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Good Works is an inspiring and beautiful book full of wisdom. It weaves together Christine Pohl's decades of insightful scholarship with the practical, lived wisdom of Keith Wasserman and the community of Good Works, Inc. This book helps us all go deeper into Jesus's call to hospitality and faithful discipleship and to be inspired to live more faithfully ourselves. -- L. Gregory Jones president of Belmont University Wasserman and Pohl invite us to pull up a seat at the table of friendship where laughter and tears flow freely and where people who are counted as little in the eyes of the world discover they are seen and known. Good Works welcomes us into their home and introduces us to a family where all are embraced. -- Michael Mather author of Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places Our work is our worship, and our worship is our work. That could be the tagline for the beautiful community of Good Works. As a pastor in Chicago, I have heard of Good Works for years. Without hoopla, fame, or a megachurch behind them, this community of Jesus just does the work of the gospel. Keith Wasserman has followed God's invitation to live in community with those closest to God's heart: the poor, the lonely, the homeless, and the forgotten. Doing so has made Wasserman one of the richest men alive. Let his experience and teaching serve as your own invitation to a life rich in good works, alive with the goodness of God, and awake to the gifts of each day. By providing study guides and reflection questions this book makes a marvelous addition to small groups and church ministry programs. -- Laura Sumner Truax author of Undone: When Coming Apart Puts You Back Together Good Works offers a profound paradigm for ministry whereby work with those at the margins is only 'good' to the extent that our own character and relationships with God and others are good. Turning the usual metrics upside down with refreshing power, Good Works illuminates the profound difference between ministry and social service agency. -- Chris Rice coauthor, with Emmanuel Katongole, of Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing Regardless of one's ministry context, this book about Good Works, Inc.--a ministry with people struggling against poverty and homelessness--will spiritually challenge yet profoundly reward anyone earnestly seeking to embody Christian hospitality. This account of Keith Wasserman's forty years of leadership, articulated and arranged by Christine Pohl's rich and warm theological mind, displays in the most concrete of terms what it takes to truly receive, and be received by, the other as a gift. Only a community rooted in worship and in constant pursuit of relational integrity guided by the Spirit can hope to become a community of friends, not only enduring but flourishing. -- Michael Gulker president of The Colossian Forum A defining feature of early Christianity's life together was its commitment to create a community without need. As theorists and practitioners of Christ's radical hospitality, Keith Wasserman and Christine Pohl draw on their years of experience writing about and living in community to animate the relationship between good works, hospitality, and God's justice-making mission. This is crucial reading for pastors, organizers, and all who desire to build 'heroic communities' of God's peace on earth. -- Drew J. Strait assistant professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary

"""Good Works is an inspiring and beautiful book full of wisdom. It weaves together Christine Pohl's decades of insightful scholarship with the practical, lived wisdom of Keith Wasserman and the community of Good Works, Inc. This book helps us all go deeper into Jesus's call to hospitality and faithful discipleship and to be inspired to live more faithfully ourselves."" -- L. Gregory Jones president of Belmont University ""Wasserman and Pohl invite us to pull up a seat at the table of friendship where laughter and tears flow freely and where people who are counted as little in the eyes of the world discover they are seen and known. Good Works welcomes us into their home and introduces us to a family where all are embraced."" -- Michael Mather author of Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places ""Our work is our worship, and our worship is our work. That could be the tagline for the beautiful community of Good Works. As a pastor in Chicago, I have heard of Good Works for years. Without hoopla, fame, or a megachurch behind them, this community of Jesus just does the work of the gospel. Keith Wasserman has followed God's invitation to live in community with those closest to God's heart: the poor, the lonely, the homeless, and the forgotten. Doing so has made Wasserman one of the richest men alive. Let his experience and teaching serve as your own invitation to a life rich in good works, alive with the goodness of God, and awake to the gifts of each day. By providing study guides and reflection questions this book makes a marvelous addition to small groups and church ministry programs."" -- Laura Sumner Truax author of Undone: When Coming Apart Puts You Back Together ""Good Works offers a profound paradigm for ministry whereby work with those at the margins is only 'good' to the extent that our own character and relationships with God and others are good. Turning the usual metrics upside down with refreshing power, Good Works illuminates the profound difference between ministry and social service agency."" -- Chris Rice coauthor, with Emmanuel Katongole, of Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing ""Regardless of one's ministry context, this book about Good Works, Inc.--a ministry with people struggling against poverty and homelessness--will spiritually challenge yet profoundly reward anyone earnestly seeking to embody Christian hospitality. This account of Keith Wasserman's forty years of leadership, articulated and arranged by Christine Pohl's rich and warm theological mind, displays in the most concrete of terms what it takes to truly receive, and be received by, the other as a gift. Only a community rooted in worship and in constant pursuit of relational integrity guided by the Spirit can hope to become a community of friends, not only enduring but flourishing."" -- Michael Gulker president of The Colossian Forum ""A defining feature of early Christianity's life together was its commitment to create a community without need. As theorists and practitioners of Christ's radical hospitality, Keith Wasserman and Christine Pohl draw on their years of experience writing about and living in community to animate the relationship between good works, hospitality, and God's justice-making mission. This is crucial reading for pastors, organizers, and all who desire to build 'heroic communities' of God's peace on earth."" -- Drew J. Strait assistant professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary"

Author Information

Keith Wasserman is founder and executive director of Good Works, Inc., a nonprofit ministry that, for more than forty years, has worked alongside people in rural Appalachia to build a community of hope among those struggling with poverty, isolation, exclusion, and homelessness. Christine D. Pohl is professor emerita of church in society at Asbury Theological Seminary. Her other books include Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us and Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition.

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