious at this month. We’re after something that outlasts a news cycle.

So what is this page?

Mostly a front porch. Our authors are why you’re here. We publish leading pastors, scholars, and practitioners scattered across the Wesleyan world, several of them now writing on Substack and all of them worth your valuable time. Our goal is to connect you to them. We’ll share excerpts from both existing and upcoming books, video from the Invite channel, our monthly letter, and the occasional note from my desk about what we’re making and why.

Subscribe if you want to know what’s coming. Then go follow the writers we recommend. That’s the invitation.

The shelf is still in my office. My hope is that every Invite Press book becomes the dog-eared kind.

Len Wilson
Publisher and Executive Director
Invite Ministries
Plano, TX