A sudden, inexplicable event leaves the daughter of her childhood friend in her care. Pressured by her community to allow her former fiancé to raise the child, Dottie must face the past she has worked fifteen years to forget.Spanning a decade, This Heavy Silence explores the power of the vows we make to others, and, more binding, those we make to ourselves. Evoking the hardship, spring-fed beauty, and the complexities of community in the rural Midwest, this award-winning, beautifully observed novel leads us to question our ideas about motherhood, faith, and the debts we owe. "Like the land she inhabits and the people she attends, Nicole Mazzarella offers a subtle and enduring beauty, born of intense interiority, and vision both broad and deep." -Scott Cairns, author of Philokalia: New & Selected Poems

    In Transforming Church in Rural America, Pastor Shannon O'Dell shares a powerful vision of relevance, possibility, and excellence for these small churches, or for any ministry that is stuck in a "rural state of mind." The book reveals:how to generate growth through transformed livesways to create active evangelism in your communityno-cost solutions for staffing challenges, enhancing the worship experience, and inspiring volunteersFocusing on vision, attitude, leadership, and innovation, you can learn the practical strategies and biblical guidance that helped to grow a church of 31 into a multi-campus church of several thousand, with a national and global outreach. Discover effective structure and ways to cast God-given vision so others can follow and make an impact. Experience the blueprint for transforming into effective, dynamic, and thriving churches no matter where the location or how small it may be.

    In his Palm Sunday sermon, the Vicar explains that Christ's crucifixion and redemption are taking place every day. He little suspects that, before the week's out, he and his entire congregation will be caught up in a latter-day Passion story which will tear apart their lives.

    One will learn communion's origin deepen his relationship with God and be challenged in discipleship.

    Christians are quick to conceive of themselves either as theologically-minded or worship-minded; either thinking Christians or feeling Christians. The results are damaging: theology without worship is muted, stifled, and cold, and worship without theology is ungrounded, unrooted, and uninformed.   This is not the way it was meant to be.   Theology (our study and knowledge of God) should always lead to doxology (our worship of Him). Worship should always be rooted in theology. When we study the nature and character of God as revealed in his Word, we are invited to respond in the affectionate, obedient discipleship of worship. How can we keep our theology from being mere head knowledge? How do we give our worship roots that will last? By fixing our eyes on God Himself—the object of our study and the object of our worship.  Fix Your Eyes​ is an invitation to understand core doctrines of the Christian faith and apply them in our daily worship of God. It walks believers through key theological concepts and shows how each can be lived out in daily life.

    And yet it is this which can allow us to know the grace of God most powerfully. This study explores why Henri Nouwen is, perhaps, the modern writer who has done most to confront the question of woundedness. In doing so his work brings us face to face with Jesus the wounded healer and can release new depths of grace in the reader's life

    But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease.After unexpected tragedy shook her family, for the first time Katie began to wonder, Is God really good? Does He really love us? When she turned to Him with her questions, God spoke truth to her heart and drew her even deeper into relationship with Him.Daring to Hope is an invitation to cling to the God of the impossible--the God who whispers His love to us in the quiet, in the mundane, when our prayers are not answered the way we want or the miracle doesn't come. It's about a mother discovering the extraordinary strength it takes to be ordinary. It's about choosing faith no matter the circumstance and about encountering God's goodness in the least expected places.Though your heartaches and dreams may take a different shape, you will find your own questions echoed in these pages. You'll be reminded of the gifts of joy in the midst of sorrow. And you'll hear God's whisper: Hold on to hope. I will meet you here.

    Why then are Christians noted for their hateful judgment of each other? Brotherhood of Betrayal illustrates the ugliness of the betrayal syndrome that festers inside the Christian church. Respected missionary pastor Clay McCain leaves his family and growing church in Sweden for a beautiful, wealthy woman. But the Christian community reacts cruelly - even to his innocent abandoned family...A Family’s Nightmare... Clay McCain, a high-profile American pastor serving in Stockholm, Sweden, mysteriously disappears. Who can his wife, Rachel, and her three young children turn to for help? Her Swedish friends? Her home church in the United States? Her mission board? Her relatives? Rachel’s eventual outreach of trust, alongside a shocking discovery, sets off an unexpected avalanche of betrayal that turns her world, her family, and her faith upside down. This poignant sequel to the bestselling Wisdom Hunter and Jordan’s Crossing dramatically illustrates the hideousness of the betrayal syndrome that is sweeping through the body of Christ—assaulting and devastating families, friends, and churches. This is a story that touches us all. It may even be your story.

     The uniqueness of this book comes in the metaphor of sipping saltwater. Even as Christians, we 'sip' on idols such as money, relationships, careers, sex, food, human approval…the list is endless. These things promise to satisfy us—to quench our thirst. In the end, however, they fail to do so and leave us thirstier than we were before drinking them. To make matters worse, we are left with devastating hangovers—the negative consequences of our idolatry. This book enables readers to identify their own source(s) of saltwater and explains how to quench their thirst with Jesus’ living water—the only drink that will ever truly satisfy us both now and for eternity. It inspires readers to go on in the Christian life as they started—by making Jesus the centre of our lives and giving our worship to him.

    In Normal Christianity he laid the groundwork for having a Kingdom Worldview. Then in Eyes of Honor he magnificently unveiled our identity in Christ. In his fourth and newest book, Raptureless; An Optimistic Guide to the End of the World, Jonathan bares his theological teeth.The End Times have become the King of the Sacred Cows for the Modern Church. Jonathan fearlessly treads where most leaders will not and asks questions that many thirst to ask but can't articulate. Questions such as, what does the Bible really say about:A secret rapture of the Church?A Future One-World Ruler?A Future Seven-Year Tribulation?Are we living in the Last Days?Welton's answers to these questions are thoroughly argued and scripturally based. Prepare to be stretched and see the Bible through brand new eyes!

    This is the romance of orthodoxy." In this book, Douglas Wilson combines G.K. Chesterton-like prose with the Apostles' Creed, and explains such doctrines as the Trinity, creation, fall, salvation, Scripture, and the church with clarity and imagination. Rather than seeing fundamentalist doctrines as a narrow and confining straightjacket, Wilson sees them as the only way for people to find true freedom and joy.

    Now, using this simple method you'll learn the best way to put this important discipline to use for maximum spiritual benefit.

    Dr. Jeannie Constantinou brings her more than forty years' experience as a professor, Bible teacher, and speaker to bear in explaining what the Orthodox phronema is, how it can be acquired, and how that phronema is expressed in true Orthodox theology -- as practiced by those who are properly qualified by both training and a deep relationship with Christ.

    In Holy Envy, she contemplates the myriad ways other people and traditions encounter the Transcendent, both by digging deeper into those traditions herself and by seeing them through her students’ eyes as she sets off with them on field trips to monasteries, temples, and mosques. Troubled and inspired by what she learns, Taylor returns to her own tradition for guidance, finding new meaning in old teachings that have too often been used to exclude religious strangers instead of embracing the divine challenges they present. Re-imagining some central stories from the religion she knows best, she takes heart in how often God chooses outsiders to teach insiders how out-of-bounds God really is.Throughout Holy Envy, Taylor weaves together stories from the classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been complicated and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions—even those whose truths are quite different from hers.  The one constant in her odyssey is the sense that God is the one calling her to disown her version of God—a change that ultimately enriches her faith in other human beings and in God.

    But much of today's apologetics (engagement with the questions that people are asking about Christianity) come from suburban churches and academic studies. Urban believers--those who live and minister in America's inner cities--often face unique issues, not often addressed by the larger Christian community. These questions aren't neat or easy to answer but need to be addressed by applying biblical truth in the culture and challenges of urban life.Author Chris Brooks has ministered for years in the urban environment as well as received extensive theological training. In Urban Apologetics, he seeks to connect the riches of the Christian apologetic tradition with the issues facing cities--such as poverty, violence, and broken families. He brings an urban rhythm and sensitivity to the task of demonstrating the relevance of faith and the healing truth that Christ provides.