Mark R. Glanville trains church leaders for post-Christian contexts using biblical scholarship and jazz piano.
Dr. Glanville (PhD) currently works as the Director of the Centre for Missional Leadership at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and is the author of 5 books. He has pastored in creative, justice-seeking churches for 14 years in both Canada and Australia and has played jazz piano professionally for 30 years. Through a variety of lenses, Mark shows how the Bible is forming churches that extend the tenderness of Jesus in their particular neighbourhood.
Blue Note Theology Podcast
The Blue Note Theology podcast offers a fresh vision for the church in post-Christian neighbourhoods. Blue notes in jazz and blues music create tension and some of the deepest creativity is found in that space. Mark Glanville, a professional jazz musician, theologian, and author, interviews guests from the piano as they imagine fresh expressions of Christian community.
Preaching in a New Key: Crafting Expository Sermons in Post-Christian Communities
Coming March 11, 2025: An Expository Preaching Guidebook for Post-Christian Communities
“Preaching in a New Key is truly stunning! The layout, design, lyrical and practical prose is wonderful. I will be using it for my Introduction to Preaching class. Glanville’s work is light for all who seek a more excellent way."
—Otis Moss III, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, Professor of Homeletics at McAfee School of Theology, and author of Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World: Finding Hope in an Age of Despair
Preaching must connect with its hearers. As the perception of the pastor has changed in recent years, and as congregations battle with increasing doubt, preaching appealing solely to rationality doesn't resonate in the same way as it once did. Post-Christian generations find themselves looking less for a charismatic authority figure and more for healthy leaders who are relationally connected to their neighborhood.
Scholar and pastor Mark Glanville provides a fresh look into the art of crafting sermons for post-Christian contexts. In Preaching in a New Key, he teaches the craft of Christ-centered expository preaching from the ground up. Writing for both new and experienced pastors, Glanville recognizes that it is time for us to reset our compasses.
Bringing together elements that are too often apart, Preaching in a New Key teaches expository preaching integrated with creativity, cultural discernment, pastoral health, justice, missiology, and more. Filled with helpful resources for seminary students and pastors alike, this book includes:
Helpful visual aids to help prepare for writing a sermon
Guides for how to structure a sermon
Examples that show how to implement preaching practices
Preaching in a New Key offers a practical and refreshing vision for crafting sermons that are sustainable for the pastor and resonant with communities.
Improvising Church: Scripture as the Source of Harmony, Rhythm, and Soul
Plenty of books diagnose our post-Christian malaise. Here's a dynamic solution.
The Englewood Review of Books Best Theology Book of 2024
The post-Christian cultural turn is creating the conditions for a crisis of confidence in the church and in pastoral ministry. While such changes can be disruptive and disconcerting, our new cultural reality makes the present moment a uniquely exciting time to reimagine churches that bear witness to Christ. How do we move beyond cookie-cutter approaches (which may have worked in the past) to building the creative, compassionate, and incarnational churches we long for?
Improvising Church plays with a metaphor of improvisation to chart twelve themes as the key "notes" on which Christian communities play as they bear witness to God in the world today. Building on these two dynamic traditions—jazz music and Christian community—Improvising Church unfolds a biblical, practical, and inventive vision for churches seeking to receive and extend the healing of Christ.
“Improvising Church is stunning. [It] brought me to tears, and made my heart sing. It is a gift to anyone seeking to help God's people become who we're called to be in our post-Christian, Western world."
—Michael J. Rhodes, author of Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World
"Imagine an interpreter of Scripture with trustworthy credentials. Now imagine a musician who enchants with creativity. Next imagine a pastor who can mobilize a community to bless a neighborhood. In Mark Glanville, all three of these are one person.”
—Jason Byassee, author of Surprised by Jesus Again: Reading the Bible in Communion with the Saints
"Improvising Church is a harmony of scriptural insight and pastoral wisdom, soulfully explored.”
—Drew G. I. Hart, author of Who Will Be a Witness? Igniting Activism for God's Justice, Love, and Deliverance
Refuge Reimagined: Biblical Kinship in Global Politics
Scripture calls us to expand the borders of our lives to enfold refugees and vulnerable immigrants.
The global crises of forced displacement is growing every day. At the same time, Western Christians' sympathy toward refugees is increasingly overshadowed by concerns about personal and national security, economics, and culture. We urgently need a perspective that understands both Scripture and current political realities and that can be applied at the levels of the church, the nation, and the globe.
In Refuge Reimagined, Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville offer a new approach to compassion for displaced people: a biblical ethic of kinship. God's people, they argue, are consistently called to extend kinship—a mutual responsibility and solidarity—to those who are marginalized and without a home. Drawing on their respective expertise in Old Testament studies and international relations, the two brothers engage a range of disciplines to demonstrate how this ethic is consistently conveyed throughout the Bible and can be practically embodied today.
Glanville and Glanville apply the kinship ethic to issues such as the current mission of the church, national identity and sovereignty, and possibilities for a cooperative global response to the refugee crisis. Challenging the fear-based ethic that often motivates Christian approaches, they envision a more generous, creative, and hopeful way forward. Refuge Reimagined will equip students, activists, and anyone interested in refugee issues to understand the biblical model for communities and how it can transform our world.
"The lens of kinship with refugees that Mark and Luke Glanville offer has the potential to be revolutionary.”
—Jarrod McKenna, host of the InVerse Podcast
“Essential reading for all who are concerned with the plight of refugees and asylum seekers in an age of displacement."
—Mark G. Brett, author of Political Trauma and Healing: Biblical Ethics for a Postcolonial World
"It is rare to find a single book that is as rich in biblical scholarship as it is well informed on one of the most urgent global issues of our generation, and rarer still to read one that is so effective in bringing the two into such constructive, creative, and hope-filled interaction.”
—Christopher J. H. Wright, author of The Mission of God
Mark Glanville Live!
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