Published Books

Author of numerous periodical articles, Ron Martoia’s first book project was entitled Morph!, a volume to help leaders do good self leadership as they foster creative and compelling environments. From creating ethos to staff chemistry, from ergonomic spirituality to ideaography, Morph is helping churches come to grips with the need for creative engagement with our shifting culture..

Ron’s second book came out in May of 2007. Static: Tuning out the “Christian Noise” to Experience the Real Message of Jesus, addresses how the words we use are containers, which engender or endanger genuine dialogue. Five big static creators are discussed that seem to inform our modern understanding of what might be the largest static generator “gospel.” Static is an all out attempt to help reframe the gospel in a way that more faithfully captures the whole narrative story and not just the abbreviated modern version so often dispensed in our churches. Follow Phil and Jess as they try to re-understand the gospel and what that means to their relationship with God and others.

The sequel to Static, Transformational Architecture: Reshaping Our Lives as Narrative (Zondervan) which came out in 2008 looks at the skyrocketing interest in spirituality in our culture and how to use those entry points so we can enter the arena of spiritual conversations. In some ways this takes the ideas and Static and moves them into the arena of personal engagement with others. If we make the sort of shift necessary to understand the gospel in a fuller, richer more biblically grounded way, what are the implications of that for conversing with people seeking to start their spiritual journey. Get to know Chad and the deep probing questions he asks as he starts into an exciting spiritual journey of following Jesus.

Ron’s fourth volume titled The Bible as Improv. Seeing and Living the Script in New Ways will be out in 2010. The metaphors we use to describe the bible give us a set of lenses with which we approach reading it. When we call the bible anowner’s manual for life we are saying something very definite about what we think the bible is supposed to provide; answers about how life works and troubleshooting things when life doesn’t work. Is that what the bible really is though? Isn’t the idea of an owner’s manual distinctly recent and modern? (owner’s manuals didn’t exist in the middle ages, or during the time of the early church fathers did they?) Are there better metaphors and therefore approaches that help us resolve some of the huge problems our current reading of the bible creates? The first review has just been posted

Ron also has a chapter in the collection of articles entitled Great Preaching; his contribution is Preaching to Postmoderns as well as a chapter on postmodern leadership in the Afrikaans volume Die Perfekte Storm.