There was a time when Christians pioneered the future—from business to church, mathematics to justice reform. Along the way, that redemptive, adaptive movement began to gild in gold the victories of the past, leaving us change averse and frozen in time. But ready or not, the invitation is for kingdom leaders to reclaim their calling to innovate. Weaving together stories with surprising twists, studies with striking conclusions, and spellbinding cultural analysis, Doug Paul unlocks the five phases of kingdom innovation. Practical, hope-filled, and endlessly readable, Ready or Not reveals that whenever God’s people have leaned into innovation, the world has shifted on its axis. "Prepare to be surprised and delighted, and ultimately, roused to action.Ready or Not is a primer for any Christian leader wanting to step into the future." --MARK BATTERSON , New York Times bestselling author of The CircleMaker; lead pastor, National Community Church, Washington, DC "This book has come at just the perfect moment! Innovative, refreshing, different, and possible ... Doug Paul invites the church to actually do what it was born for: reimagine the future. Let this book challenge and inspire you toward kingdom come!" --DANIELLE STRICKLAND , author; speaker; leader "Doug is a pioneer with a passion to bring others along. It's easy to deconstruct the past, but it takes a true revolutionary to paint a vision for the future." --GABE LYONS , president, Q Ideas; co-author of Good Faith "Innovative? Creative? These are not the words that most associate with church, are they? Doug Paul is going to change all of that. Filled with compelling stories and practical instructions, Ready or Not teaches us how to rediscover Christianity's core DNA of innovative creativity--and at just the right time. I will be recommending this book to every pastor or leader-ship team I coach." --TOD BOLSINGER , author of Canoeing the Mountains and Tempered Resilience "Provocative and compelling, this is an essential book to help us meet the moment. The stories and insights, practice and application, are all woven together to surprise, delight, and help you lean into becoming the innovative leader God has uniquely created you to be." --WILL MANCINI , co-author of Future Church; founder, the FutureChurch Company "Ready or Not will serve as a navigational guide into the steps of innovation you need to take. In compelling, entertaining, and brilliant form, DougPaul has captured the patterns of some of the most interesting innovations and distilled them into a process for leaders and teams to follow." --JEFF VANDERSTELT , author; lead teaching pastor, Doxa Church "Some leadership books are so boringly technical I just can't get through them, but Doug Paul's Ready or Not is different. It's a rollicking gallop through the recent history of innovation, chock-full of fascinating stories from a variety of fields of endeavor. Never before has a step-by-step process for innovation been presented with this much verve. Ready or Not is a roller-coaster ride--exhilarating and inspiring." --MICHAEL FROST , Morling College, Sydney "Ready or Not is a road map to break the church out of its sleepy programs and break it into the holy art of kingdom innovation. As eccentric as it is practical, you'll want to reread it and start trying it--I recommend both." --JUSTIN WHITMEL EARLEY , lawyer; author of The Common Rule In the pages to come, I'll introduce you to rock stars who got it wrong,iconoclasts with a cultural mandate, alcoholic movement-makers,world creators, research geeks, posh Brits with revolutionary chops,and middle-aged men in dad jeans who are not-so-loudly changingthe world. We'll explore why some denominations are skyrocketingafter decades of decline, and we'll see how a group of moms made aplan to take over (and did). This book is about how we find, activate, and multiply freshinnovation for the sake of gospel transformation. It's about how, readyor not, we recover our imagination for innovation in the church again. I'm going to challenge some of the fundamental assumptions wehave about how innovation happens and why Christian leaders cansometimes be so resistant to change. We're going to look at stories of wild breakthrough and epiccollapse. We'll debunk myths that have built the temple of ourcollective cultural understanding of how innovation occurs. We'llunpack theories that have proved true in practice. Most importantly, we'll ask: How does kingdom innovation happenand how can we make it normal? Doug Paul is an innovation strategist who works with churches, denominations, networks and socialpreneurs. In his work he's been able to work with some of the most innovative and fastest growing churches in North America and Europe. He lives in Richmond, VA, along with his wife, Elizabeth, and three kids, where he also helps lead a local church in the city center.