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

    Whether you feel restless or satisfied right now, Jim Cymbala believes that God has more for you. In this new book, he'll help you find out how to access the 'more' God intends---more peace, real joy, and a deeper sense of purpose. As you open yourself up to the 'more' of God, you will also discover your unique work assignment---the one thing God is calling you--and no one else--to accomplish for the sake of his work in the world.

    She, having lived through great loss, taught on God’s grace in the midst of hardship, as well as teaching wives and mothers to fulfill the high calling of Titus 2. In her final book, Elisabeth Elliot describes how it is often through the deepest suffering that God teaches us the deepest lessons. As we trust Him through our trials, we come to a greater assurance of His love and sovereignty—even as He works all things together for the good of those who love Him.

    And he has consistently been guided by his faith, which influenced his actions on issues ranging from capital punishment to pardons, health care to abortion, welfare to free college tuition. Yet the place of faith in public life has been hotly debated since our nation's founding, and the relationship of church and state remains contentious to this day--and for good reason. Too often, Bill Haslam argues, Christians end up shaping their faith to fit their politics rather than forming their politics to their faith. They seem to forget their calling is to be used by God in service of others rather than to use God to reach their own desires and ends.Faithful Presence calls for a different way. Drawing upon his years of public service, Haslam casts a remarkable vision for the redemptive role of faith in politics while examining some of the most complex issues of our time, including:partisanship in our divided era;the most essential character trait for a public servant;how we cannot escape "legislating morality";the answer to perpetual outrage; andhow to think about the separation of church and state.For Christians ready to be salt and light, as well as for those of a different faith or no faith at all, Faithful Presence argues that faith can be a redemptive, healing presence in the public square--as it must be, if our nation is to flourish.

    Where the world stresses the importance of success, Bird invites readers to embrace nine specific failures in the areas of our personal lives, our relationships, and the church. Why? Because what human wisdom deems indispensable is so often an impediment to our spiritual growth, and what it deems insignificant is so often essential to it.With compelling examples from the Bible and today, Bird paints an enticing picture of the counterintuitive, countercultural life that God wants for us. He helps readers delight in all of the ways that Jesus turned the world upside-down, allowing us to experience true freedom, not from our weaknesses but in the midst of them.

    We’ve got plenty of churches without them!” “The church brought another one of their campuses near us. It’s totally unethical what they are doing.” “We can’t reach young families. They all go to the big church that has all the children’s and student stuff.” “We don’t have the money or the people the other churches have.”   Bestselling author Thom S. Rainer (I Am a Church Member, Autopsy of a Deceased Church) has heard comments like these hundreds, if not thousands, of times. They are statements of hopelessness. They are statements of despair. They are statements of defeat.   Church leaders don’t want to feel this way. They desire to break out of the mediocrity of the same, lame, and tame existence of their churches. They want their churches to make a difference.   There is hope. God’s hope. God’s possibilities.  What does a scrappy church look like? Let’s take a look together.

    When Katherine James and her husband found out their son was using heroin, their responses ran the gamut: disbelief, anger, helplessness, guilt. As they struggled to come to grips with their son's addiction and decide how best to help him, their home became a refuge for an unlikely assortment of their son's friends, each with their own story, drawn by the simple love and acceptance they found there--"the Lost Boys," James calls them. In this sensitive, vulnerable memoir, award-winning novelist James turns her lush prose to a new purpose: to tell her family's story through the twists and turns of her son's addiction, overdose, and slow recovery. The result is not just a look at the phenomenon of drug abuse in suburban America, but also a meditation on the particular anguish of loving a wayward child and clinging to a desperate trust in God's providence through it all.

    Maybe you’d like to see your faith become more active and life-changing in the world around you. Pastor Kerry and Chris Shook felt that way. Even though their calling involved preaching and teaching, they became weary of sermons and words. They felt a gap between what they were saying and the needs of people around them.  They decided to do something about it.  Be the Message is their story of waking up to the gospel—not just a gospel of words and sermons, but the gospel of intention and action and people. They discovered a profound secret:  You Are the Gospel As they explored the deeper truths of scripture, the verse “the word of God lives in you” came alive. Digging deeper, they discovered that the gospel message is really about life message—your life lived out. God’s call to you is simple: Be the Message Be the Message opens up a new world of understanding about what God calls you to. As the Shooks learned, the gospel is not about what you say. It’s about who you are and what you do—and how you can be God’s hands and feet in the world.  What would happen if we talked about God less and walked with God more? Be the Message reminds us that Christianity was meant to be a faith of action, not a faith of words. Yet often we sacrifice doing something for the sake of talking about it. When we actually act out on our faith, we find our faith grows even more.  You can do more than nothing.  People’s lives are changed when you allow your life to be the gospel to the world. Living out the gospel in the world today is both simple and costly.  The Shooks explore that paradox through biblical stories and their own experience of making a decision to live out the gospel in practical ways.  Choosing to be the gospel changed their family, church and personal relationships with God. How can it change your life?

    We want to dwell in lush valleys, not wander in trackless deserts. And yet, during the first three centuries of the church, many men and women purposefully moved into deserts to seek God. They understood something that we have missed: a desert is not a place of vast nothingness, but a place where we can truly experience God's provision, restoration, and intimacy.Through Scripture and personal stories of her own times of waiting and struggle, Allison Allen offers a fresh perspective for women who dare to believe that God is doing something of eternal value in their dry seasons. She shows how God can use these times in our lives to reveal himself to us, to give us rest, to get our attention, to show us our strength, to experience his blessings, and more. Any woman who has been feeling spiritually sapped will welcome this refreshing message of hope.

    They’re signs that you survived whatever tried to break you.For Devon Still, life has been a journey from one scar to the next. From one challenge to the next. His is a story of pushing through pain and overcoming obstacles of all shapes and sizes—of choosing to fight for the sake of his family, his community, and his faith.Millions of people around the world have been inspired by Devon’s tireless devotion in helping his daughter, Leah, learn how to “beat up cancer.” But in these pages, Devon takes readers behind the headlines to reveal the deeper story of what prepared him for that fight.Still in the Game is Devon’s declaration that our challenges reveal our purpose, that our scars make us stronger, and that no loss is too great to stop our comeback!

    Kerry Stokes is a remarkable Australian. Not because he is one of this country's wealthiest and most powerful people but because of what he overcame to get there and because he has endured when others didn't. He is the last mogul. His rise has intrigued the business world for decades but there is so much more to him than takeover targets and balance sheets. Behind the laconic front is a human story as tough and touching as a Dickens tale: Oliver Twist with great self-expectations. It is the story of a poor boy who stared down poverty, ignorance and the stigma of his birth to achieve great wealth and fulfilment. A compelling story that, until now, he has not told. Now he oversees a multi-billion dollar media, machinery and property empire. He is renowned for his art collection and for philanthropy, spending millions of dollars to buy Victoria Crosses from soldiers' families to donate to the Australian War Memorial. But he's a private man. A man apart. He made his name in the West but kept his distance from the buccaneering band of entrepreneurs who forged fabulous fortunes in Perth from the 1960s until the 1987 crash. Bond went to jail, Holmes a Court died; Connell did both. Lesser lights flickered and faded but Stokes grew stronger, becoming a player alongside Murdoch, Packer and Lowy. His story fascinates all the more because he has spent most of his life guarding it. But now he's telling it, to one of Australia's great storytellers. This book will tell his story, scars and all.

    Jackie Mize--who was told it was impossible for her to have a baby and who is now the mother of four beautiful children--provides readers with a supernatural answer. Filled with powerful and intimate scriptural prayers, this little book gives readers a way to come before Father God in faith with issues from having a difficult time getting pregnant to joyfully cradling that precious gift from God in their arms. By taking an expectant mother--or a women who desperately wants to be expecting--through God's promises for her and her baby's future, Prayers and Promises for Supernatural Childbirth is a bundle of joy that delivers hope and encouragement, while chasing away doubts and fears. Specific issues covered in the scriptural prayers include: fulfillment over barrenness; the threat of miscarriage; a joyful delivery day; and dedicating one's baby to God.

    Feeling lost, he decided to pair his spiritual journey with a literal one: a hundred-mile pilgrimage along the northeast coast of England.Inspired by the life and influence of the seventh-century monk Cuthbert, Sheridan travelled on foot from the Holy Island of Lindisfarne to Durham. Taking his friend DJ along for the journey, and keeping a journal by his side, Sheridan discovered not resolution but peace. Not ambition but purpose. Not shouts of convictions but whispers of the presence of God.In The Making of Us, Sheridan invites us to join him as he walks along England’s shores and we trace the borders of our own hearts. Part pilgrim’s journal, part call to reflection, The Making of Us eloquently reminds us of the beauty of journeying into uncertainty, the freedom of letting go, and the wonder of losing our identity only to discover who we really are.

    In an effort to help those who've been hurt by or turned off by negative religion, Martin Thielen explains that there is an alternative to abandoning religion: good religion. Thielen uses personal stories to illustrate the dangers of religion that is judgmental, anti-intellectual, and legalistic. While addressing the growth of the new atheism movement and the "Nones" (people that have no religious affiliation), this book argues that leaving religion is not practical, not helpful, and not necessary. Thielen provides counterparts to the characteristics of bad religion, explaining that good religion is grace-filled, promotes love and forgiveness, and is inclusive and hope-filled. Perfect for individual, group, or congregational study, a Leader's Guide and a Worship and Outreach Kit are also available to further the discussion and increase community involvement.

    Restore and grow your faith as you read about Hilary Yancey's personal journey back to God.Three months into her pregnancy with her first child, Hilary Yancey received a phone call that changed everything. As she learned the diagnosis-cleft lip and palate, a missing right eye, possible breathing complications-Hilary began to pray in earnest. Even in the midst of these findings, she prayed that God would heal her son. God could do a miracle unlike anything she had seen. Only when Hilary held her baby, Jack, in her arms for the first time did she realize God had given her something drastically different than what she had demanded. Hilary struggled to talk to God as she sat for six weeks beside Jack's crib in the NICU. She consented to surgeries and learned to care for a breathing tube and gastronomy button. In her experience with motherhood Hilary had become more familiar with the sound of her son's heart monitor than the sound of his heartbeat. Later, during surgeries and emergency trips back to the hospital with her crying, breathless boy, Hilary reproached the stranger God had become. Jack was different. Hilary was not the mother she once imagined. God was not who Hilary knew before. But she could not let go of one certainty-she could see the image of Christ in Jack's face. Slowly, through long nights of wrestling and longer nights of silence, Hilary cut a path through her old, familiar faith to the God behind it. She discovered that it is by walking out onto the water, where the firm ground gives way, that we can find him. And meeting Jesus, who rises with his scars to proclaim new life, is never what you once imagined.