By Brant Hansen
Ministry is full of opportunities to be offended, but it doesn’t have to define you or your leadership. In Living Unoffended, Brant Hansen offers a refreshing, deeply practical vision for letting go of anger and leading with grace instead. If you want to build a healthier culture in your church and experience more peace in your leadership, Living Unoffended is a must-read. Get your copy today and start leading differently.
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To be sure, the great thing about a church group like that is you really get to know people. The bad thing about a church group like that is you really get to know people.
People, it turns out, tend to be wrong about a lot of things. They don’t raise their kids the way you raise yours. They have different standards, artistically and morally, with regard to what they’ll watch on Netflix. They make bad financial decisions. What are they thinking? They’re
moody. They get excited about something, then don’t want to follow through.
They have some theologically sketchy ideas too. Sometimes really sketchy. The whole “other people” world out there is a big mess.
A way to avoid all this, of course, is to merely attend a church service of some sort. It’ll be ordered just so, and you’ll see the backs of everyone’s heads as they face the stage, and you can pretend everyone has their act together. It’s all under control. You’re in no danger whatsoever.
So here’s Hansen’s Law: It’s only when you actually get to know people that you discover how weird everyone really is. And here’s a corollary: Yep, everybody’s really weird.
Still, Jesus designed us to be together. One reason, according to N.T. Wright, is that “Jesus’ followers needed to know how to put into practice the way of forgiveness he was advocating.”
People will give you lots of occasions for practicing this, as you’ve probably noticed.
If unity is such a big deal to Jesus, it simply makes no sense for me to call myself His follower while remaining independent.
There’s an old song about how breaking up is “hard to do,” but you know what’s harder than breaking up? Not breaking up.
G. K. Chesterton, who was a British writer, literary critic, and philosopher was also a champion of marriage. Even as he often waxed poetic about marriage, he knew full well how hard it could be.
“I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.”
I think it’s true beyond man/woman relationships. We’re all ultimately incompatible. If I were to meet my exact clone, it would just be a matter of time before I and me would go our separate ways. We’d have some toast, quote Monty Python lines to each other, share some laughs . . . and then start getting really annoyed.
Things tend toward disorder, toward breaking down, and toward entropy and decay. Our refusal to break up, our refusal to isolate out of a desire for convenience or fear of being hurt, is evidence of life.
It’s also evidence that grace is real, and it works.
Yes, Jesus-followers are an odd group. Some are hard to take. Some are annoying. Some would say the same of me. But there’s something wonderful, mysterious, even shocking, about people who stay together anyway.
About the Book
Anger feels powerful, but it’s a trap. What if you could break free from the cycle of offense and embrace a life of peace, joy, and forgiveness?
We live in an outrage culture. Social media thrives on anger, and people are more divided than ever. Anger feels justified—it gives us a sense of control and moral superiority. But it’s exhausting, isolating, and ultimately destructive. Studies show that chronic anger increases stress, damages relationships, and even harms physical health.
Living Unoffended by bestselling author Brant Hansen offers a practical, faith-based roadmap to freedom from anger. With humor, biblical wisdom, and Brant Hansen’s signature hand-drawn illustrations, this two-color “action guide” shows readers how to:
- Let go of offense and embrace forgiveness.
- Build emotional resilience in a culture of outrage.
- Discover joy and peace through a lifestyle of grace.
About the Author
Brant Hansen is a nationally syndicated radio host and podcaster of The Brant and Sherri Oddcast. He works with CURE International, a worldwide network of hospitals that brings life-changing medical care and the good news of God’s love to children with treatable conditions. Brant lives in South Florida with his wife, Carolyn. You can find out more about the amazing work of CURE at cure.org, and you can follow Brant at Brant Hansen Page on Facebook, and @branthansen on Instagram and Twitter.
Endnotes
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (SPCK Publishing, 1996), 297.
G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1912), 67–68.