Jonathan Martin

After a lot of conversations, meetings, deliberation and prayer…I’m thrilled to announce that I agreed to sign with Tyndale House Publishers today for my first book, Prototype (tentatively subtitled a guide for liars, dreamers and misfits to become human)!

With the help of my tremendous agent, David van Diest, we’ve been exploring our options for awhile.  But ultimately, Tyndale won me over with their heart for ministry, their sense of community and mission, their creativity, and their belief in the message of my book.  Okay and to be truthful…their deep dish Chicago pizza may have pushed me all the way over.  I’m excited about working with Jan Long Harris and the team there!

There is so much God has done in us through Renovatus, and it feels like the time is right to release that message into the kingdom and the culture on another level.  I couldn’t be more thrilled about partnering with Tyndale to bring this big message–this new way of being human, to the world.  I’ll certainly be eager to share more about the forthcoming book.  But in the meantime, here’s a small taste of what’s ahead:

“Who are you…really?”

 It’s the most difficult, intrusive question we will ever be asked.  Though we live in a world of relentless self-expression, so few of us know who we really are.  We know our hobbies and interests—the kind of stuff you put in a facebook profile.  As in, “Here is where I went to college, here are my favorite movies, here are my favorite bands.  I like to fish, to hunt, to play video games, to go scuba diving, to listen to Jay-Z.”  But the question is not “what are your hobbies?”  We are more than the sum total of our interests.  The question is a more primal one: “who are you?” 

 Its not overstating the case to say that most of us live in a perpetual identity crisis.  We have access to an unprecedented amount of voices competing for our attention, voices telling us who we are and who we ought to be.  It’s why most of us fumble like its our first middle school dance when we are asked a question as direct as “who are you?” It’s not just that it’s an intrusive question, or that it’s difficult to sum up who we are within a few sentences.  I think most of the time, we honestly don’t know. 

 But what if it were possible to know who we are…really?  What if it were possible to hear the name we had before the world was made?  What if it were possible to be so really and truly and fully alive—so fully human—that no matter what might happen to us, we would have no reason to be afraid? 

 The premise of this book is that Jesus came as the prototype for a whole new way of being human; that is in fact possible to become human in all the ways He was and said we could become.  It is possible to break away from the relentlessly monotonous trappings of modern life and become someone else. Curiously enough, in becoming something you’ve never been, you may find that you end up being more yourself than you were before. It is possible to find your place in the resistance movement of liars, dreamers and misfits that are re-shaping the cosmos and overthrowing the world.

 It is the assumption of this book that resurrection life wants to come barreling down on you, that God’s future wants to break into your present, and that you can live a life of such alien gentleness that people around you might actually become a little afraid of what’s happening to you.

Step-by-step, Prototype explores what it would mean to become somebody else. Not to become superhuman, just fully human in all of the ways Jesus said we could. We see how we could learn how to depend on others in authentic human relationships in a world where we are so cut off from authentic communication. We see how we could learn how to touch and receive touch in a world where we are profoundly alone and isolated. We learn the practices that the earliest Christians believed would help us grow and develop in this new way of being human. We learn how life-altering resurrection power is revealed to us in shockingly mundane places and situations.

I’ll certainly keep you updated as to what’s coming in the months ahead-thanks so much for your support, friends! It’s an exciting time.