So, he did what comes naturally to him, but might seem unnatural to many. A trusted white friend responded: Here is the deal: we don’t understand it; we don’t know what to say; and we don’t know what to do. That response propelled Aaron to action to deepen the understanding of his white friends, with the hope that greater understanding would result in a greater unity believers possess in Christ. The lessons he learned are the foundation of this book a letter to the white Christians he dearly loves, as well as those he hopes to one day meet. Dear White Christian is designed for any white Christian who seeks practical tools for beginning or continuing conversations with black brothers and sisters in Christ. As you read this book, lean into that which makes you uncomfortable. Allow this letter to give you insight and challenge you for the glory of God. "Dear White Christian provides a black leader’s perspective ... to help break down the walls that inhibit real conversations and understanding to take place." James Marsh, Director, Van Lunen Center at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI “This book will help you embrace the challenge to recognize the season we are in and steward it well.” Thurman L. Williams, Associate Pastor, Grace and Peace Fellowship Church, St. Louis, MO.

    As a result, they focus a lot on what Jesus has done to appease God's wrath for sin. But how does Jesus Christ actually feel about his people amid all their sins and failures? This book draws us to Matthew 11, where Jesus describes himself as "gentle and lowly in heart," longing for his people to find rest in him. The gospel is primarily about God's heart drawn to his people, a heart of tender love for the sinful and suffering. These chapters take readers into the depths of Christ's very heart for sinners, diving deep into Bible passages that speak of who Christ is and encouraging readers with the affections of Christ for his people. His longing heart for sinners will comfort and sustain readers in their up-and-down lives.

    His longing for God ignited a ferocity in his soul."Encounter the multifaceted life of one of the most influential and creative pastors of the past half century with unforgettable stories of Eugene's lifelong devotion to his craft and love of language, the influences and experiences that shaped his unquenchable faith, the inspiration for his decision to translate The Message, and his success and struggles as a pastor, husband, and father.Author Winn Collier was given exclusive access to Eugene and his materials for the production of this landmark work. Drawing from his friendship and expansive view of Peterson's life, Collier offers an intimate, beautiful, and earthy look into a remarkable life.For Eugene, the gifts of life were inexhaustible: the glint of fading light over the lake, a kiss from Jan, a good joke, a bowl of butter pecan ice cream. As you enter into his story, you'll find yourself doing the same--noticing how the most ordinary things shimmer with a new and unexpected beauty.

    They are the stuff of news headlines and vitriolic social media posts. But they also reflect stirrings of the heart in real people with real questions and concerns.Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, once a leftist professor in a committed lesbian relationship and now a confessional Christian, but always the thoughtful and compassionate professor, has written a followup to The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. This book answers many of the questions people pose when she speaks at universities and churches, questions not only about her unlikely conversion to Christ but about personal struggles that the ques­tioners only dare to ask someone else who has traveled a long and painful journey.Dr. Butterfield not only goes to great lengths to clarify some of today's key controversies, she also traces their history and defines the terms that have become second nature today - even going back to God's original design for marriage and sexuality as found in the Bible. She cuts to the heart of the problems and points the way to the solution, which includes a challenge to the church to be all that God intended it to be, and for each person to find the true freedom that is found in Christ.Chapters include:Conversion: the Spark of a New IdentityIdentity: the Flame of Our Union in ChristRepentance: the Threshold to God and the Answer to Shame, Temptation, and SinSexual Orientation: Freud’s 19th Century Category MistakeSelf-Representation: What Does It Mean to Be “gay”?Conflict: When Sisters DisagreeCommunity: Representing Christ to the World

    And then seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: African Americans—particularly young black men—are an endangered species.Now the country’s urban war zone is brought powerfully to life by a rising young literary talent, D. Watkins. The author fought his way up on the east side (the “beast side”) of Baltimore, Maryland—or “Bodymore, Murderland,” as his friends call it—surviving murderous business rivals in the drug trade and equally predatory lawmen. Throughout it all, he pursued his education, earning a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, while staying rooted in his community.When black residents of Baltimore finally decided they had had enough—after the brutal killing of twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody—Watkins was on the streets when the city erupted. He writes about his bleeding hometown with the razor-sharp insights of someone who bleeds along with it. Here are true dispatches from the other side of America.

    The generation born into evangelical purity culture has grown up, and many have started families of their own. But as time goes on, it's becoming more evident that many still struggle with purity culture's complicated legacy--its idolization of virginity, its mixed messages about modesty and lust, and its promise of a healthy marriage and great sex for those who follow the rules. In Talking Back to Purity Culture, Rachel Joy Welcher reviews the movement carefully, examining its teachings through the lens of Scripture. Compassionate, faithful, and wise, she charts a path forward for evangelicals in the ongoing debates about sexuality--one that rejects legalism and license alike, steering us back instead to the good news of Jesus. It's time to talk back to purity culture--and this book is ready to jump-start the conversation.

    After spending over six hard years doing relief work in Somalia, and experiencing life where it looked like God had turned away completely and He was clueless about the tragedies of life, the couple had a crisis of faith and left Africa asking God, "Does the gospel work anywhere when it is really a hard place?  It sure didn't work in Somalia. Nik recalls that, “God had always been so real to me, to Ruth, and to our boys. But was He enough, for the utter weariness of soul I experienced at that time, in that place, under those circumstances?” It is a question that many have asked and one that, if answered, can lead us to a whole new world of faith. How does faith survive, let alone flourish in a place like the Middle East? How can good truly overcome such evil? How do you maintain hope when all is darkness around you? How can we say “greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world” when it may not be visibly true in that place at that time? How does anyone live an abundant, victorious Christian life in our world’s toughest places? Can Christianity even work outside of Western, dressed-up, ordered nations? If so, how?The Insanity of God tells a story—a remarkable and unique story to be sure, yet at heart a very human story—of the Ripkens’ own spiritual and emotional odyssey. The gripping, narrative account of a personal pilgrimage into some of the toughest places on earth, combined with sobering and insightful stories of the remarkable people of faith Nik and Ruth encountered on their journeys, will serve as a powerful course of revelation, growth, and challenge for anyone who wants to know whether God truly is enough.

    African slave, homeless exile, surrogate mother, Hagar's story provides an image of survival and defiance appropriate to black women today. Exploring all the themes inherent in Hagar's story -- poverty and slavery, ethnicity and sexual exploitation, exile and encounters with God -- Sisters in the Wilderness traces parallels in the history of African-American women from slavery to the present. A particular theology -- a womanist theology -- emerges from this shared experience; specifically, from the interplay of oppressions on account of race, sex, and class. In Part I, Williams shows how reading Hagar's story exemplifies the issues and problems black women face. The "forced motherhood," "single motherhood" and "surrogate motherhood" Hagar experienced have been part of black women's lives. Williams also explores the dismal reality of contemporary "racial narcissistic...consciousness" which finds its parallel in Hagar's travail as foreign servant and outcast. Finally, there is the religious resonance of Hagar's sojourns in the wilderness and her encounters with God. These themes Williams finds echoed in the cultural and literary traditions of African-American women. Part II considers the theological implications of the womanist understanding of Hagar's history. Williams explores the relationship between womanist and black liberation theology, and womanist theology and the black church. Through the combination of social history, political theology, and literary criticism, Williams demonstrates how approaching theology consciously informed by the awareness of the identity of black women results in a rich and vibrant knowledge of the sacred. Sisters in the Wilderness provides a reconstruction of "God-talk"

    An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still.

    Ryle served the Lord in ministry in the Church of England for almost the entire length of the Victorian Age. Although Ryle was committed to all forms of evangelism, his heart beat strongest for mass evangelism in the cities. Much of his immediate influence on Victorian evangelism stemmed from his prolific number of tracts. Several million copies of his more than 200 different tracts were distributed in a variety of languages throughout the Land.Bishop Ryle's desire, and his answer to the issues of his day, was the pursuit of personal revival of Scriptural holiness. This holds just as true for today, as it was in his time.

    The case exemplifies how the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching — a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.

    But instead of easing our emotional burden, the pressure to love ourselves more actually makes it worse. Even so, the idea that unconditional self-love can cure all that ails us is tempting and easy to rationalize.It's time to admit to ourselves what we already know: we are not smart enough; we are not beautiful enough; we are not tough enough; we are not good enough. And that's okay, because God is.Allie Beth Stuckey, a young mother, Christian, and conservative thought leader, was once herself sucked into the Cult of Self-Love--and knows that you probably have been too. In this book, she shows you how to identify and combat the toxic, exhausting myths our culture encourages with Scripture and traditional values like personal responsibility, self-sacrifice, and grit. For instance:Myth: There is no objective truth.Truth: We'll never feel personally fulfilled if we have no moral benchmark at which to aim.Myth: Life is all about me.Truth: When our highest priority is our own comfort and success, we end up alienating family and friends.Myth: Happiness is the goal.Truth: Since good vibes don't last forever, they're not sufficient criteria for personal purpose and meaning.Blending timeless wisdom and biblical truths, Stuckey shows how these sneaky, pervasive myths threaten women and fuel victimhood culture--from social justice warriors to radical feminism and the new wave of socialism. Stuckey dismantles these myths step-by-step and offers strategies that can help you move past them--and undo the damage they've done.

    Early Christianity was subversive and dangerous-dangerous for Christians and a threat to the keepers of the old order. Most of all Christianity was countercultural. But what about contemporary American Christianity? Is it the countercultural way of Jesus or merely a religious endorsement of Americanism? In his provocative book, Postcards From Babylon, Brian Zahnd challenges the reader to see and embrace a daring Jesus-centered Christianity that can again turn the world upside down."In a bold and daring articulation, Brian Zahnd has sketched a 'Theology of the Cross' for our time and place in the United States of the twenty-first century. He does so in a way that deeply resonates with the primal claims of evangelical theology. He sees that the Gospel is inherently and inescapably countercultural because the God of the Gospel is in particular and passionate solidarity with the 'left behind.'"--Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary"If I had miraculous powers, I would interrupt the programming of every religious broadcast in America, then, as Jesus replaced water with wine, I would substitute the message from Brian Zahnd that you'll read in this book. Read it and you'll see why. I recommend that you buy two copies of this book. Immediately read one-underline it and extract quotes from it to share on Facebook and Twitter, and refer to it in sermons and casual conversations. Send the other to that friend or relative who likes to talk about God and country. Include a note asking if they'd be willing to talk with you about it after they read it. Then see what happens as these Postcards from Babylon do their work in you and in others."--Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration"This love letter from a concerned pastor will enrage contemporary Pharaohs and their false prophets who blaspheme by blessing everything that Christ came to free us from. Postcards from Babylon diagnoses the diabolical and invites us to become pilgrims on Christ's narrow road that delivers us out into life."--Jarrod McKenna, pastor, founder of First Home Project for refugees in Australia

    shouted those words to a crowd gathered in Washington, D.C. His speech, "I Have a Dream," is now familiar, even famous. But has his dream been realized? In Free at Last? Carl Ellis offers an in-depth assessment of the state of African-American freedom and dignity within American culture today. Updating and expanding his examination (previously published as Beyond Liberation) for a new generation of readers, Ellis stresses how important it is for African-Americans to know who they are and where they have been. So he begins by tracing the growth of Black consciousness from the days of slavery to the present, noting especially the contributions of King and Malcolm X. He also pays particular attention to traces of a "theological soul dynamic," an authentic manifestation of Christianity in Black culture, which runs through American history. It is this dynamic faith, says Ellis, that promises true freedom--the realization of King's dream--for African-Americans today.

    He arrived with a pistol, 88 bullets, and hopes of starting a race war. Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine innocents during their closing prayer horrified the nation. Two days later, some relatives of the dead stood at Roof’s hearing and said, “I forgive you.” That grace offered the country a hopeful ending to an awful story. But for the survivors and victims’ families, the journey had just begun.In Grace Will Lead Us Home, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes provides a definitive account of the tragedy’s aftermath. With unprecedented access to the grieving families and other key figures, Hawes offers a nuanced and moving portrait of the events and emotions that emerged in the massacre’s wake.The two adult survivors of the shooting begin to make sense of their lives again. Rifts form between some of the victims’ families and the church. A group of relatives fights to end gun violence, capturing the attention of President Obama. And a city in the Deep South must confront its racist past. This is the story of how, beyond the headlines, a community of people begins to heal.An unforgettable and deeply human portrait of grief, faith, and forgiveness, Grace Will Lead Us Home is destined to be a classic in the finest tradition of journalism.