Mandy Smith

Originally from Australia, Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church, a campus and neighborhood congregation with its own fair-trade café in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is a speaker and author, most recently of The Vulnerable Pastor and Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture (Brazos, 2021). Mandy and her husband Jamie, a New Testament professor, live with their family in a little house where the teapot is always warm.

www.TheWayIsTheWay.org

"To those with the most impossible of 'jobs'―our pastors―comes a great gift: The Vulnerable Pastor. Here, with great care, Mandy Smith manages to reframe what it means to be a pastor and to infuse it with the life of the gospel. I truly tell you that The Vulnerable Pastor resonated with the core of my being. It not only made being a pastor possible again, it made being a pastor wonderful." (David Fitch, B. R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology, Northern Seminary, author of Prodigal Christianity)

(Of "Making a Mess"): "Mandy Smith is a provocateur of imagination and holy mischief. Here is an invitation to play with God. May it spark something in you that will bend the world a little closer to Jesus and to justice."

Shane Claiborne

(Of "Life is Too Important"): "The biggest questions are still the oldest ones: Where do I find meaning? What produces authentic joy? How do I live well and wisely in light of my finitude? Every once in a while someone raises these questions in a fresh, light-giving way. This is Mandy Smith's gift to us."

John Ortberg