Weaving together contemporary illustrations with penetrating insight from the life of Moses, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership explores topics such asresponding to the dynamics of callingfacing the loneliness of leadershipleading from your authentic selfcultivating spiritual communityreenvisioning the promised landdiscerning God's will togetherEach chapter includes a spiritual practice to ensure your soul gets the nourishment it needs. Forging and maintaining a life-giving connection with God is the best choice you can make for yourself and for those you lead.

    A growing number of people are disturbed by the values exhibited by the contemporary church. Worship has become entertainment, the church has become a shopping mall, and God has become a consumable product. Many sense that something is wrong, but they cannot imagine an alternative way. The Divine Commodity finally articulates what so many have been feeling and offers hope for the future of a post-consumer Christianity. Through Scripture, history, engaging narrative, and the inspiring art of Vincent van Gogh, The Divine Commodity explores spiritual practices that liberate our imaginations to live as Christ's people in a consumer culture opposed to the values of his kingdom. Each chapter shows how our formation as consumers has distorted an element of our faith. For example, the way churches have become corporations and how branding makes us more focused on image than reality. It then energizes an alternative vision for those seeking a more meaningful faith. Before we can hope to live differently, we must have our minds released from consumerism's grip and captivated once again by Christ.

    A number of encounters with John as well as a family crisis lead Jake to a new understanding of what his life should be like: one filled with faith bolstered by a steady, close relationship with the God of the universe. Facing his own disappointment with Christianity, Jake must forsake the habits that have made his faith rote and rediscover the love that captured his heart when he first believed.Compelling and intensely personal, So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anything relates a man's rebirth from performance-based Christianity to a loving friendship with Christ that affects all he does, thinks, and says. As John tells Jake, "There is nothing the Father desires for you more than that you fall squarely in the lap of his love and never move from that place for the rest of your life."

    Through this provocative project, the founder of PreachersNSneakers is helping thousands of Jesus followers wrestle with the inevitable dilemmas created by a culture obsessed with image and entertainment.In PreachersNSneakers: 9 Questions to Help You Live Your Faith in an Age of Capitalism, Consumerism, and (Wannabe) Celebrity, the author boldly confronts many of the difficult questions plaguing countless Christians’ minds, such as:Should pastors grow wealthy off of religion, and why do we get so angry when they do?Is it okay to stoke envy among others with curated “lifestyle” images on social media?Do we really believe that divine blessings are monetary, or is that just religious wallpaper to hide our own greed?Is there space in Christendom for celebrities like Kanye and Bieber to exist without distorting the good news?What about this: Is it wrong for someone like this author to call out faith leaders online and leverage “cancel culture” to affect change?PreachersNSneakers will navigate these challenging questions and many more with humor, wit, candor, and a few never-before-published hijinks. Each chapter will explore the various sides of the debate, holding space for readers to make up their own minds. The book will doubtlessly become a staple for church small groups, college ministries, and book clubs, emboldening struggling believers who want to live a more genuine faith.After all, the Lord works in mysterious colorways.

    Inviting others to faith requires leaning in to your own story, overcoming fear, and stepping out. But the good news is for everyone, always. And you can help keep it going.Using Scripture and story, Steve Carter casts a vision for non-threatening conversations that point people to Christ. Most significantly, Steve shows that only through risking it all will we discover what God is truly like.

    The Pastor’s Kid Dad may be following God’s call, but the Pastor’s kids (PKs) are just following mom and dad. Often to devastating results. Barnabas Piper – son of Pastor and bestselling author John Piper – has experienced the challenges of being a PK first-hand. With empathy, humor, and personal stories, he addresses the pervasive assumptions, identity issues and accelerated scrutiny PKs face.  But more than just stating the problems – he shares the one thing a PK needs above all else (as do their pastor/father and church) is to live in true freedom and wholeness.

    An eclectic assortment of people with differing personalities, political views, and parenting styles can make for awkward interactions and difficult connections. What's the point of putting in the tough work to build relationships? But the Bible says God's people ought to be bound together. It uses words like beloved, brothers and sisters, saints, and fellow laborers to describe their mutual relationship in the church. In this book, Megan Hill answers a common question of churchgoers: What's so great about the church? With rich theology, practical direction, and study questions for group use, Hill encourages and equips both first-time visitors and regular members to delight in being a part of the local church--no matter how messy and ordinary it seems today. It is only when God's people begin to see one another as the Lord sees them that they will truly find a place to belong.

    The Bible contains a radically different way of understanding our identity. The path that God has chosen for us to discover who we really are is the path of holiness. The most exciting thing is that this path is not for otherworldy saints, rather it is a path of earthy, gutsy holiness. It's a path that is not about basing your life on this world or of shunning your desires. Instead, it is about bringing your hopes, your dreams, your brokenness, your desires, your humanness under the Lordship of Christ. By doing this we don’t just discover a new way of living out our faith, we discover a liberating, revolutionary, life-embracing way of being truly human.

    Kaitlyn Schiess grew up in this landscape, and understands it from the inside.Spiritual formation, and particularly a focus on formative practices, are experiencing a renaissance in Christian thinking―but these ideas are not often applied to the political sphere. In The Liturgy of Politics, Schiess shows that the church's politics are shaped by its habits and practices even when it's unaware of them. Schiess insists that the way out of our political morass is first to recognize the formative power of the political forces all around us, and then to recover historic Christian practices that shape us according to the truth of the gospel.

    Follow the faith journey of author and fellow disciplemaker Jen Hatmaker and rediscover Jesus among the least of us.

    At the core of our being is this truth--we are designed for and defined by our relationships, former pastors Plass and Cofield write. We were born with a relentless longing to participate in the lives of others. Fundamentally, we are relational souls. Our ability to make deep and emotionally satisfying connections rests on the capacity to trust, and we all know trust can be difficult. Early-life relational programming and patterns of attachment can serve as blueprints for relationships later in life, whether good or bad. But no matter our conditioning, God is out to reclaim and restructure the deepest terrain of the human soul by helping us shed our reactive False Self and put on our receptive True Self. Through spiritual disciplines and a conscious participation in the love of the Father, Son and Spirit, we transform our self-awareness and our connection with other people. Authored by counselor Dr. Richard Plass and spiritual director James Cofield, The Relational Soul brings together concepts from psychology and spiritual formation. Each chapter includes introductory stories and practical If this is true, what about you? questions to help readers engage in relationships in more life-giving ways. When the presence of Christ and community connects with a soul that is open, we witness the miracle of transformation.

    But as we grow older, we learn to be more "rational" and more confident that reality is merely what we can see. Even as Christians who believe in the resurrection, we live as if miracles and magic have been drained from the world. As Mike Cosper wrestled with his own disillusionment, he found writers, thinkers, and artists like Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor, James K. A. Smith, and David Foster Wallace whose words and ideas reassured him that he was not alone. And he discovered ancient and modern disciplines that shape a Christian way of life and awaken the possibility of living again in an enchanted world. Exquisitely written with thoughtful practices woven throughout, this book will feed your soul and help you recapture the wonder of your Christian walk.

    They spoke hard words that often chafed and unsettled their listeners. Like the Old Testament prophets, and more recent prophetic voices like Frederick Douglass, Dr. Eric Mason calls the evangelical church to a much-needed reckoning. In a time when many feel confused, complacent, or even angry, he challenges the church to:Be Aware – to understand that the issue of justice is not a black issue, it’s a kingdom issue. To learn how the history of racism in America and in the church has tainted our witness to a watching world.Be Redemptive – to grieve and lament what we have lost and to regain our prophetic voice, calling the church to remember our gospel imperative to promote justice and mercy.Be Active – to move beyond polite, safe conversations about reconciliation and begin to set things aright for our soon-coming King, who will be looking for a WOKE CHURCH.

    And as we learn to hold questions in one hand and answers in the other, we discover new depths of faith that will remain secure even through the storms of life.

    Some want to strengthen the evangelical voting bloc. Others focus on social justice causes, and still others would abandon the public square altogether. What do we do when brothers and sisters in Christ sit next to each other in the pews but feel divided and angry? Is there a way forward?In How the Nations Rage, political theology scholar and pastor Jonathan Leeman challenges Christians from across the spectrum to hit the restart button byshifting our focus from redeeming the nation to living as a nation already redeemedrejecting the false allure of building heaven on earth while living faithfully as citizens of a heavenly kingdomletting Jesus’ teaching shape our public engagement as we love our neighbors and seek justiceWhen we identify with Christ more than a political party or social grouping, we can return to the church’s unchanging political task: to become the salt and light Jesus calls us to be and offer the hope of his kingdom to the nations.