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What are you reading to stay robust in your thought life? How do you keep that missional imagination alive and redeem culture for the common good? I personally need books that are realistic but promote resilience of vision for kingdom ethics in a broken world, books that see God as above all human problems. To that end, I suggest the following: Gordon E. Carkner, PhD, Meta-Educator 

Radcliffe Camera Library, Oxford, UK

Brad Edwards, The Reason for Church: Why the Body of Christ Matters in an Age of Anxiety, Division, and Radical Individualism. Zondervan, 2026 

Diane Kalen-Sukra, Lead with Civility: A Handbook for Uncivil Times. 2026. 

Roger Scrutin, On Human Nature. Princeton University Press, 2017; and Beauty: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2011. 

Makoto Fujimura, Art is a Journey Into the Light. Yale University Press, 2025. 

The Gospel After Christendom: An Introduction to Cultural Apologetics (editors: Collin Hansen, Skyler R. Flowers, and Ivan Mesa), Zondervan Reflective. 

Paul T. Sloan, Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism. Baker Academic, 2025. 

Amy Orr-Ewing, Forgiveness: Reclaiming its Power in a Culture of Outrage and Fear. 2026. 

Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom. InterVarsity Press, 2021. 

N. T. Wright, Creation, Power, and Truth: The Gospel in a World of Cultural Confusion. 2025. 

Christian Wiman, Zero to the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair. (poetry) 

Isabelle Hamley, Embrace Justice: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2022. SPCK, 2021. 

Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel: Interpretation. Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1990. Ute also loves his commentary on Isaiah. 

Karen Hao, The Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s Open AI. Penguin, 2025. 

Christopher Watkin, The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity: Tracing the Roots of Colonialism, Secularity, and Ecology. Cambridge University Press, 2025. 

Tish Harrison Warren, What Grows in Weary Lands?: On Christian Resilience. 2026. 

Michael Edwards, Untimely Christianity: Hearing the Bible in a Secular Age. 2022 

Catalysing a Missional Imagination (Missio Dei)

• Imagine a new world where God’s values were dominant: love, justice, mercy, shalom. Look through God-attuned eyes; listen with God-attuned ears; love with God-aligned hearts.
• What would it be like to embody the Gospel as a person or a small group? Think of yourself as an ambassador for the Sermon on the Mount.
• What if we were to see each other as part of God’s bigger plan/story and not as religious consumers?
• Where is God at work in your neighbourhood, at your workplace, in your family?
• Try deep listening through prayer walks, conversations, and discernment: What are the needs, longings, and stories of people around you?
• Take one brave step this week to put Missio Dei into practice. Joy will follow.
• Are there seminars, books, biblical teaching, or YouTube videos on missional imagination?
• Ask how you can envision God’s future for Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax: Gather with people to discuss this in pubs, coffee shops, parks: Talk about the prophetic kingdom of God and its profound implications for life in our communities.
• What tools are at your disposal such as music, the arts, technology, examples of people living it out, living large in kingdom terms?
• Write down 50 reasons why you should attempt to change the world right now.
• What is your street level presence on this journey? Who are the big dream people, the heart-revealers, the entrepreneurs, and evangelists in your space?
• It can take years for listening, experimenting, discerning, collaboration to get traction. Long term cultural shifts take time, prayer, and work but it often emerges among the grass roots Christian community. Involve young people and their ideas.
• What can you learn from other cultures about radical hospitality, unique stories of brave discipleship? How have they discovered resilient faith and hope amidst struggle and suffering? Listen to new Canadians and refugees.
• What do the poor and homeless have to teach us about compassion and the kingdom of God?

“God is love, and humans are made in God’s image. Love, then, is who we are—love’s agents. God is the giver, we are the gifted, love is the gift. God is the caller, we are the called, love is the calling. This is what I mean by the gift/call structure of humankind. Being and becoming lovers—the gift of being human and the call to become human—happen together, inextricably, simultaneously in a process of being and becoming.” ~ James Olthuis in Beautiful Risk, 68