James Bryan Smith

• Overview
• Books
• Articles
• Podcast Episodes

Articles & Essays by James Bryan Smith

Book Excerpt

What Your Soul Needs

Published May, 2022 • Featured August 5, 2022

An excerpt from James Bryan Smith’s newest book takes a look at how God restores the human soul.

Article

My Spirituality is Not for Me

Published September, 1992 • Featured February 3, 2022

My spirituality is not for me, but for me to give to others. My spirituality is for you. James Bryan Smith writes about the stunning reality of God’s purposes in forming us.

Book Excerpt from The Magnificent Story

Longing for a Magnificent Story

Published September, 2017 • Featured July 16, 2020

Stories have the power to shape our lives as James Bryan Smith shares in this excerpt from The Magnificent Story: Uncovering a Gospel of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth.

Interview

On Suffering: An Interview with James Bryan Smith and Bill Vaswig

Published April, 2005 • Featured August 29, 2018

Renovaré team members James Bryan Smith and William Vaswig describe their experiences of suffering, physical helplessness, grief, disappointment, loneliness, and waywardness.

Journal/Magazine Article

The Jogging Monk and the Exegesis of the Heart

Published July, 1991 • Featured October 16, 2017

It is always a good time to share again this classic piece on from James Bryan Smith. Here he tells the story of how he came to read Scripture by ​“listening to the text, reflecting on it, asking not merely what it means, but what it is asking of me, what it is asking me to hear.”

Book Excerpt from The Good and Beautiful Community

The Most Important Job

Featured May 28, 2017

In this pre-Pentecost (or anytime) piece, James Bryan Smith (and Dallas Willard) explain why praying for the success of other churches than one’s own is important and powerful.

Book Excerpt from A Spiritual Formation Workbook

An Infusion of the Holy Spirit

Featured April 27, 2017

How can the Holy Spirit infuse our material world to unite the physical and the spiritual? Join us for an exploration from A Spiritual Formation Workbook of the Incarnational Tradition and the many ways God uses the spiritual disciplines to bring harmony back to our bodies and spirits.

Book Excerpt from The Good and Beautiful God

Real Community

Featured January 11, 2017

Community is at the heart of the Renovaré Institute experience. This excerpt from James Bryan Smith’s The Good and Beautiful God captures the flavors of this sort of community — born in faith and fellowship and nurtured by the Holy Spirit.

Article

Longing to be Known

Featured February 10, 2016

For over 20 years, small groups have been using​A Spiritual Formation Workbook to guide their journeys together. One of the workbook’s authors, James Bryan Smith, tells us some of what he’s learned about spiritual formation groups so far.

Essay

God Cares for Us Through One Another

Featured February 3, 2016

James Bryan Smith describes a particularly meaningful celebration of communion with a small group of fellow disciples, and the clarity it gave him about our interconnectedness in the Body of Christ.