on October 17, 2021
Genres: Non-Fiction, Christian Life
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Do You Ever Feel Worthless?
Or Question Your Value to God or His Church?
Those thoughts of worthlessness don't line up with God's Word. Because God loves you more than you can imagine and wants to accomplish great things through you. God gives each of His children spiritual gifts to help grow His kingdom, and the church can't reach its full potential without you. You.There's no past too messy for God to clean. There's no mistake God can't redeem.
If you don't feel qualified to serve God, you are in the perfect frame of mind to begin.Worth No Less is an encouraging and challenging Bible study designed for both personal growth and small group study.
Jason Thompson is the discipleship pastor at Renovation Church in Simpsonville, South Carolina. Being a pastor was never his goal or part of his academic training, he just followed God’s lead and was given opportunities to serve from those around him. Now, as a discipleship pastor, he’s poised to pass on that baton, equipping others for the work of the Gospel. Worth No Less is his attempt to do that in written form, combining the lessons he’s learned with his own personal history to encourage others toward ministry.
Thompson’s experience as a lay leader turned pastor is a key pivot point for the book. This isn’t some academic or highly educated theologian encouraging the “little people” to join in the work. This is just-a-regular-person Jason showing that the “little people” aren’t little at all—and that God wants everyone to use their giftings to serve the church. Worth No Less is a good primer for getting volunteer engagement and instilling confidence in lay ministry leaders.
There’s nothing in Worth No Less that stands out as particularly mind-blowing or revolutionary—but maybe serving Jesus shouldn’t be. Thompson cuts through all the excuses, tears down all the lies, and preaches the message that if God has saved you, he has saved you into his service. At the heart of it all is discipleship: actually following Jesus and not just going to church. The book is written as a small group curriculum, with each of the ten chapters concluding with a page of discussion questions. It would be easy to adapt this material to a five or ten week class training lay leaders for various aspects of ministry.
My one criticism would be that Worth No Less does keep things pretty elementary, and, occasionally superficial. It’s great exhortation and works as a foundation, but needs to be deeper to really develop the faith lives of those called to ministry. There are a lot of books on this topic and this one doesn’t really stand out over any of them. But if Thompson was called to write this book, then it’ll have the effect the Spirit wanted. I appreciate Thompson’s faithfulness and hope that this book gets to the people who need it.