Transforming Power: Biblical Strategies for Making a Difference in Your Community  by Robert Linthicum (InterVarsity Press, 2003) Resource Type: Book Main Audience: This book is for an intermediate to advanced audience of church leaders wanting to dig deeper theologically and practically into community organizing and justice initiatives. Purchase Now Summary: Part 1 is on the theology of power. It addresses the issues of God’s original intentions (shalom) and discusses the role of personal and structural sin/evil in marring shalom. It includes a chapter on Jesus, drawing mainly on Luke, and emphasizes Jesus’ teaching on the jubilee and on wealth. The chapter on the church discusses the church’s mandate to work for shalom in the city – to be the presence of Jesus, to pray for the welfare of the city, to do word-and-deed ministry, and to take actions in the political realm that work for more just structures. Part 2 tries to get practical, addressing the notion of “relational power” and discussing community organizing as the strategy for affecting change in systems. One chapter in this section addresses the reluctance/objections some Christians have and emphasizes that confrontation, agitation, civil disobedience, and holding power brokers accountable is fully Biblical. This is the foundations book, the ABCs, on this topic of power and the Biblical practice of power. I noted it as for intermediate and advanced churches not because it itself is the “advanced text” on this subject, but because it is likely that only churches already on the journey of community ministry are ready for understanding/wrestling with the more complex issues of structural change and the appropriate wielding of power. | 
