Read the next book while it is still becoming.
Alan is beginning his next book. Anyone can follow it chapter by chapter as he writes, alongside Movemental peers reading the same emerging manuscript.
Centered?
What is your center? And why it matters.
Alan has described the project as a book about Jesus-, gospel-, and Bible-centeredness.
What is your center?
That is the question Alan has given us so far.
What actually sits at the center of Christian faith, leadership, discipleship, church, and movement—and why does the answer matter?
“I’m going to start with the book tentatively called “Centered?” It will be on Jesus/Gospel/Bible centeredness.
What is your center? And why it matters.”
You do not have to wait for the finished book.
As chapters become ready to share, they appear inside the Open Manuscript before conventional publication, open to anyone reading.
Read the conversation around the writing.
Alan does not work in isolation. Selected Movemental peers can interact with the developing manuscript, raising questions, responding to ideas, and contributing to the conversation around the work.
Introduction: Why the Center Matters
The organizing principle around which every commitment finds its shape
Every system reveals its center through what it produces. It does not take long to be in a church community to discern what is functioning as its gravitational reality. The center is never a decorative feature sitting politely at the edge of church life, available for reference when convenient. It is the organizing principle around which every other commitment finds its shape, its energy, and its eventual destiny. Name the center of any human system and you have already named its future.
This is why the question of the church's center carries such weight, and why getting it right matters far more than most congregations realize. A wheel finds its integrity through its hub; move the hub and every spoke reorganizes around a new alignment, whether anyone intended this or not. A body finds its coherence through its head; the whole system continues functioning through channels the head establishes, whether the body notices this dependency or simply assumes its own autonomy.
Congregations are no different. Something stands at the center of every church's practical life, forming its preaching, its discipleship pathways, its leadership culture, its measures of maturity, and its capacity for mission. The task before us is to discern what has actually taken that position, and to keep returning our communities to the center capable of holding the whole weight of what the gospel promises.
“Name the center of any human system and you have already named its future.” This is the thesis sentence that needs to echo through the entire volume.
The wheel and hub analogy is exact. If the hub is shifted even two inches, the entire wheel tears itself apart under highway speeds.
Reading is open to everyone. Commenting in the margins is for members.
The margin is not a public comment section. It is a window into a real intellectual conversation around work still in development.
A manuscript is allowed to change.
What you read here is unfinished by definition. Alan may revise, remove, expand, or rethink what appears.
Open Manuscript shows work in progress, not a finished claim frozen in advance.
- Working title
- Centered?
- Draft shared
- September 2026 · All 7 chapters live
- Current status
- Open manuscript preview (draft mode)
Follow the ideas outward.
A chapter may connect outward in three directions. Not every chapter will carry all three.