In this new work, pastor Thabiti Anyabwile attempts to answer the natural next question: What does a healthy church member look like in the light of Scripture?God intends for us to play an active and vital part in the body of Christ, the local church. He wants us to experience the local church as a home more profoundly wonderful and meaningful than any other place on earth. He intends for his churches to be healthy places and for the members of those churches to be healthy as well. This book explains how membership in the local church can produce spiritual growth in its members and how each member can contribute to the growth and health of the whole.

    Acts 17:6 That was the startled cry, circa 50 AD, from a hastily assembled mob in Thessalonica. Paul and Silas had been arrested for preaching the gospel. They were viewed as revolutionaries, dangerous men who were upsetting the status quo and inciting riots. But they were just two ordinary men, walking in the power of God, sharing a simple message of his love and grace. It s been a while since we ve seen the likes of this. If you ever find church boring or you believe something is missing from our churches today, you aren t alone. Mark Buchanan believes there is a visible gap between the life Jesus offered to us and the life we re living, between the church Jesus envisioned and the church we see today. When Jesus announced that the Kingdom was at hand, this can t be what he meant. Instead of counting everything loss to be found in Christ, we ve made it our priority to be safe instead of dangerous, nice instead of holy. Author and pastor Mark Buchanan believes that we need to recover a simple idea: that God meant his church to be both good news and bad news, an aroma and a stench a disruptive force to whoever or whatever opposes the Kingdom of God and a healing, liberating power to those who seek it."

    As a result, they focus a lot on what Jesus has done to appease God's wrath for sin. But how does Jesus Christ actually feel about his people amid all their sins and failures? This book draws us to Matthew 11, where Jesus describes himself as "gentle and lowly in heart," longing for his people to find rest in him. The gospel is primarily about God's heart drawn to his people, a heart of tender love for the sinful and suffering. These chapters take readers into the depths of Christ's very heart for sinners, diving deep into Bible passages that speak of who Christ is and encouraging readers with the affections of Christ for his people. His longing heart for sinners will comfort and sustain readers in their up-and-down lives.

    But there are still so many people who aren't being reached, who don't want to come to church. And the truth is that attendance at church on Sundays does not necessarily transform lives; God's presence in our hearts is what changes us. Leaders and laypeople everywhere are realizing that they need new and more powerful ways to help them spread God's Word. According to international church starter and pastor Neil Cole, if we want to connect with young people and those who are not coming to church, we must go where people congregate. Cole shows readers how to plant the seeds of the Kingdom of God in the places where life happens and where culture is formed - restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, parks, locker rooms, and neighborhoods. Organic Church offers a hands-on guide for demystifying this new model of church and shows the practical aspects of implementing it.

      Todd Wagner invites readers to experience the adventure, goodness, and fullness of life that God has intended for humankind from the beginning of time and especially today through His provision through His people. Weekly meetings of mostly bored adults who regularly attend services have nothing to do with God’s vision for His people. Wagner paints the picture of a perfect Father’s intention to bring His people into an adventurous life full of authentic relationships, powerful transformation, and seemingly impossible significance and meaning.

    Like a good friend, Brian comes alongside those seeking help in trials of life to help them find meaning and strength.

    The once dominant faith is now facing rapidly declining church attendance, waning political influence, and an abysmal public perception. More than 76% of Americans self-identify as Christians, but many today are ashamed to carry the label.  While many Christians are bemoaning their faith’s decline, Gabe Lyons is optimistic that Christianity’s best days are yet to come. In the wake of the stunning research from his bestselling book, unChristian, which revealed the growing disenchantment among young generations for Christians, Lyons has witnessed the beginnings of a new iteration of the faith. Marked by Lyons’ brutal honesty and unvarying generosity, Lyons exposes a whole movement of Christians—Evangelicals, Mainline, Protestants, Orthodox, Pentecostals, and others—who desire to be a force for restoration even as they proclaim the Christian Gospel. They want the label Christian to mean something good, intelligent, authentic, and beautiful. The next generation of Christians, Lyons argues, embodies six revolutionary characteristics: “When Christians incorporate these characteristics throughout the fabric of their lives, a fresh, yet orthodox way of being Christian springs forth. The death of yesterday becomes the birth of a great tomorrow. The end of an era becomes a beautiful new beginning. In this way, the end of Christian America becomes good news for Christians.” In THE NEXT CHRISTIANS, Lyons disarms readers by speaking as a candid observer rather than cultural crusader. Where other people shout, Lyons speaks in a measured tone offering helpful analysis of our current reality while casting a vision for how to be a Christian in a world disenchanted with the faith. Both a celebration and a reckoning, THE NEXT CHRISTIANS combines current day models and relevant research with stories of a new generation of Christian leaders. If you are worried by what you see transpiring around you, this book will take you on a surprising social exploration in hopes that you too will restore confidence in your faith.

    In The Case for Faith, Strobel turns his skills to the most persistent emotional objections to belief---the eight "heart barriers" to faith. This Gold Medallion-winning book is for those who may be feeling attracted to Jesus but who are faced with difficult questions standing squarely in their path. For Christians, it will deepen their convictions and give them fresh confidence in discussing Christianity with even their most skeptical friends. "Everyone --seekers, doubters, fervent believers-- benefits when Lee Strobel hits the road in search of answers, as he does again in The Case for Faith. In the course of his probing interviews, some of the toughest intellectual obstacles to faith fall away." --Luis Palau "Lee Strobel has given believers and skeptics alike a gift in this book. He does not avoid seeking the most difficult questions imaginable, and refuses to provide simplistic answers that do more harm than good." --Jerry Sittser, professor of religion, Whitworth College, and author of A Grace Disguised and The Will of God as a Way of Life

    Until one intense night in the Jamaican Blue Mountains that allowed him to see himself in the mirror of grace, changing everything. The Secret Life of a Fool is Andrew Palau's unforgettable journey of running from God -- and the crushing, freeing experience of coming back to Him. It is a story of getting high, burning up cars, being stranded in Europe, surviving a near-fatal plane crash, and utter despair overcome by simple grace and a father's love, expressed in excerpted letters throughout this book.

    What does it mean to be a healer in the modern world? In this hope-filled book, Nouwen offers a radically fresh interpretation of modern ministry.

    It’s as if they are trying to navigate with mere fragments of a map?different parts of the good news?and so they fail to see the whole picture. Daniel Montgomery, lead pastor of the fast-growing Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, and Mike Cosper, founder of Sojourn Music, argue that we need to put the collective fragments together, recovering the whole gospel for the whole church, and taking it into the whole world.

    My first reaction was that it was an excellent book for women, but as I continued to read I realized it would be of equal value for men to help them ex-perience the feminine within themselves and the Divine....Barbara Baker, psychologist in private p.

    Ron Sider does. He has, since before he first published Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger in 1978. Despite a dramatic reduction in world hunger since then, 34,000 children still die daily of starvation and preventable disease, and 1.3 billion people, worldwide, remain in abject poverty. So, the professor of theology went back to re-examine the issues by twenty-first century standards. Finding that Conservatives blame morally reprehensible individual choices, and Liberals blame constrictive social and economic policy, Dr. Sider finds himself agreeing with both sides. In this new look at an age-old problem, he offers not only a detailed explanation of the causes, but also a comprehensive series of practical solutions, in the hopes that Christians like him will choose to make a difference.

    Kent Edwards recalls a story that late pastor J. Vernon McGee told about seeing children in South Africa playing a game of marbles in the dust with real diamonds. The precious stones were being handled with no regard for their true worth. Edwards fears the same thing happens today when preachers offer Scriptural truth to listeners without being completely overwhelmed by its greatness themselves in the process.Deep Preaching is his call to "rethink" preaching. Edwards helps preachers learn to preach the word in ways that will powerfully change the lives of hearers. He contends that sermons "need not settle comfortably on the lives of the listeners like dust on a coffee table." He encourages preachers to join him in casting off the lines that moor their ministries to the status-quo and make every effort to steer their preaching out of the "comfortable shallows." He urges them to preach deep sermons rather than superficial ones, moving "beyond the yawn-inspiring to the awe-inspiring, from the trite to the transforming."

    But often there is so much focus in our churches on the first part of Christ's command--evangelism--that the second part--teaching new believers to obey all that Christ commanded--is forgotten. New believers find themselves on their own, trying to figure out what their new life is supposed to look like. In this well-loved book, Bill Hull explains why disciple-making must be the focus of every believer's life and shows how each of us can do it. With practical examples drawn from vast ministry experience, Hull helps the church deepen and enrich the lives of believers as they learn to truly follow Christ.