What does it look like to help others become more like Christ?In this concise guide, pastor Mark Dever outlines the who, what, where, when, why, and how of discipling--helping others follow Jesus.Following the pattern found in Scripture, this book explains how disciple-making relationships should function in the context of the local church, teaching us how to cultivate a culture of discipling as a normal part of our everyday lives.Part of the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series.

    We either compartmentalize our faith or drift from it altogether—into a world that’s so alluring.Have you wondered lately:Why does the Western church look so much like the world?Why are so many of my friends leaving the faith?How can we get back to our roots?Disappearing Church will help you sort through concerns like these, guiding you in a thoughtful, faithful, and hopeful response. Weaving together art, history, and theology, pastor and cultural observer Mark Sayers reminds us that real growth happens when the church embraces its countercultural witness, not when it blends in.It’s like Jesus said long ago, “If the salt loses its saltiness, it is no longer good for anything…”

    They have inherited a model of leadership that equates leading worship with being a rock star. But leading worship is more than a performance, it's about shaping souls and making disciples. Every worship leader is really a pastor.The Worship Pastor is a practical and biblical introduction to this essential pastoral role. Filled with engaging, illustrative stories it is organized to address questions of theory and practice, striving to balance conversational accessibility with informed instruction.Part One presents a series of evocative "vignettes"--intriguing and descriptive titles and metaphors of who a Worship Pastor is and what he or she does. It shows the Worship Pastor as Church-Lover, Disciple Maker, Corporate Mystic, and Doxological Philosopher.Part Two covers specific roles related to ministry within the worship service itself--the Worship Pastor as Theological Dietician, Caregiver, Mortician, Emotional Shepherd, War General, Prophetic Guardian, Missional Historian, and Liturgical Architect.Part Three looks at ministry beyond the worship service--the Worship Pastor as Visionary Teacher, Evangelist, Artist Chaplain, and Team Leader.While some worship leaders are eager to embrace their pastoral role, many are lost and confused or lack the resources of time or money to figure out what this role looks like. Pastor Zac Hicks gives us a clear guide to leading worship, one that takes the pastoral call seriously.

    In Reclaiming Glory, Clifton draws not only upon his own burden for revitalizing dying churches but also upon years of church rePlanting experience to offer passionate counsel for how to breathe new life into a dying church . . . all for the glory of the God who is building his church upon the immovable rock of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

    For this very end, God has established elders and deacons, members, and congregational authority. This primer on church structure connects the different offices of the church to one another and to the glory of God. In the Church Basics Series, trusted church experts write practical, trustworthy resources on issues like Church Discipline, Church Leadership, the Lord's Supper, and Baptism that every pastor can hand every church member.

    Watershed Discipleship is a ""triple entendre"" that recognizes we are in a watershed historical moment of crisis, focuses on our intrinsically bioregional locus as followers of Jesus, and urges us to become disciples of our watersheds. Bibliographic framing essays by Myers trace his journey into a bioregionalist Christian faith and practice and offer reflections on incarnational theology, hermeneutics, and ecclesiology. The essays feature more than a dozen activists, educators, and practitioners under the age of forty, whose work and witness attest to a growing movement of resistance and reimagination across North America. This anthology overviews the bioregional paradigm and its theological and political significance for local sustainability, restorative justice, and spiritual renewal. Contributors reread both biblical texts and churchly practices (such as mission, baptism, and liturgy) through the lens of ""re-place-ment."" Herein is a comprehensive and engaged call for a ""Transition church"" that can help turn our history around toward environmental resiliency and social justice, by passionate advocates on the front lines of watershed discipleship. CONTRIBUTORS: Sasha Adkins, Jay Beck, Tevyn East, Erinn Fahey, Katarina Friesen, Matt Humphrey, Vickie Machado, Jonathan McRay, Sarah Nolan, Reyna Ortega, Dave Pritchett, Erynn Smith, Sarah Thompson, Lydia Wylie-Kellermann "". . . let diverse young peace and justice activists and visionaries instruct you. Their fresh biblical exegesis, interlaced with the experience of coming home to their bioregions and its waters of life, will inspire you from front to back in this remarkable volume"" --Larry Rasmussen, Union Theological Seminary ""Myers brings a much-needed prophetic voice to the church with his call to watershed discipleship. The way he frames the issues--along with hopeful actions--and then engages an array of younger voices makes this anthology poignant. The book helps the church rediscover that the bioregional lens is critical to practicing the good news of the gospel. This material will be required reading in the collegiate courses I teach and with congregations seeking a new paradigm for living out their faith."" --Luke Gascho, Executive Director, Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center, Goshen College; Leader, Mennonite Creation Care Network ""This book is important not just because it offers some shred of hope for the future of the church, but because it shows Christians who are relevant allies in the struggle for the planet."" --Laurel Dykstra, Salal + Cedar Watershed Discipleship Community, Coast Salish Territory ""Ched Myers and the team of young authors he has assembled offer in this volume a Spirit-inspired, theologically grounded call to action that is filled with passionate hope."" --Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union Ched Myers is an author and activist theologian who has worked in social change movements for forty years. He and his partner, Elaine Enns, who helped edit this volume, co-direct Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (www.bcm-net.org) in the Ventura River watershed, traditional Chumash teritory in southern California. Their publications can be found at www.ChedMyers.org.

    Nones are the fastest growing religious demographic in the United States. A pastor and self-proclaimed former none, Heath possesses an excellent understanding of church growth and the lack thereof, and frequently draws upon that experience when look for ways to welcome people to church. In Glorify: Reclaiming the Heart of Progressive Christianity, Heath shares the experiences, insights, lessons, and challenges that shaped them on their journey of faith. The book is sometimes practical, sometimes spiritual, and always glorifying the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which Heath asserts is the true way to change the world.

    The question goes like this: "Look, I've read your book, and it expresses what I have always thought about Christian ministry. But as I kept reading, I had this sinking feeling that what actually happens in our church is still a long way from the kind of disciple-making ministry vision you outline and that I believe in. So my question is this: What can we do about it? How can we shape the whole culture of our church around disciple-making?" In "The Vine Project", Marshall and Payne provide a roadmap and resources for this sort of church-wide culture change. The book guides your ministry leadership team through a five-phase process for growth and change, with biblical input, practical ideas, resources, case studies, exercises and projects along the way. You will be helped to: • clarify and sharpen your convictions (Phase 1) • reform your own personal life to express these convictions (Phase 2) • honestly evaluate every aspect of your current church (or ministry) culture (Phase 3) • devise some key plans for change and put them into effect (Phase 4) • keep the momentum going and overcome obstacles (Phase 5). "The Trellis and the Vine" proposed a "ministry mind-shift that changes everything". "The Vine Project" shows how that mind-shift can and must shape every aspect of what you are doing as a congregation of Christ's people to make disciples of all nations. For more information and help in working through 'The Vine Project', as well as additional resources, templates, videos, case studies, the PDF of the Team Manual, and much more, visit thevineproject.com (a website is run by Colin Marshall and the team at Vinegrowers.)

    There was a time when our neighborhoods were our closest communities.No more. Neighborhoods have become the place where nobody knows your name. Into this neighborhood crisis the words of Jesus still ring true: Second only to the command to love God is the command to "love your neighbor as yourself."In "Next Door as It Is in Heaven, " Lance Ford and Brad Brisco offer first principles and best practices to make our neighborhoods into places where compassion and care are once again part of the culture, where good news is once again more than words, and where the love of God can be once again rooted and established.

    Her voice is vulnerable and personal as she reflects on her own interracial relationship, parenting her Black teenaged son, and making art in the age of Black Lives Matter. Her short essays leave you cheering and hopeful.Kemp’s searing and tender commentary about herself, life within her interracial family, and racial justice take the reader on a rare journey into an African American boundary crosser. Kemp grew up in poverty in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood but went on to graduate from Stanford University and earned a PhD from Northwestern University. Now married to her European American husband, Kemp watches the way that race plays out in her family, her work as a performing artist and professor, and in her spiritual journey.This intimate short collection of essays will leave you pondering deep questions long after you stop reading. A great conversation starter, this short book is a must read for people concerned with racial unity, making Black Lives Matter, and educators and youth development professionals.

    Drawing from Vanier's writings, it situates Vanier's theological thinking on community, care, and what it means to be and become human in the context of ""welcome."" This book draws attention to how welcome, for Vanier, is a visible expression of genuine hospitality, friendship, and human growth, offering an alternative way of conceiving and naming the social forming dynamics within Christian community, with special attention given to how welcome occurs within the communities of L'Arche. At a deeper level, this book assesses Vanier's thinking on the place and role both the self and community play in welcoming the truth of reality as it is revealed and given within community in order to prepare the way for exploring how welcome is a sign of community life, the visible expression of individual and communal trust in God's providence, and a conduit of God's presence in the world. ""Wall's Welcome as a Way of Life is a welcome addition to the growing realization that Jean Vanier and his friends have a lot to teach us about the Lord."" --Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus, Duke Divinity School ""Benjamin Wall has made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of how the life and writings of Jean Vanier cohere in a precisely articulated vision of Jesus Christ. Wall shows why welcome and responsiveness must be central to any human community, Christian or otherwise, that we want to label 'caring.'"" --Brian Brock, Lecturer in Moral and Practical Theology, University of Aberdeen ""'Welcome, ' 'hospitality, ' 'community'--while trite in some theological discourses, Wall has retrieved these notions from deep within the Christian tradition with help from a source not expected to yield theological and conceptual robustness: the L'Arche 'way of life.' It's the radical otherness of L'Arche realities that moves practical theology from the margins of applicability to the center, where it will transform Christian imagination and praxis from within. Difference and vulnerability here do real theological work to generate new forms of human relationality, thanks to Welcome as a Way of Life."" --Amos Yong, Professor of Theology and Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary; Author of Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (2007) Benjamin S. Wall (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is Assistant Professor of Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy at Greensboro College in Greensboro, NC.

    Many pastors and other church leaders, like it or not, struggle with ambition. In this book Craig Hill shows how the New Testament can help Christian leaders deal with this problem honestly and faithfully. Hill examines such passages as the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2 to show how New Testament authors helped early Christians construct their identity in ways that overturned conventional status structures and hierarchies. Status and ambition, Hill says, are not often addressed forthrightly in the church, as Christians either secretly indulge those impulses or feebly try to quash them. Hill'sServant of All will help Christian leaders reconcile their human aspirations and their spirituality, empowering them to minister with integrity.

    Christ's moving memoir of her journey from death to rebirth and regeneration, culminating on the rst Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Having left behind the male God of traditional religion who rules the world from outside it, Christ hopes that the Goddess can help her manifest her heart's desires. Deeply disappointed, she discovers the Goddess as a personal presence who is always with her and every other individual in the world, but whose power is not omnipotence. The mystery of the Goddess is revealed at the ancient site of Kato Zakros in Crete as the dance of life: a serpentine path with no beginning and no end, into the darkness, into the light, and back again. Thea-logy, re ection on the meaning of Goddess, emerges from and takes root in a woman's embodied experience, inspiring others to join the dance.