About Os Guinness

Born in China and raised and educated in England, he has lived in the United States since 1984. He has been a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1986 to 1989, Dr. Guinness served as Executive Director of The Williamsburg Charter Foundation, which celebrated the genius of the First Amendment and set out the signers’ vision of a civil public square. He helped to draft The Williamsburg Charter which was signed by former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, Chief Justices William Rehnquist and Warren Burger, Coretta Scott King, Elie Wiesel, several members of Congress, and many others. In 1991, he founded The Trinity Forum and served as Senior Fellow until 2004, during which time he conducted seminars for leaders around the world and published seven major curricula. Guinness has addressed audiences around the world, including the British House of Commons, the U.S. Congress, the St. Petersburg Parliament, and the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences. His countless addresses at leading universities worldwide have helped to influence an entire generation of thinkers. Os lives with his wife Jenny in McLean, Virginia, and they have one son CJ, who is a businessman in New York.

The Call & Entrepreneurs Of Life

The Jackson Institute recommends Os Guinness’ book, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, over every other work on the subject of life purpose. The companion volume, Entrepreneurs of Life is an excellent work on “Faith and the Venture of Purposeful Living,” which we suggest using in conjunction with The Call. Dr. John R.W. Stott acknowledged that Os “ranges surefootedly over history, literature, Scripture, experience and biography.” In an interview that Guinness gave after the release of The Call, he said that “on a personal level, it was the concept of calling that helped me discover my own purpose in life. Furthermore, in my travels through the English-speaking world, the questions I have been asked most frequently have to do with calling. All across the West today, people are seeking a deeper sense of individual purpose.”

The Call (249 pages) is written to help you find and fulfill the central purpose of your life and is an excellent curriculum to study and discuss in discipleship groups. In Entrepreneurs of Life (254 pages), Dr. Guinness serves as a guide through the annals of Western travel and tradition, demonstrating what calling is and how each of us can choose to respond. In this work, you will learn how to approach your own life from diverse historical figures such as William Wilberforce, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Florence Nightingale, Tolstoy, Beethoven, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, explorer Ferdinand Magellan, and others.

Tji’s Recommendations For Discipleship Groups

First, encourage every group member to purchase copies of both books, The Call and Entrepreneurs of Life. Entrepreneurs of Life is available from Amazon and the online store at The Trinity Forum. There will be weekly readings from both works.

Have each participant download Man’s Chief End: God’s Glory from this website.

Schedule 18 weeks with the members of your group to invest in this study.

Content Downloads

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