Since joining Barna in 1995, David has designed and analyzed nearly five hundred studies for a variety of churches, nonprofits, and corporations. He and George Barna write a free research report published online at www.barna.org. David and his wife Jill have three children and live in Ventura, California.Gabe Lyons founded Fermi Project, a broad collective of innovators, social entrepreneurs, and church and society leaders working together to make positive contributions to culture (www.fermiproject.com). Prior to Fermi Project, Gabe cofounded Catalyst, a national gathering of young leaders, while serving as vice president for John Maxwell's INJOY organization. Gabe, his wife Rebekah, and their three children reside in Atlanta, Georgia.To meet the contributors and learn more about this book and the conversations it is creating, visit www.unchristian.com.This work was commissioned by Fermi Project.The New Testament writer Paul told the first-century Christians: "You yourselves are our letter . . . known and read by everybody."When a person "reads" your life, what does it say? What does your faith look like to outsiders?A major new research project, unveiled for the first time in this book, describes the increasingly negative reputation of Christians, especially among young Americans.The research shows that Christians are best known for what they are against. They are perceived as being judgmental, antihomosexual, and too political. And young people are quick to point out they believe that Christianity is no longer as Jesus intended. It is unChristian.It shouldn't be this way.What Christians believe may not be popular, but Paul also advised the first believers to "live wisely among those who are not Christians" and to "let your conversation be gracious and effective."In this eye-opening book, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons--along with more than two dozen leading voices within Christianity--unpack the major criticisms leveled against Christians. Understand why those negative images exist and how you can best represent Jesus to your friends, neighbors, and co-workers.Your life is an open book. Is it unChristian?

    Written for lay men and women, it includes practical discussions on church leadership, male and female roles, worship, spiritual gifts, confrontation, unity, and prayer. Revised and expanded with study questions and new conclusions.

    The Emotionally Healthy Church offers a strategy for discipleship that accomplishes healthy living and actually changes lives.

    Here, in her new book, Real Good Church: How Our Church Came Back from the Dead, and Yours Can, Too, she shares everything her church did, addressing topics such as: outreach and growth strategies, finances and giving, creative worship, including personal testimony and corporate prayer, church conflict and change, anxiety and humor, and much more.

    Lamenting the vacuous, often pagan nature of contemporary American spirituality, Eugene Peterson here firmly grounds spirituality once more in Trinitarian theology and offers a clear, practical statement of what it means to actually live out the Christian life.Writing in the conversational style that he is well known for, Peterson boldly sweeps out the misunderstandings that clutter conversations on spiritual theology and refurnishes the subject only with what is essential. As Peterson shows, spiritual theology, in order to be at once biblical and meaningful, must remain sensitive to ordinary life, present the Christian gospel, follow the narrative of Scripture, and be rooted in the "fear of the Lord" -- in short, spiritual theology must be about God and not about us. The foundational book in a five-volume series on spiritual theology emerging from Peterson's pen, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places provides the conceptual and directional help we all need to live the Christian gospel well and maturely in the conditions that prevail in the church and world today.

    But if you’re looking for something different, something that . . . approaches leadership as an art as well as a scienceinspires hope and expectation in those of us who aren’t born leaderschallenges those with leadership roles to explore new possibilities. . . then Leonard Sweet wants to help you discover a very different kind of leadership vision. It’s one you hear if your ears are open, and it could summon you at any time. When you respond, the puzzle pieces of who you are will fit together into a leader others follow because you’ve answered a call, not trained for a position.“The church has it all wrong. It is trying to train leaders. Instead, it ought to train everyone to listen and to develop their own soundtrack.”Leaders don’t see a vision, says Sweet, they hear one. “Sound becomessight. Leaders hear life.”For a sonogram of “acoustic leadership,” Sweet takes us inside the incredible account of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the celebrated polar explorer who led his entire crew of twenty-seven from disaster in the Antarctic to safety. Called “the greatest leader that ever came on God’s earth, bar none,” Shackleton objectifies the goals of Sweet’s own exploration in search of wisdom for today and tomorrow’s truly compelling, voice-activated leaders.Right now, you may be leading many people or just yourself. But who knows what tomorrow—or a minute from now—will call forth in you. Are your ears open?

    

    Humans–as Augustine noted–are "desiring agents," full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love.James K. A. Smith focuses on the themes of liturgy and desire in "Desiring the Kingdom," the first book in what will be a three-volume set on the theology of culture. He redirects our yearnings to focus on the greatest good: God. Ultimately, Smith seeks to re-vision education through the process and practice of worship. Students of philosophy, theology, worldview, and culture will welcome "Desiring the Kingdom," as will those involved in ministry and other interested readers.

    Drawing on nearly 40 years of teaching and ministry experience, pastor-scholar Sam Storms answers 25 challenging questions Christians are often too afraid to ask, addressing thorny issues ranging from the eternal destiny of infants to the roles of demons and angels.The robust, thoughtful answers provided in this book offer a helpful alternative to relying on simplistic explanations, and will encourage you in the search for truth and clarity on such tough topics.

    6:6).Today we see a culture that is increasingly hostile to Christians, and Christians are increasingly aware that they need to form strong communities to do for them what the culture no longer can. This is a good thing, but it will only work if like Nehemiah and his men we are committed to resisting the dictates of our culture. If we are at all afraid of looking like the crazy fundamentalists that our culture loves to hate, then our communities will be as easily led by the culture as anybody else.In this short book, Pastor Douglas Wilson describes some of the most important ways to create and maintain counter-cultural Christian communities. Whether he is talking about the need for kids to get calluses or for love and loyalty within churches, Douglas Wilson brings decades of on-the-ground wisdom and experience to the topic.A city without walls is not really a city; neither is a city without a church at the center. Get busy. Build the walls, fight sin, love your family and church, and live out the Gospel.

    Throughout the book, the focus is on the integral issue of who we worship . . . and why. Ross then applies these discoveries to the contemporary Christian practice and debate.Recalling the Hope of Glory stands to become a definitive resource for the pastor, worship leader, and those training for the ministry. Regardless of their denomination, readers will appreciate the author's high view of Scripture and just how much it can and should inform Christian worship.

    All injustice affects others, so talking about justice that isn't social is like talking about water that isn't wet or a square with no right angles. But the Bible's call to seek justice is not a call to superficial, kneejerk activism. We are not merely commanded to execute justice, but to "truly execute justice." The God who commands us to seek justice is the same God who commands us to "test everything" and "hold fast to what is good."Drawing from a diverse range of theologians, sociologists, artists, and activists, Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, by Thaddeus Williams, makes the case that we must be discerning if we are to "truly execute justice" as Scripture commands. Not everything called "social justice" today is compatible with a biblical vision of a better world. The Bible offers hopeful and distinctive answers to deep questions of worship, community, salvation, and knowledge that ought to mark a uniquely Christian pursuit of justice. Topics addressed include:RacismSexualitySocialismCulture WarAbortionTribalismCritical TheoryIdentity PoliticsConfronting Injustice without Compromising Truth also brings in unique voices to talk about their experiences with these various social justice issues, including:Michelle-Lee BarnwallSuresh BudhaprithiEddie ByunFreddie CardozaBecket CookBella DanusiarMonique DusonOjo OkeyeEdwin RamirezSamuel SeyNeil ShenviWalt SobchakIn Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, Thaddeus Williams transcends our religious and political tribalism and challenges readers to discover what the Bible and the example of Jesus have to teach us about justice. He presents a compelling vision of justice for all God's image-bearers that offers hopeful answers to life's biggest questions.

    Leon McBeth's 'The Baptist heritage' is a definitive, fresh interpretation of Baptist history. Based on primary source research, the book combines the best features of chronological and topical history to bring alive the story of Baptists around the world.

    In this concise book, respected apologist Rebecca McLaughlin outlines the evidence that Jesus was a real person, explaining the reliability of the Bible's accounts of his life and why believing in a virgin birth is not as ridiculous as it might sound.This book shows that there is a rational basis for the belief that the world's most famous story is fact, not fantasy--and how those events in history can infuse our lives today with meaning and joy.

    It is not, however, out of reach. The ability to identify the main themes of any passage is a skill you can learn, even as you seek to apply its truth to your own life. Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible guides you on a Scriptural quest for knowledge and understanding. Stories and verse from the Old and New Testaments are woven together and cross-referenced, until the connections are clear and indisputable, like DNA from the Bible. Although the great Biblical themes of Covenant and Kingdom find their fullest expression in Jesus, Covenant goes all the way back to the beginning, when the only thing required was to maintain the "oneness" that God had created. After the Fall, the way was blocked; yet, God built a bridge, in Covenant, back to us. In Jesus, that Covenant was fulfilled, as on the cross, he offered himself as the ultimate blood sacrifice. The Bible is about God, our Father, inviting us to know him in a very real and personal way.Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible provides guidance to the path of understanding that it will take to develop, to the fullest, your own individual relationship with God.