Description
About the Author and Narrator
The Rev. Canon Dr. John Ashley Null is an internationally respected scholar of the English side of the Great Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Among Dr. Null’s current projects is compiling and editing the personal papers of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556)—the English counterpart of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564)—which is a five-volume project for Oxford University Press.
Dr. Null is also an Olympic chaplain with a continuing vibrant chaplaincy to elite athletes today. Much of what he teaches in this delightful audio book (he really is a storyteller) is based on the spiritual guidance he imparts to elite athletes and coaches in helping them to integrate the Reformation’s emphasis on God’s unconditional love and grace with their own vocations as professional sports people.
“When you are gifted at something,” Dr. Null teaches, “it’s so easy to get your sense of well-being from how others respond to your giftedness. This performance mentality can be true of any vocation like the professions, arts or academics, although it is especially prevalent in athletics.”
In Performance Identity you are asked a profound question: Is your “personhood” a project that you work away at—or is it a settled gift from God? Is your personal identity dependent on your continuing good performance? Or, instead, are you settled-in as God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand, that you should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).
Holding research degrees from Yale and the University of Cambridge, Dr. Null has received numerous awards for his work, including Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, as well as being an elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries in London. He currently holds a research post funded by the German Research Council at Humboldt University of Berlin, and is a visiting fellow at the Divinity Faculty of Cambridge University and St. John’s College, Durham University.
Dr. Null travels widely and teaches regularly in seminaries and churches in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australia.