Now, in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg addresses the yearnings of those who want a fully contemporary faith that welcomes rather than oppresses our critical intelligence and openness to the best of historical scholarship. Borg shows how a rigorous examination of historical findings can lead to a new faith in Christ, one that is critical and, at the same time, sustaining.Drawing on his own journey from a naïve, unquestioning belief in Christ through collegiate skepticism to a mature and contemporary Christian faith, Borg illustrates how an understanding of the historical Jesus can actually lead to a more authentic Christian life—one not rooted in creed or dogma, but in a life of spiritual challenge, compassion, and community.In straightforward, accessible prose, Borg looks at the major findings of modern Jesus scholarship from the perspective of faith, bringing alive the many levels of Jesus's character: spirit person, teacher of alternative wisdom, social prophet, and movement founder. He also reexamines the major stories of the Old Testament vital to an authentic understanding of Jesus, showing how an enriched understanding of these stories can uncover new truths and new pathways to faith.

    But simply having block parties or spending more time downtown is not enough to describe what it means to be a missional people. What is needed is a reformation of the way we actually live our lives as Jesus followers. We need to see a way of living faithfully to God's mission in the world, right here, right now.In this inspiring yet practical book, Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford equip believers to live missionally regardless of situation, vocation, or location, making the concept of being missional accessible to the whole body of Christ. Touching on issues of discipleship, spirituality, and church at every level of experience, Right Here, Right Now calls readers to be the people God has made them to be.

    Instead, God wants His church to function as a family—a group of real people who love each other and care for one another’s needs, no matter how messy.   Our culture is dying for the kind of community that only the church can provide—if we are living as God intended: as a family, protecting one another, extending grace, and loving unconditionally.   We are not called to be consumers who ask what the church can offer us. We are called to love deeply, fight fairly, and bring hope to a generation of people starving to belong to something greater than themselves. Welcome to the family. You belong here.

    Making Room revisits the Christian foundations of welcoming strangers and explores the necessity, difficulty, and blessing of hospitality today.Combining rich biblical and historical research with extensive exposure to contemporary Christian communities -- the Catholic Worker, L'Abri, L'Arche, and others -- this book shows how understanding the key features of hospitality can better equip us to faithfully carry out the practical call of the gospel.

    Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a moment of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich even when it contains a splinter of sadness. It’s the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands. Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity. Bittersweet is courageous, gutsy, audacious, earthy. This is what I’ve come to believe about change: it’s good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it’s incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God’s hand, which is where you wanted to be all long, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be. I’ve learned the hard way that change is one of God’s greatest gifts, and most useful tools. Change can push us, pull us, rebuke and remake us. It can show us who we’ve become, in the worst ways, and also in the best ways. I’ve learned that it’s not something to run away from, as though we could, and that in many cases, change is a function of God’s graciousness, not life’s cruelty.” Niequist, a keen observer of life with a lyrical voice, writes with the characteristic warmth and honesty of a dear friend: always engaging, sometimes challenging, but always with a kind heart. You will find Bittersweet savory reading, indeed. “This is the work I’m doing now, and the work I invite you into: when life is sweet, say thank you, and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you, and grow.”

    The path toward the liberated existence we all long for is found in a truth as simple to say as it is hard to do: love people, even the difficult ones, without distinction and without limits.Driven by Bob’s trademark storytelling, Everybody, Always reveals the lessons Bob learned--often the hard way--about what it means to love without inhibition, insecurity, or restriction. From finding the right friends to discovering the upside of failure, Everybody, Always points the way to embodying love by doing the unexpected, the intimidating, the seemingly impossible. Whether losing his shoes while skydiving solo or befriending a Ugandan witch doctor, Bob steps into life with a no-limits embrace of others that is as infectious as it is extraordinarily ordinary. Everybody, Always reveals how we can do the same.

    Life on Mission gives gospel-centered, biblical, practical foundations for how missions was meant to be: an everyone-together effort.  Life on Mission is a thorough yet simple guide for everyday missionaries—electricians, lawyers, church planters, students, etc.—that equips them with truths and practices for living out the gospel within their own community. Adaptable to any context, Life on Mission functions great as both an individual and small-group study. Threaded with engaging stories and probing reflection questions, Life on Mission will help you and your community take bold steps to living life on mission.

    This Willow Creek Resources evangelism course for churches and groups of all sizes is designed to equip believers for effective evangelism by showing them how they can share the Gospel in a natural and powerful way while being the person God made them to be.

    And as you come to know Him better, you'll find yourself trusting Him more completely.

    I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. . . . In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? With compelling honesty John Stott confronts this generation with the centrality of the cross in God's redemption of the world -- a world now haunted by the memories of Auschwitz, the pain of oppression and the specter of nuclear war. Can we see triumph in tragedy, victory in shame? Why should an object of Roman distaste and Jewish disgust be the emblem of our worship and the axiom of our faith? And what does it mean for us today? Now from one of the foremost preachers and Christian leaders of our day comes theology at its readable best, a contemporary restatement of the meaning of the cross. At the cross Stott finds the majesty and love of God disclosed, the sin and bondage of the world exposed. More than a study of the atonement, this book brings Scripture into living dialogue with Christian theology and the twentieth century. What emerges is a pattern for Christian life and worship, hope and mission. Destined to be a classic study of the center of our faith, Stott's work is the product of a uniquely gifted pastor, scholar and Christian statesman. His penetrating insight, charitable scholarship and pastoral warmth are guaranteed to feed both heart and mind.

    J. Mahaney strip away the nonessentials and bring you back to the simplest, most fundamental reason for your faith: Jesus Christ. Chapters include "Breaking the Rules of Legalism," "The Cross Centered Day," and "Assurance and Joy." His Gift, Your Hope Do you desire more passion for Jesus Christ? Return to the very essence of your faith--the cross of Christ. Here, the deepest truths of Calvary will stir your passion for Him into an unquenchable fire.

    This new edition includes a revised text, new notes, and new bibliography. "The movement and meeting of God with us is indeed a speech-event in which new humanness is evoked among us. Being attentive to language means cultivating the candid imagination to bring our own experience to the Psalms and permitting it to be disciplined by the speech of the Psalms. And, conversely, it means letting the Psalms address us and having that language reshape our sensitivities and fill our minds with new pictures and images that may redirect our lives." --from Chapter 3 Endorsements: "I am so glad to see this second edition of Praying the Psalms. In it Walter Brueggemann reveals the ways in which the Psalms teach the mother tongue of biblical speech by inviting us to the risk of daring candor with God.The contemporary church in North America regularly suffers collective amnesia in the face of the languages of techno-speak, market share and sentimental clich� that shape the world we inhabit. Praying the Psalms offers a surprising antidote to this chronic forgetfulness. It invites us to recover our ancient memory and true identity by learning again to pray the Psalms. I know of no better book for introducing a congregation to the Psalms than this one." --Edwin Searcy, Pastor, University Hill Congregation, United Church of Canada, Vancouver, BC "'The Psalms just don't speak to me.' Anyone who has ever felt this way should read Brueggemann's book. . . . He shows how these ancient prayers can lead us from the disorientation of our chaotic lives into a reorientation of transformation. His treatment of both the post-Holocaust Christian use of these very Jewish prayers and the troublesome call for vengeance is most timely. This book shows how the Psalms can indeed speak to us." --Dianne Bergant, CSA author of Preaching the New Lectionary ". . . Brueggemann pushes me and other readers to recognize the full gamut of passions reflected in the Psalms: joy and exultation but also disappointment, sorrow, anger, resentment, even the desire for vengeance. . . . I am grateful to Brueggemann for making me more alert to what the Psalms are saying about our common human relation to God and more honest about my own feelings as I pray the Psalms every day as part of the Liturgy of the Hours." --Joseph A. Bracken, SJ coauthor of Self-Emptying Love in a Global Context "Few persons have so lived in and with the Psalms as Walter Brueggemann. Here he takes us into their depths, which are so clearly the depths of our human existence. The piety of the Psalms is strong medicine. Brueggemann bids us take it for the cure of our souls." --Patrick D. Miller author of Interpreting the Psalms and They Cried to the Lord About the Contributor(s): Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He is the author of numerous works including Theology of the Old Testament, Inscribing the Text, Prophetic Imagination, and David's Truth.

    But they have been poorly equipped with methods that are no longer effective in today's post-Christian world. As a result, many people become frustrated, blame themselves, and simply give up. Evangelism in a Skeptical World is a textbook on evangelism that is ideal for the church or the classroom to equip Christians with the principles and skills they need to tell the unbelievable news about Jesus to friends in a skeptical world.Many of the older principles and methods of evangelism in the twentieth century no longer work effectively today. In a post-Christian, post-churched, post-reached world we need new methods to communicate the timeless message of the gospel in culturally relevant ways. Dr. Chan combines the theological and biblical insights of classic evangelistic training with the latest insights from missiology on contextualization, cultural hermeneutics, and storytelling. Every chapter is illustrated with real-world examples drawn from over fifteen years of evangelistic ministry. These are methods that really work - with university students, urban workers, and professionals - getting past the defensive posture that people have toward Christianity so they can seriously consider the claims of Jesus Christ.Field-tested and filled with unique, fresh, and creative insights, this book will equip you to share the gospel in today's world and help as many people as possible hear the good news about Jesus.

    But Jesus showed the way to live faithfully before an unbelieving world.As the greatest evangelist, Jesus exemplified how to attract people to the gospel. He modeled how to initiate spiritual conversations full of grace and truth. Christian evangelism, then, both in theory and practice, must be shaped by his pattern.Seeking to articulate the passions and principles present in Christ's life and words, longtime L'Abri staff member Jerram Barrs has studied Jesus' diverse encounters with people throughout the Gospels. Each chapter of Learning Evangelism from Jesus recounts one of those stories, draws useful lessons for readers' lives and communication of the gospel, and concludes with questions for further reflection and application. This highly practical book will guide Christians in how to live before unbelievers and how to love them into the kingdom, just as Jesus did.

    And more than helping you find your way out, this book will help you find your way through that place.