The Guest List

Most readers have encountered the Beatitudes so many times they feel familiar - eight beautiful sayings tucked into the opening of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In The Guest List, pastor and evangelist Rock Pifer argues they are not eight separate sayings at all, but a single pathway: eight steps that build on one another, each preparing the reader for the next, drawing them deeper into the life Jesus describes as the Kingdom of God.The journey begins where few want to admit they are - poor in spirit, empty-handed, aware of a desperate need for God. From there it moves through mourning, meekness, hunger for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, and finally persecution. Along the way something begins to change. Readers see people differently. They learn to release what they have been holding. Peace begins to follow them. And Jesus’ words about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world begin to make sense in an entirely new way.This is not a theological lecture. It is a journey told through real people and real events: a wild-haired stranger asking for gas money, a stolen wallet confessed twenty years too late, a chair at the front of a small-town church, a woman learning to forgive, a woodshed, and a confrontation on a dark road called Bark Shanty.Rock Pifer spent decades pastoring and preaching in rural Pennsylvania, and he writes from experience rather than from an ivory tower - plainly, honestly, and often with humor. His own path from a broken life to following Jesus shapes his perspective on what it means to be changed from the inside out.Written for new believers, lifelong Christians, pastors, teachers, and anyone who suspects there is more to following Jesus than they have experienced so far, The Guest List challenges readers to stop treating the Beatitudes as familiar words on a page and start walking them.A companion study guide is also available, designed to take individuals and small groups through the same eight steps over ten weeks.