Shannan Martin

Popular blogger Shannan Martin offers Christians who are longing for a more meaningful life a simple starting point: learn what it is to love and be loved right where God has placed you. For Christ-followers living in an increasingly complicated world, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure of how to live a life of intention and meaning. Where do we even begin? Shannan Martin offers a surprisingly simple answer: uncover the hidden corners of our cities and neighborhoods and invest deeply in the lives of people around us. She walks us through her own discoveries about the vital importance of paying attention, as well as the hard but rewarding truth about showing up and committing for the long haul, despite the inevitable encounters with brokenness and uncertainty. With transparency, humor, heart-tugging storytelling, and more than a little personal confession, Martin shows us that no matter where we live or how much we have, as we learn what it is to be with people as Jesus was, we'll find our very lives. The details will look quiet and ordinary, and the call will both exhaust and exhilarate us. But it will be the most worth-it adventure we will ever take.

Waking Up to God's Goodness Around You

The Ministry of Ordinary Places

When was the last time you made a new friend? Chatted with a neighbor? Felt connected to your community? Risked being known? There are so many ways, both intentionally and unintentionally, we wall ourselves off from one another, yet we are truly better, healthier, and happier together. The good news is, if you long to trade loneliness, isolation, and disconnection for the security, camaraderie, and joy found through authentic connection with those around you, you need only Start with Hello. In this practical, compelling book, author Shannan Martin shares simple practices for living as a more open-hearted, empathetic neighbor who sees past what divides us, looks for common ground, and is rewarded with vibrant and enduring friendships. Told from Shannan's street-level vantage point in her diverse, complex neighborhood, we see the path to a more deeply connected life before us. Start with Hello illuminates the way.

(And Other Simple Ways to Live as Neighbors)

Start with Hello

Start with Hello : (and Other Simple Ways to Move Toward Each Other)

Popular blogger and Dayspring (in)courage contributor Shannan Martin invites readers into the messy beauty of living open to God s upside-down best by telling the moving, funny, powerful story of her family s adventure of finding God in the margins."

Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted

Falling Free

“Shannan’s story feels at once familiar and spectacular, ordinary and exceptional. You will discover that at the same time her words make you squirm, you will wish you lived next door to her. You will want her wisdom and you will want her pickles.” —Jen Hatmaker (from the foreword) Shannan Martin had the perfect life: a cute farmhouse on six rambling acres, a loving husband, three adorable kids, money, friends, a close-knit church—a safe, happy existence. But when the bottom dropped out through a series of shocking changes and ordinary inconveniences, the Martins followed God’s call to something radically different: a small house on the other side of the urban tracks, a shoestring income, a challenged public school, and the harshness of a county jail (where her husband is now chaplain). And yet the family’s plunge from “safety” was the best thing that could have happened to them. Falling Free charts their pilgrimage from the self-focused wisdom of the world to the topsy-turvy life of God’s more being found in less. Martin’s practical, sweetly subversive book invites us to rethink assumptions about faith and the good life, push past insecurity and fear, and look beyond comfortable, middle-class Christianity toward a deeper, richer, and ultimately more fulfilling life.

Shannan Martin

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