You've trained and dreamt of doing large things in famous ways as fast as you can for God's glory. But pastoral work keeps requiring your surrender to small, mostly overlooked things over long periods of time.You stand at a crossroads. Jesus stands with you. You were never meant to know everything, fix everything, and be everywhere at once. That's his job, not yours.So what now? Let the apprenticeship begin.

    Greear pastors. Big givers. Key volunteers. Some of his best leaders and friends. And that's exactly how he wants it to be.When Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission, he revealed that the key for reaching the world with the gospel is found in sending, not gathering. Though many churches focus time and energy on attracting people and counting numbers, the real mission of the church isn't how many people you can gather. It's about training up disciples and then sending them out. The true measure of success for a church should be its sending capacity, not its seating capacity.But there is a cost to this. To see ministry multiply, we must release the seeds God has placed in our hands. And to do that, we must ask ourselves whether we are concerned more with building our kingdom or God's.In Gaining By Losing, J.D. Greear unpacks ten plumb lines that you can use to reorient your church's priorities around God's mission to reach a lost world. The good news is that you don't need to choose between gathering or sending. Effective churches can, and must, do both.

    But such a community can be enjoyed only when it relies on the power of God in the gospel.In The Compelling Community, pastors Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop cast a captivating vision for authentic fellowship in the local church that goes beyond small groups. Full of biblical principles and practical advice, this book will help pastors lead their congregations toward the kind of community that glorifies God, edifies his people, and attracts the lost.

       Steven Charleston—an Episcopal bishop and Choctaw native—takes a unique and provocative look into the “vision quests” of Jesus, and considers Christian biblical interpretation from the perspective of Native American theology. In these inspiring parallels he finds an enlightening spiritual harmony between North American indigenous communities and four specific experiences of Jesus as portrayed in the synoptic gospels.   From Jesus’s time in the wilderness, to the Transfiguration, to Gethsemane, and finally, to Golgotha, these quests offer insight into such topics as the need to enter the “we” rather than the “I” and the pursuit of freedom through discipline and concern for justice, compassion, and human dignity. The Four Vision Quests of Jesus reveals the values that are primary to the foundation of Native tradition and integral to Christian thought—the principles that lie at the very heart of what unites us all.

    Young adults are walking away. Volunteers are hard to recruit. Leaders are burning out. And the culture is changing faster than ever before. There’s no doubt the church is in a moment in history for which few church leaders are prepared. You can look for answers, but the right response depends on having the right conversation. In Lasting Impact, Carey Nieuwhof leads you and your team through seven conversations that will help your church grow and have a lasting impact.

    Snyder as Tozer's valedictory. It was his last message ever given to God's people. Written shortly before his death in 1963, it was published two days after his death. It is a challenging message to all who want to walk with Christ. "HERE IS THE BURDEN of my heart; and while I claim for myself no special inspiration I yet feel that this is also the burden of the Spirit. If I know my own heart it is love alone that moves me to write this. What I write here is not the sour ferment of a mind agitated by contentions with my fellow Christians. There have been no such contentions. I have not been abused, mistreated or attacked by anyone. Nor have these observations grown out of any unpleasant experiences that I have had in my association with others. My relations with my own church as well as with Christians of other denominations have been friendly, courteous and pleasant. My grief is simply the result of a condition which I believe to be almost universally prevalent among the churches."

    Some choose to respond to the most urgent needs, while others seek a more balanced and intentional approach. But what determines these priorities? Where should a busy pastor look for wisdom in making decisions?In the Pastor’s Ministry, pastor and author Brian Croft looks to the Scriptures to determine the top ten priorities for a faithful pastoral ministry. These biblically rooted responsibilities help pastors determine how to spend their time and with greater discernment respond to the demands of the church. Each of these priorities is rooted in a direct command of God’s Word, including: Guarding the TruthPreaching and Teaching the WordPraying for the FlockSetting an ExampleVisiting the SickComforting the GrievingCaring for WidowsConfronting SinEncouraging the Faint-HeartedIdentifying and Training Other LeadersTo be successful and faithful in pastoral ministry, every pastor needs to understand these core callings and make them part of his regular practice.  These ten responsibilities guide how a pastor schedules his time, helping him to lay the foundation for a biblically faithful ministry in his church.

    Many believers are contemplating in a fresh way what it means to take the Great Commission seriously. Rediscovering Discipleship takes the guesswork out of Christian maturity.Based on insights gained from a decade of personally making disciples, author and pastor Robby Gallaty tackles the two hindrances that keep believers from getting involved in making disciples: ignorance and uncertainty. Since many believers have never been personally disciple, they have no model to guide them in discipling others. Their ignorance of the process fuels their uncertainty, which leaves them crippled from the start. With simple principles that are easy to apply, Rediscovering Discipleship provides readers with the tools to follow the Great Commission—to go and actually make disciples who multiply and make disciples.Gallaty begins with a brief historical overview of the discipleship ministries of influential theologians, preachers, and pastors from years past, and then identifies roadblocks that hinder believers from becoming disciples before offering a step-by-step process for readers to immediately get started on the path to effective disciple making.

    Because poverty is complex, however, helping low-income people often requires going beyond meeting their material needs to holistically addressing the roots of their poverty. But on a practical level, how do you move forward in walking with someone who approaches your church for financial help?From the authors of When Helping Hurts comes Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence, a guidebook for church staff, deacons, or volunteers who work with low-income people.Short and to the point, this tool provides foundational principles for poverty alleviation and then addresses practical matters, like:How to structure and focus your benevolence workHow to respond to immediate needs while pursuing long-term solutionsHow to mobilize your church to walk with low-income peopleWith practical stories, forms, and tools for churches to use, Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence is an all-in-one guide for church leaders and laypeople who want to help the poor in ways that lead to lasting change.

    The church needs spiritual revival. But reviving and strengthening the Black Church will require great wisdom and courage.  Reviving the Black Church calls us back to another time, borrowing the wisdom of earlier faithful Christians. But more importantly, it calls us back to the Bible itself. For there we find the divine wisdom needed to see all quarters of the Black Church live again, thriving in the Spirit of God. It’s pastor and church planter Thabiti Anyabwile's humble prayer that this book might be useful to pastors and faithful lay members in reviving at least some quarters of the Black Church, and churches of every ethnicity and context— all for the glory of God.

    Consider the book a quick start guide to help create a Christ-centered life and ministry trajectory. There really is a way to read, apply, preach, serve, and live with Jesus as the Hero that keeps the gospel of God’s sovereign grace front and center in everything.Any biblical truth abstracted from the gospel is corrupted. The only possible context for genuine obedience is faith in Jesus. Therefore, genuine spiritual motivation must always be presented in terms of the gospel. We are not heroes; we are sinners, failures, and weaklings—the not-nobles of the world. Attempting to become a spiritual hero or to cultivate a heroic image is an empty, vain, hollow, and hopeless pursuit. There is only one Hero—Jesus—and he has no rivals. When we start trusting him and stop trying to be him, we can say with Paul, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1)."David Prince is my favorite living preacher. He connects every text of scripture with the central message of the Bible: the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. This book models that biblical strategy. I highly commend it for anyone who preaches, teaches, or seeks to apply God's word." Russell D. Moore, President, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention"The saving glory of Jesus Christ is the world's only hope and thus ought to be the church's only focus. What a great gift this wonderful book is, then, in helping us direct our vision and ministry away from ourselves and to Christ the Redeemer!" Jared C. Wilson, Managing Editor of Midwestern Seminary's For the Church (ftc.com) and Author, The Prodigal Church"I will be quick to commend this book to those who want to make sure King Jesus is kept at the center of the life of the church and all the things she does to rightly honor and worship the One that the Scriptures testify to from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21." Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

    It is compelled by a desire to challenge the current crisis of sustainability from the point of view of indigenous communities and deep ancestry. Author James W. Perkinson ably synthesizes material from a diverse range of fields, including anarcho-primitivism, biblical studies, and history of religions in order to argue for a 'turn to indigeneity.' The book's motive force is a deep concern for humanity's future in the face of eco-disasters like climate change and population overshoot as well as the compounding problems brought on by political economy calamities. Given the growing trend toward a turn away from institutionalized religious commitment and toward a more generalized and post-modern mix of practices and interests typically styled as 'spiritual,' the work proposes 'political spirituality' as a theme for investigation. Throughout the book, Perkinson raises the question: What does it really meant to be a human being? This query is posed not merely as a philosophical inquiry or existential musing, but as a personal and political conundrum arising from the overwhelming crises now engulfing our global reality. The book constitutes a poetic 'walk about' across quite different historical epochs and disparate contexts. Creatively foraging for indigenous memories and insurgent energies to help us live and cope in our modern state of unsustainability, the work aims to re-animate love of the wild and 'interspecies listening' for the sake of survival. The text articulates a deep suspicion toward our growing fascination with a kind of 'techno-messianism,' while nonetheless exploring some of the artistic innovations and meanings emerging from industrialization and digitalization.

    Bobby Jamieson describes how baptism and the Lord’s Supper transform a scattered group of Christians into a gathered local church. It traces the trajectory of a church’s birth, how gospel people form a gospel polity.   Baptism is where faith goes public. It is the initiating oath-sign of the new covenant. It is the passport of Christ’s kingdom and a kingdom citizen’s swearing-in. The Lord’s Supper is the renewing oath-sign of the new covenant, a corporate act of fellowship with Christ that binds the church into one body. Baptism confers church membership and the Lord’s Supper confirms it. Baptism confers membership; the Lord’s Supper renews it. So baptism is required for church membership like vows are required for marriage.     After building and summarizing this positive theological case for why baptism is required for church membership, the book answers objections, poses challenges to the open membership view, and applies this theological vision to the local church’s practice of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and church membership.   Why is baptism required for church membership? Because church membership is a public affirmation of someone’s public profession of faith in Christ, and Jesus has appointed baptism as the means by which his followers publicly profess their faith in him. Why does this question matter? Because removing baptism from membership erases the line Jesus himself has drawn between the church and the world.

    Richard Niebuhr wrote as early as 1929, the problem of church and world involves us in a paradox; unless the church accommodates itself to the world, it becomes sterile inwardly and outwardly; unless it transcends the world, it becomes indistinguishable from the world and loses its effectiveness no less surely. In the same context he went on to state: The rhythm of approach and withdrawal need not be like the swinging of the pendulum, mere repetition without progress; it may be more like the rhythm of the waves that wash upon the beach; each succeeding wave advances a little farther into the world with its cleansing gospel before that gospel becomes sullied with the earth.Niebuhr s thought on the paradox of church and world is an essential piece of our understanding of twentieth-century theology in America. In this volume, Jon Diefenthaler collects for the first time over forty writings that trace the lineage of Niebuhr s thought, presents them in a single place, and makes a case for their enduring value in a post-church religious environment."

    Hammett shares his latest insights and suggestions for churches seeking to serve all generations. This is an updated version of Hammett's 2007 book Reaching People Under 40 while Keeping People Over 60 that expands the reach another decade and emphasizes diversity with insight from new contributors Paul L. Anderson and Cornell Thomas.

    

    All of these have the potential to transform yourcongregation into a fearless, Spirit-driven church that will make new spiritual history for Christ in your own mission field and beyond.