Upside-Down Spirituality

Blogger, speaker, and Bible teacher invites readers to embrace the upside-down teachings of Jesus, where failure is success, endings are beginnings, and freedom is found only as we learn to fully submit.

Enter a world where failure is success, endings are beginnings, and freedom is found as we learn to submit

It may sound counterintuitive, but the truth is that Christianity is not just a "nicer" version of the world we live in. It's a completely different, upside-down, backward faith. Somewhere along the way, we've forgotten that and instead accepted a boring, predictable, watered-down version of the life we were meant to live.

Now Chad Bird invites us to put our striving for success aside to embrace nine specific failures in the areas of our personal lives, our relationships, and the church. With compelling examples from the Bible and today, Bird paints an enticing picture of the countercultural life God wants for us. He helps us delight in all of the ways that Jesus turned the world upside down, allowing us to experience true freedom, not from our weaknesses but in the midst of them.


"A soul-stirring guide to grace in everyday life, brimming with heart, insight, and poetry."-- David Zahl, director of Mockingbird Ministries and author of Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion

"Chad Bird has not just set the value of success on its head but has restored to success its true meaning."-- Paul F. M. Zahl, retired Episcopal minister and theologian


Chad Bird has served as a pastor, professor, and lecturer and is the author of several books, including Your God Is Too Glorious. He has contributed articles to The Lutheran Witness, Gottesdienst, The Gospel Coalition, Concordia Theological Quarterly, Modern Reformation, Mockingbird, Logia, Higher Things, and The Federalist. In addition to hosting chadbird.com, he is a regular contributor to christholdfast.org and 1517legacy.com. He lives in Texas.

In our age when the church can too often seem like a poor copy of the world, Chad Bird challenges us to reclaim the astounding originality of our ancient, backward faith. Where the world stresses the importance of success, Bird invites readers to embrace nine specific failures in the areas of our personal lives, our relationships, and the church. Why? Because what human wisdom deems indispensable is so often an impediment to our spiritual growth, and what it deems insignificant is so often essential to it.

With compelling examples from the Bible and today, Bird paints an enticing picture of the counterintuitive, countercultural life that God wants for us. He helps readers delight in all of the ways that Jesus turned the world upside-down, allowing us to experience true freedom, not from our weaknesses but in the midst of them.