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.”

    Jim Wallis argues that America's separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. God's Politics offers a vision for how to convert spiritual values into real social change and has started a grassroots movement to hold our political leaders accountable by incorporating our deepest convictions about war, poverty, racism, abortion, capital punishment, and other moral issues into our nation's public life. Who can change the political wind? Only we can.

    Early Christianity was subversive and dangerous-dangerous for Christians and a threat to the keepers of the old order. Most of all Christianity was countercultural. But what about contemporary American Christianity? Is it the countercultural way of Jesus or merely a religious endorsement of Americanism? In his provocative book, Postcards From Babylon, Brian Zahnd challenges the reader to see and embrace a daring Jesus-centered Christianity that can again turn the world upside down."In a bold and daring articulation, Brian Zahnd has sketched a 'Theology of the Cross' for our time and place in the United States of the twenty-first century. He does so in a way that deeply resonates with the primal claims of evangelical theology. He sees that the Gospel is inherently and inescapably countercultural because the God of the Gospel is in particular and passionate solidarity with the 'left behind.'"--Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary"If I had miraculous powers, I would interrupt the programming of every religious broadcast in America, then, as Jesus replaced water with wine, I would substitute the message from Brian Zahnd that you'll read in this book. Read it and you'll see why. I recommend that you buy two copies of this book. Immediately read one-underline it and extract quotes from it to share on Facebook and Twitter, and refer to it in sermons and casual conversations. Send the other to that friend or relative who likes to talk about God and country. Include a note asking if they'd be willing to talk with you about it after they read it. Then see what happens as these Postcards from Babylon do their work in you and in others."--Brian D. McLaren, author of The Great Spiritual Migration"This love letter from a concerned pastor will enrage contemporary Pharaohs and their false prophets who blaspheme by blessing everything that Christ came to free us from. Postcards from Babylon diagnoses the diabolical and invites us to become pilgrims on Christ's narrow road that delivers us out into life."--Jarrod McKenna, pastor, founder of First Home Project for refugees in Australia

    Kara E. Powell and youth expert Chap Clark--authors known for the integrity of their research and the intensity of their passion for young people--Sticky Faith is geared to spark a movement that empowers adults to develop robust and long-term faith in kids of all ages.Further engage your family and church with the Sticky Faith Guide for Your Family, Sticky Faith curriculum, and Sticky Faith youth worker edition. Sticky Faith is also available in Spanish, Cómo criar jóvenes de fe sólida.

    Here, women live within stringently enforced doctrines of wifely submission and male headship, and live by the Quiverfull philosophy of letting God give them as many children as possible so as to win the religion and culture wars through demographic means.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Marty, who regards this book as one of the most vital books of our time, as well as an introduction by the author never before included in the book, and a new preface by James Gustafson, the premier Christian ethicist who is considered Niebuhr’s contemporary successor, poses the challenge of being true to Christ in a materialistic age to an entirely new generation of Christian readers.

    Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to "safety". Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation.In Live Not By Lies, Dreher amplifies the alarm sounded by the brave men and women who fought totalitarianism. He explains how the totalitarianism facing us today is based less on overt violence and more on psychological manipulation. He tells the stories of modern-day dissidents--clergy, laity, martyrs, and confessors from the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Europe--who offer practical advice for how to identify and resist totalitarianism in our time. Following the model offered by a prophetic World War II-era pastor who prepared believers in his Eastern European to endure the coming of communism, Live Not By Lies teaches American Christians a method for resistance: - SEE: Acknowledge the reality of the situation. - JUDGE: Assess reality in the light of what we as Christians know to be true. - ACT: Take action to protect truth.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.

    A mother of two, a Christian, and a lifelong resident of middle America, Lenz was bewildered by the pain and loss around her--the empty churches and the broken hearts. What was happening to faith in the heartland?From drugstores in Sydney, Iowa, to skeet shooting in rural Illinois, to the mega churches of Minneapolis, Lenz set out to discover the changing forces of faith and tradition in God's country. Part journalism, part memoir, God Land is a journey into the heart of a deeply divided America. Lenz visits places of worship across the heartland and speaks to the everyday people who often struggle to keep their churches afloat and to cope in a land of instability. Through a thoughtful interrogation of the effects of faith and religion on our lives, our relationships, and our country, God Land investigates whether our divides can ever be bridged and if America can ever come together.

    Any theology that is indifferent to the theme of liberation is not Christian theology."With the publication of his two early works, Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), James Cone emerged as one of the most creative and provocative theological voices in North America. These books, which offered a searing indictment of white theology and society, introduced a radical reappraisal of the Christian message for our time.Here, combining the visions of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., Cone radically reappraises Christianity from the perspective of the oppressed black community in North America. Forty years later after its first publication, his work retains its original power, enhanced now by reflections on the evolution of his own thinking and of black theology and on the needs of the present moment.Offers a radical reappraisal of Christianity from the perspective of an oppressed Black North American community.

    Internalizing society’s devaluation of the feminine, some women are killing their own natural impulses to pursue a feminist ideal that bears no relation to God’s good design. Other women struggle to conform to a fundamentalist, feminine caricature, which requires denying their full humanity and gifting.Defying both feminists and fundamentalists, Julie Roys reveals God’s true, affirming, and compelling vision for women, showing them how to reclaim what is uniquely feminine, and become healthy, balanced women of God.

    Asbury single-handedly guided the creation of the American Methodist church, which became the largest Protestant denomination in nineteenth-century America, and laid the foundation of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements that flourish today. John Wigger has written the definitive biography of Asbury and, by extension, a revealing interpretation of the early years of the Methodist movement in America. Asbury emerges here as not merely an influential religious leader, but a fascinating character, who lived an extraordinary life. His cultural sensitivity was matched only by his ability to organize. His life of prayer and voluntary poverty were legendary, as was his generosity to the poor. He had a remarkable ability to connect with ordinary people, and he met with thousands of them as he crisscrossed the nation, riding more than one hundred and thirty thousand miles between his arrival in America in 1771 and his death in 1816. Indeed Wigger notes that Asbury was more recognized face-to-face than any other American of his day, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

    Flash and fizz can be effective at attracting young families, but without sustainable systems beneath the unforgettable moments, the impact is almost always short-lived. In this practical resource, you’ll learn how to recruit volunteers, partner with parents, navigate politics, and care for your own soul instead of frantically scrambling to do it all yourself. Sustainable Children’s Ministry will help you build a ministry foundation that will still be standing long after you are gone.

    It's a vision that stands in stark conflict with the anemic modern (and postmodern) perspectives that dominate contemporary life. Medieval Christianity began telling a beautiful story about the good life, but it was silenced in mid-sentence. The Reformation rescued truth, but its modern grandchildren have often ignored the importance of a medieval grasp of the good life. This book sketches a vision of "medieval Protestantism," a personal and cultural vision that embraces the fullness of Christian truth, beauty, and goodness."This volume is a breath of fresh air in our polluted religious environment. Hopefully many readers will breathe deeply of its contents and be energized." -The Presbyterian Witness"[A] delightful apologetic for a Protestant cultural vision. . . . before you write off these two as mere obscurantist Reformed types, take care. I found that some of my objections were, on the surface, more modern than biblical." -Gregory Alan Thornbury, Carl F. Henry Center for Christian Leadership"[T]his book cries out against the bland, purely spiritualized Christianity to which so many of us have become accustomed. . . . I highly recommend it." -David Kind, Pilgrimage, Concordia Theological Seminary

    But as Donald S. Whitney makes clear, the daily worship of God by families at home is a practice rooted in the Bible and common throughout Christian history. How can people unfamiliar with family worship lead it in their own homes? How do busy households in today's culture recover faithfulness in family worship? This practical book shows you how simple and easy it can be.

    Never offline, always within reach, we now wield in our hands a magic wand of technological power we have only begun to grasp. But it raises new enigmas, too. Never more connected, we seem to be growing more distant. Never more efficient, we have never been more distracted. Drawing from the insights of numerous thinkers, published studies, and his own research, writer Tony Reinke identifies twelve potent ways our smartphones have changed us—for good and bad. Reinke calls us to cultivate wise thinking and healthy habits in the digital age, encouraging us to maximize the many blessings, to avoid the various pitfalls, and to wisely wield the most powerful gadget of human connection ever unleashed.