Clergy and church leaders will find the evidence and answers in this book provocative, eye-opening and actionable.What if members of your congregation were 13 times more likely to have invited someone to participate in your church in the past month? Three times as satisfied with their lives? Spent more than two hours per week serving and helping others in their community? And tripled their giving to your church? What would your church — your parish — look like? And how would you go about creating this kind of change? One thing is certain: Church leaders are never going to inspire more people to be actively and passionately involved in their congregations by doing the same things over and over again. Pastors and lay leaders need something fresh. Something new. The last thing they need is “just another program” or to set up a laundry list of new activities for members. In this compelling and insightful book, Al Winseman — who has led thriving churches, including one he built from the ground up — explores how churches and parishes can dramatically increase members’ participation, service to the community, giving and even life satisfaction. But the solutions Winseman offers are not the “magic pill” many leaders have come to expect. Rather, he shows leaders how to reach and inspire the hearts, minds and imaginations of their people. Based on solid research by Gallup, Growing an Engaged Church will appeal to Protestant and Catholic clergy and lay leaders who are looking for a way to be the Church instead of just “doing church.”

    Her narrative, along with Root’s insights, help you uncover the action of God as it pertains to your own youth ministry, and encourage you to discover how you can participate in that action. As you join this theological journey, you’ll find yourself exploring how theology can and should influence the way you do youth ministry.

    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.

    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.

    Increasing numbers of us don't believe in God anymore. We don't expect miracles. We've grown up and left those fairytales behind, culturally and personally.Yet five hundred years ago the world was very much enchanted. It was a world where God existed and the devil was real. It was a world full of angels and demons. It was a world of holy wells and magical eels. But since the Protestant Reformation and the beginning of the Enlightenment, the world, in the West at least, has become increasingly disenchanted.While this might be taken as evidence of a crisis of belief, Richard Beck argues it's actually a crisis of attention. God hasn't gone anywhere, but we've lost our capacity to see God.The rising tide of disenchantment has profoundly changed our religious imaginations and led to a loss of the holy expectation that we can be interrupted by the sacred and divine. But it doesn't have to be this way. With attention and an intentional and cultivated capacity to experience God as a living, vital presence in our lives, Hunting Magic Eels, shows us, we can cultivate an enchanted faith in a skeptical age.

    The Birth of a Baby Faith Commitment Preparing for Adolescence Commitment to Purity Passage to Adulthood High School Graduation Life in ChristAs you tap into the natural patterns of child development and family, you’ll motivate parents when they’re most open to shaping their children’s faith. Shift puts family discipleship—at church and at home—on one simple, common path. One home at a time, you can move a fledgling family ministry effort to one that’s firing on all 6 cylinders! This is a family ministry approach that’s attainable and sustainable.

    

    It offers creative approaches to answering some of the most pressing questions in theology of mission and missionary practice today. The authors, who are leading mission experts, discuss biblical theology of mission, provide historical overviews of the development of various viewpoints, and address theologically current issues in global mission from an evangelical perspective. This readable yet thorough text integrates current views of the kingdom of God and holistic mission with traditional views of evangelism and church planting. It also brings theology of mission into conversation with ecclesiology and eschatology. Topics covered include contextualization, the missionary vocation, church and mission, and theology of religions. Sidebars and case studies enable readers to see how theology of mission touches real-life mission practice.

    Luce issues a revolutionary wake-up call to the church and home about the cultural battle for America's teens' hearts, minds, and souls.

    In one of his most famous parables, he sets up as a model of Christian behavior a man who, unlike some religious folks, actually gets down off his donkey and helps a person in dire need.With energy and enthusiasm, Reggie McNeal calls believers to dismount, get down and dirty, and live a life that makes a difference. He shows readers how to recalibrate their spiritual efforts to move from church-centric service to greater community engagement in order to do their essential part in creating a world worth living in. McNeal also shows readers that helping others actually helps the one doing the service just as much as the one being served. In fact, serving is the very best way to learn about yourself and grow spiritually. Anyone who longs to have the impact on the world that Jesus did will love this provocative and inspirational message.

    Oak Hills Church, from the pastoral staff to the congregation, had to confront addiction to personal ambition, resist consumerism and reorient their lives around the teachings of Jesus. Their renewed focus on spiritual formation over numerical growth triggered major changes in the content of their sermons, the tenor of their worship services, and the reason for their outreach. They lost members.But the health and spiritual depth of their church today is a testimony of God's transforming work and enduring faithfulness to the people he loves.Honest and humble, this is Kent and Mike's story of a church they love, written to inspire and challenge other churches to let God rewrite their stories as well. Read it for the church you love.

    A much-needed resource, this book will inform, guide, and even catalyze today's many church planting leaders. The authors clearly show leaders how to plant churches that create a multiplication movement and offer inspiration for them to do so. The book addresses their questions about what to do next in their church planting strategies, in light of research on what's actually working best.Author Ed Stetzer heads up LifeWay Research Provides reliable, credible information about what church planting strategies work best A volume in the Leadership Network Series Offers a definitive guide for church planting and the burgeoning movement it is part of.

    Sauls shares his own stories and those of other leaders from Scripture and throughout history to remind us that we are human, we are sinners, and we need Jesus to help us thrive as people and leaders.   For Christian leaders—both inside and outside of the church—weaknesses that are left unchecked can lead to a downfall that is both public and painful. They want to lead with character and live like Jesus, but ambition, isolation, criticism, envy, anticlimax, opposition, restlessness, and insecurity can get in the way. From Weakness to Strength provides leaders with tools to draw near to Jesus and stay encouraged and hopeful, even (and especially) when sin and struggle get in the way.

    Is God all-powerful? Is God good? How can God allow so much innocent human suffering?These questions, taken together, have been called the "theodicy problem," and in this book Thomas Long explores what preachers can and should say in response. Long reviews the origins and history of the theodicy problem and engages the work of major thinkers who have posed solutions to it. Cautioning pastors not to ignore urgent theodicy-related questions arising from their parishioners, he offers biblically based approaches to preaching on theodicy, guided by Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares and the "greatest theodicy text in Scripture" -- the book of Job.

    He looks in turn at the only three things he believes need be of concern: the glory of God, the pain of the world, and the renewal of the Church. From these flow the priest's many roles, such as spiritual explorer, multi-lingual interpreter, wounded companion, friendly irritant, creative leader and mature risk-taker. This book pays homage to Robert Martineau's The Office and Work of a Priest, published in 1972, and much valued as a wise account of the duties of a priest at that time. "Dipping again into John Pritchard's The Life and Work of a Priest for this review reminded me what a remarkable, wise, and humane book it is. It covers just about everything parish life might throw at clergy. Well, not quite everything. If you're troubled by sylvan revels or cohabiting bandits, I'm afraid you're on your own." Paul Handley, Church Times