An in-depth look at the history of one of the Vineyard, one of the fastest growing church movements in the last twenty years.

    Stearns' journey there took much more than a long flight to Africa. It took answering God's call on his life, a call that tore him out of his corner office at one of America's most prestigious corporations--to walk with the poorest of the poor in our world."The Hole in Our Gospel" is the compelling true story of a corporate CEO who setaside worldly success for something far more significant, and discovered the full power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to change his own life. He uses his journey to demonstrate how the gospel--the whole gospel--was always meant to be a world changing social revolution, a revolution that begins with us.ECPA 2010 Christian Book of the Year Award Winner!"Read this compelling story and urgent call for change--Richard Stearns is a contemporary Amos crying 'let justice roll down like waters....' Justice is a serious gospel-prophetic mandate. Far too many American Christians for too long a time have left the cause to 'others.' Read it as an altar call." --Eugene H. Peterson, translator of The Message, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, BC"Rich Stearns calls us to exhilarating obedience to God's life-altering, world-changing command to reflect his love to our neighbors at home and globally. The Hole in Our Gospel is imbued with the hope of what is possible when God's people are transformed to live radically in light of his great love." --Gary Haugen, President & CEO, International Justice Mission"Richard Stearns is quite simply one of the finest leaders I have ever known.... When he became president of World Vision I had a front row seat to witness the way God used his mind and heart to inspire thousands.... His new book, The Hole In Our Gospel will call you to a higher level of discipleship.... Now is the time...Richard Stearns has the strategy...your move!" --Bill Hybels, Founding and Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL"Rich Stearns has given us a book that makes absolutely clear what God hopes for and expects from each of us.... He reminded me of my personal responsibilities and the priority I must give them and also where life's true rewards and fulfillment are to be found." --Jim Morris, former executive director, United Nations World Food Program"World Vision plays a strategic role on our globe. As the largest relief organization in the history of the world, they initiate care and respond to crisis. Rich Stearns navigates this mercy mission with great skill. His book urges us to think again about the opportunity to love our neighbor and comfort the afflicted. His message is timely and needed. May God bless him, the mission of World Vision and all who embrace it." --Max Lucado, author of 3:16--The Numbers of Hope, Minister of Writing and Preaching, Oak Hills Church, San Antonio, TX"With passionate urging and earnestness, Rich Stearns challenges Christians to embrace the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ by embracing the neediest and most vulnerable among us. After reading the moving stories, the compelling facts and figures, and Stearns' excellent application of scripture and his own experiences at World Vision, you will no doubt be asking yourself: What should I do?" --Chuck Colson, Founder, Prison Fellowship

    During her lifelong service to the poorest of the poor, Mother Teresa be

    But sometimes Jesus spoke words that followers then and now have found difficult. He instructs disciples to hate members of their own families (Luke 14:26), to act as if they were slaves (Matthew 20:27), and to sell their belongings and give to the poor (Luke 18:22). He restricts his mission (Matthew 10:6); he speaks of damnation (Matthew 8:12); he calls Jews the devil's children (John 8:44).In The Difficult Words of Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine shows how these difficult teachings would have sounded to the people who first heard them, how have they been understood over time, and how we might interpret them in the context of the Gospel of love and reconciliation.Additional components for a six-week study include a DVD featuring Dr. Levine and a comprehensive Leader Guide.

    Leading missiologist Ed Stetzer and his associates first offer a detailed investigation of the four younger unchurched types. With a better understanding of their unique experiences, they next clarify the importance each type places on community, depth of content, social responsibility, and making cross-generational connections in relation to spiritual matters.Most valuably, Lost and Found finds the churches that have learned to reach unchurched young adults by paying close attention to those key markers vetted by the research. Their exciting stories will make it clear how your church can bring searching souls from this culture to authentic faith in Christ.Those who are lost can indeed be found. Come take a closer look.

    It’s also the story of the growth of a pastor, the mistakes he’s made along the way, and God’s grace and work in spite of those mistakes. Mark Driscoll’s emerging, missional church took a rocky road from its start in a hot, upstairs youth room with gold shag carpet to its current weekly attendance of thousands. With engaging humor, humility, and candor, Driscoll shares the failures, frustrations, and just plain messiness of trying to build a church that is faithful to the gospel of Christ in a highly post-Christian culture. In the telling, he’s not afraid to skewer some sacred cows of traditional, contemporary, and emerging churches. Each chapter discusses not only the hard lessons learned but also the principles and practices that worked and that can inform your church’s ministry, no matter its present size. The book includes discussion questions and appendix resources. “After reading a book like this, you can never go back to being an inwardly focused church without a mission. Even if you disagree with Mark about some of the things he says, you cannot help but be convicted to the inner core about what it means to have a heart for those who don’t know Jesus.”—Dan Kimball, author,The Emerging Church “… will make you laugh, cry, and get mad … school you, shape you, and mold you into the right kind of priorities to lead the church in today’s messy world.”—Robert Webber, Northern Seminary

    The words on these pages will not go down like Ambien. I’m not writing to calm or coddle you. With God’s help, I intend to incite a riot in your mind. Trip your breakers and turn out the lights in your favorite hiding places of insecurity and fear. Then flip the switch back on so that God’s truth can illuminate the divine destiny that may have been lying dormant inside you for years. In short, I’m out to activate your audacious faith. To inspire you to ask God for the impossible. And in the process, to reconnect you with your God-sized purpose and potential.—STEVEN FURTICK, from Sun Stand Still“Steven Furtick challenges all of us—from the missionary in the third world to the family in the suburbs—to believe God for the impossible and begin living a life of faith beyond the ordinary.” —ANDY STANLEY, senior pastor, North Point Community Church “I don’t know anyone better positioned to challenge you to rise above mundane living and embrace faith-filled audacity than Steven Furtick.”—CRAIG GROESCHEL, senior pastor, LifeChurch.tv“For too long Christians have embraced a miniscule vision of faith.… Steven Furtick reminds us that the God who accomplished the impossible through the great heroes of faith still desires to do the same through us today.” —JENTEZEN FRANKLIN, senior pastor, Free Chapel “This book will show you that your hopes and expectations are truly just the beginning of what God can do.” —ED YOUNG, senior pastor, Fellowship ChurchFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

    What happened to the Western church? Why are we losing the generation under thirty and reaching so few nonbelievers? In Church Zero, Peyton Jones examines one of our biggest problems: squeezing our leaders into a mold that cuts their hair and drains away their commando strength. Scripture lays out a leadership model that worked explosively in the first century. When properly understood, Christ’s model can help your church live the way it was meant to live, truly making a difference in your community. Church Zero gives the blueprints for how the Western church might start rebuilding from the ground up. What would tomorrow look like if we had to restart from a biblical ground zero? Church Zero will help us once again become a radical, dangerous people who cannot be ignored.

    As we pull back the curtain on His life, we discover that Jesus knows what it’s like to be marginalized. He understands how it feels to have society shove you to the side, to not really be accepted, and in the end to be totally rejected. He can identify with life in the margins because when God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, He landed in the margins. On purpose. And He chose to land there because it’s in the margins that broken lives get mended, prisoners are set free, and the poor hear the Good News.Reimagine Your Life Welcome to the crowded margins of life. It’s a place where normal people don’t feel normal. Where the daily grind drowns out the soft cry within that says, “I do not have it together.” Where just beneath the surface we long for meaning and—dare we hope?—wholeness. Rick McKinley writes from experience: Only God can rescue a person from the margins. Why? Because when He came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, in the margins is where he landed. On purpose. To find you. Don’t wait till you get yourself together. Meet Jesus in the margins just as you are, and reimagine your life through the lens of His transforming love. Story Behind the BookThis book was birthed out of Rick’s ministry at Imago Dei Community Church. Rick’s heart is to communicate God’s Word in an understandable way to those who are outside the reach of traditional churches. He often calls this “unpacking the gospel”—a gospel he sees as the predominant theme in all of Scripture. Rick says the kind of people he ministers to “are not afraid of the language of theology, but the theological ideas need to be brought down from the mountain.”

    Jesus's ability to woo people to him and win their hearts was directly related to how he challenged their assumptions about religion. He not only gave them a unique, personal way to follow him but also showed them how to participate with him in his mission.Sacrilege helps readers rethink what it really means to become like Jesus. It exposes the patterns of thinking that have held the church hostage for years and inspires readers to rethink the way they understand Scripture, family, spiritual formation, conversion, church, sin, and more.

    He guides churches away from an internal focus to emphasize participation in their community and surrounding culture. In this important book, Mancini offers an approach for rethinking what it means to lead with clarity as a visionary. Mancini explains that each church has a culture that reflects its particular values, thoughts, attitudes, and actions and shows how church leaders can unlock their church's individual DNA and unleash their congregation's one-of-a-kind potential.

    Now the revision to the compact, perennial bestseller includes a provocative new concluding chapter depicting God asking a believer questions about his stewardship over material resources.Jesus spent more time talking about money and possessions than about heaven and hell combined. But too often we've overlooked or misunderstood his most profound teaching on this topic, from his words in Matthew 6. Jesus offers us life-changing investment advice. He actually wants us to store up treasures for ourselves--just not here on earth. Instead, he urges us to store our treasure in heaven, where they will await us, and last forever. We can't take it with us--but we can send it on ahead!Readers are moved from the realms of thoughtful Bible exposition into the highly personal arena of everyday life. Because when Jesus told His followers to "lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven," He intended that they discover an astounding secret: how joyful giving brings God maximum glory and His children maximum pleasure. In The Treasure Principle, you'll unearth a radical teaching of Jesus--a secret wrapped up in giving.Once you discover this secret, life will never look the same. And you won't want it to be."Supercharged with stunning, divine truth! Lightning struck over and over as I read it." - John Piper, Senior Pastor, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis

    He shares practical ways for church leaders to move beyond the building walls and take the kingdom to those who need it most. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Scott argues that every believer, not just the leaders, can fill their city, workplace, and family with the beauty and power of Christ.   When believers become scattered servants, the Holy Spirit will equip them to advance the kingdom and change lives through their hearts and hands.

    Hinckley said, "There is no more significant work in this world than the preparation of boys to become men . . . who are qualified to live productive and meaningful lives." And President Thomas S. Monson underscores this thought when he says that "It's easier to build boys than to mend them." Bradley D. Harris, professor of recreational management and youth leadership at Brigham Young University, and past member of the LDS Young Mens General Board, challenges parents and youth leaders alike to rediscover the spiritual dimensions of Scouting-to focus on the close relationship that should exist between Scouting and the Aaronic Priesthood. The author's 22-year professional career with the Boy Scouts of America, combined with extensive experience within the Church in various priesthood leadership capacities, gives him invaluable insights into the responsibilities that parents and leaders have in bringing young men to Christ. "The family is the first institution charged with bringing young men to Christ. . . . Working in harmony, the family and the Aaronic Priesthood should create an atmosphere where young men's individual testimonies can . . . flourish." Trails to Testimony is a powerful guide for families and leaders entrusted with the sacred responsibility of teaching and guiding the young men of the Church.

    We think about God in the comfort of our own minds, in isolation from one another; meanwhile the world waits for a people to practice the way of Jesus together. Mark Scandrette contends that Jesus has in mind something more lively for us: not a classroom so much as a kingdom, where our formation takes place not only in our heads but in our hearts and our bodies, and in the company of one another, in a way that blesses the world we've been entrusted with. In Practicing the Way of Jesus Scandrette draws from his experience as a spiritual director and leader of an intentional community, as well as the best contemporary thinking on kingdom spirituality, to paint a picture of life lived together, in the way of Jesus--which is another way of saying life lived to the full.