The Apprentice Series is a collection authored by James Bryan Smith and published by InterVarsity Press. The titles in the series are The Good and Beautiful God, The Good and Beautiful Life (available January 2010), and The Good and Beautiful Community (available September 2010). The series is designed to guide readers in an apprenticeship with Jesus recognizing that we follow Jesus to become like Jesus.
For most of us, becoming like Jesus means life change—dramatic life change. The Apprentice Series is based on a simple structure for producing change that has four components. The first “element” is actually the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that enlivens all our efforts to follow Christ—including the other three components of transformation.
The second area where change can happen is in transforming our narratives. Narratives are the stories we live by that give our life purpose and explanation. Often our narratives are at work in our lives without our knowing it. We have narratives about God, our self, others and so forth. Many of us have narratives about God that do not match the narratives that Jesus revealed. We cannot change our behavior until we change the narratives that guide us.
One way to change our narratives is to engage in soul-training exercises, which makes up the third component of transformation. Each chapter includes a practice that helps the reader open to the Holy Spirit and begin replacing false narratives with the true narratives of Jesus. The exercises are often simple and usually counter-cultural. For example, the first exercise of The Good and Beautiful God is sleep, because when we sleep we are relinquishing our perceived control of life and inviting God to be God.
The fourth and final component of transformation is community. We cannot change on our own, we need other people on the journey with us to encourage and challenge us. And while each book in the series [can] be read by an individual they also include reflection questions throughout each chapter as well as a group guide appendix that offers discussion questions for each chapter. In addition, on this website under the “Small Groups” tab you will see a “Leader Guide” which is another, more robust resource for nurturing community.
With this framework in mind, the topics of each book in the series flow in a natural progression. Book one, The Good and Beautiful God, looks at our competing narratives about God and tests them against the God Jesus revealed. As we come to know the God that Jesus knows, it is natural for us to fall more deeply in love with God.
As we fall more deeply in love with God and as we recognize God’s provision and love for us our lives start to look different. This is what the second book explores. The Good and Beautiful Life walks through the “Sermon on the Mount,” Matthew 5-7, taking seriously the teachings of Jesus as something his apprentices will be able to do. But how is it possible to be free from anger, lust, lying, vainglory and the like? It is possible as we grow in understanding where we are—in God’s wondrous kingdom—and who we are—people indwelt by Christ.
As our hearts are changed our lives begin to change and the ultimate expression of this change comes in our relationships with others. In the third book in the series, The Good and Beautiful Community, the outward expression of a Kingdom heart is the focus. Just as our perception of God and our self is transformed and healed, so too we begin to see other people as precious children of God.