Church Life
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Dangers Of American Christianity
$15.99Add to cartThe message of the gospel should be the lens through which our world view is formed.
The author believes that instead our culture has made us water down the true message to fit contemporary American Culture.The dangers he identifies include:
-Getting too mixed up in our culture
-Isolating ourselves too much from contemporary culture
-Safe and easy believism without proper life changing repentance
-Making it all about what God can do for me
-Entitlement
-The prosperity gospel
-Not being busy with the things of GodThe Church needs to rediscover what made it the powerful force it is supposed to be in a culture that wants to adapt the Church to fit its own values.
We cannot water down or dilute the gospel message in any way and remain effective in a world of secular humanistic values.
The Church has to get back to biblical values and not compromise with the world’s values and culture.Each chapter has questions for reflection, if you’re reading on your own, or discussion in groups.
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Missiological Research : Interdisciplinary Foundations Methods And Integrat
$32.99Add to cartThis volume is a key reference tool for all researchers delving into the various methods of missiological study. Five units focus on: foundations of missiological research, key aspects of biblical and theological methods, qualitative methods, quantitative and mixed methods for research, and integration of missiological research and the missionary life. Each chapter succinctly summarizes a method, suggests resources for more advanced interaction, and provides an exemplar journal article with abstract. The comprehensive reference volume brings together:
-14 veteran practitioner-scholars who provide clear and concise guidance to empirical research methodology, biblical-theological inquiry, and the integration of the two interdisciplinary approaches
-25 appendices to aid the researcher with resources.
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Small Church Checkup
$16.00Add to cartMany small membership churches today are faced with the sobering reality of attendance loss and overall decline. This resource provides a guide to help you find hope, alternatives, and the possibility of a new beginning. Included are tools to help you measure your church’s vitality, evaluate the results, and diagnose your church’s condition, along with several options for treatment plans as you seek to faithfully serve your community. Remember that we can choose our story. If we believe in our hearts there is another possibility, we can be faithful in choosing intentional pathways forward that honor God, the church founders, and generations to come. Follow the steps outlined in these pages to evaluate where you are and what the next steps on your journey need to be as you seek to be a “not yet big church,” “a stable, small church,” or a church that chooses to close and be repurposed for unexpected new life.
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New Copernicans : Understanding The Millennial Contribution To The Church
$16.99Add to cartIn The New Copernicans: Understanding the Millennial Contribution to the Church, author John Seel, PhD, provides a road map to this new millennial landscape, and an antidote to being drawn off course.
The millennial generation is steering the church in a new direction and is providing a missional opportunity for the church. The church will either follow their lead, or meander in a direction leading them further away from the ultimate path of making disciples.
Millennials are the carriers of a profound shift in the culture narrative, one that will reshape our understanding of human society in the coming years. Rather than being a problem for the church to lament, this shift represents an occasion to celebrate. Yet it demands being able to understand this direction to a more accurate assessment of human nature and reality.
In The New Copernicans: Understanding the Millennial Contribution to the Church, author John Seel, PhD, provides a road map to this new millennial landscape, and an antidote to being drawn off course. Rather than give the reader a formula for their local church, Recalculating will provide a lens though which to see the world in the light of the millennial frame. It addresses the “why” questions, empowering the reader to assess their own situation and apply the appropriate direction. It will not advocate “cookie cutter” programs, rather provide a refreshed vision with which to interact along side this important generation.
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Vibrant Church : Strategies For Church Renewal
$13.99Add to cartHelp your church reach its potential to become a beacon in your community, a model of all that God has called the church to be. The Vibrant Church provides guidance for pastors and key lay leaders, teaching you how to make your church healthy in all areas of church life.
You’ll learn to:
-Write a specific vision for your church
-Improve your leadership skills
-Establish a strategic plan for the future
-Build the ministry team
-Grow a dynamic outreach ministry
-Disciple fully devoted followers of Christ
-Create an environment of genuine love and concern
-Develop meaningful worship
-Train faithful stewards of money and time -
American Church In Crisis
$24.99Add to cartGroundbreaking research based on a national database of over 200,000 churches shows that the overall United States population is growing faster than the church.
The director of the American Church Research Project, Dave Olson, has worked to analyze church attendance, showing that it is virtually unchanged from fifteen years ago while our population has grown by fifty-two million people. What does this mean for you, your church, and the future of Christianity in North America? The American Church in Crisis offers unprecedented access to data that helps you understand the state of the church today. “We live in a world that is post-Christian, postmodern, and multiethnic, whether we realize it or not,” says the author. This book not only gives a realistic picture that confirms hunches and explodes myths, but it provides insight into how the church must change to reach a new and changed world with the hope of the gospel. Readers will find a richly textured mosaic with optimistic and challenging stories. Charts, diagrams, and worksheets provide church leaders and motivated church members with a stimulating read that will provoke much discussion. Questions for discussion accompany the chapters.
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Power Of The 72
$17.99Add to cartForeword By Darrell Johnson
Introduction: Welcome To The 72Part I: Theology
1. Faith Comes First
2. Sent To The Poor
3. Wolves, Bears, And Crushing PressurePart II: Application
4. How People Become Christians
5. Earnest And Powerful Prayers
6. Friends: Secular To Sacred
7. Experience: Healing And Hearing
8. Conversion: Rejoice With MeEpilogue: A Final Benediction
Acknowledgments
NotesAdditional Info
They were not professionals. They were not celebrities. We don’t even know their names.We know very little about them, except that they were ordinary people who were drawn to Jesus. When Jesus asked them to join him in his mission, they stepped up, answered the call, and went out in his name. And amazing things happened as a result.
They were the 72. And God uses normal people like the 72 to bring good news to the world.
Pastor and evangelist John Teter explains how Jesus trains ordinary people to accomplish an extraordinary mission. He unpacks the story of the sending of the 72 to reveal how they were equipped in evangelism and discovered opportunities to herald God’s kingdom in concrete and tangible ways. Filled with vivid stories of Teter’s remarkable experiences in ministry and church planting, this book shows how we can live out God’s call and witness the transformation of those around us.
You too have been called by Jesus. Discover how God empowers you to play your part. Welcome to the 72.
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Infants And Children In The Church
$24.99Add to cartInfants and Children in the Church: Five Views on Theology and Ministry addresses an important, but often overlooked, theological and ministry issue facing the church today: How should churches receive and minister to the infants and children God has entrusted to their care?
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Divergent Church : The Bright Promise Of Alternative Faith Communities
$18.99Add to cartNew faith communities are appearing across the U.S.. Many of them bear little resemblance-on the surface-to ‘church’ in its conventional form. But when we look a little deeper we see striking continuity with the most deeply rooted practices of the Christian faith in community. What are those practices? What do these unconventional, alternative faith communities look like? How are they, perhaps, indicators of a hopeful new future for the church? And what can we learn from them? Authors Kara Brinkerhoff and Tim Shapiro spent more than a year researching and exploring these questions, closely examining the life of a dozen alternative faith communities across the country. They include new monastic communities, food-oriented communities, affinity group communities, house churches, hybrid churches and others. They are creative, ingenious, innovative, clever, dynamic and transformative. But they represent human expressions of activities that have always been part of human religious congregations: hospitality, learning, storytelling, care, leadership, worship and honoring place. This fascinating book goes beyond simply analyzing current trends. It reveals how innovative Christians are engaging in time-honored practices, creating new types of communities, which will shape the church to come. Further, it shows us how we too might innovate while holding true to the essential practices of our gathered faith. This is an instructive picture of Christian community, past, present and future.
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Stay In The City
$16.99Add to cartWe live in an urban age. To a degree unprecedented in human history, most of the world’s people live in cities. It is thus vital, say Mark Gornik and Maria Liu Wong, for Christians to think constructively about how to live out their faith in an urban setting.
In Stay in the City Gornik and Liu Wong look at what is happening in the urban church–and what Christians everywhere can learn from it. Once viewed suspiciously for their worldly temptations and vices, cities are increasingly becoming centers of vibrant Christian faith. Writing from their experience living and working in New York City, Gornik and Liu Wong invite readers everywhere to join together in creating a more flourishing–and faith-filled–urban world.
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Church In Ordinary Time
$23.99Add to cartMuch of Christian theology is focused on the story of Jesus and the promised consummation of all things-but the church spends its life in the gap between them. How can we live more faithfully as Christians in this gap between the resurrection of Christ and the eschaton? In Church in Ordinary Time, Amy Plantinga Pauw argues that the liturgical season of ordinary time aptly symbolizes the church’s existence as God’s creature in this time between the times.
Pauw presents a compact Trinitarian ecclesiology that is attuned to church life in this era of ordinary time. Formal ecclesiologies have largely neglected this ordinary-time dimension of Christian life, she says, and in so doing have virtually ignored the ongoing graciousness of God’s work as Creator. Drawing on the seasons of the church year and the creation theology elaborated in Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, Pauw offers wisdom for daily life in Christian communities of faith.
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Fresh Expressions : A New Kind Of Methodist Church For People Not In Church
$15.99Add to cartA wave of new Christian churches are emerging to reach unchurched and dechurched people who live in a culture that is increasingly non-religious and multi-religious. These new forms of church gather and network with people who typically have never been to church. The new faith communities listen to people and go where they are on the journey toward Jesus. They are deeply ecumenical but do not lose their distinctiveness because they learn fresh ways to communicate their identity through discipleship. Fresh Expressions began in the United Kingdom where it ignited over 3000 new faith communities. In the United States the movement is putting down roots in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Ken Carter and Audrey Warren offer this book as a group study for church leaders and congregations who are in the grip of Holy Spirit motivation to renew their tradition by reaching people who are dechurched or not yet in a discipleship relationship with Jesus. Each chapter includes two Bible study experiences for group conversation.
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Dare To Date
$14.99Add to cart“It’s Complicated’Matters of the heart always seem to be. But dating in the church? It can be even worse. Relationships can be difficult to define, intentions hard to discern. But with singles making up a third of the total church congregation in the UK, there is a real need to demystify the dating process and return to dating in its simplest form.Rediscover how to date.In this brand new handbook, couples psychologist and dating course leader Aukelien van Abbema offers guidance on how to understand yourself and your own dating patterns, how to rely on your network of friends, and how to bring God into the whole process. Filled with wisdom, stories and practical advice, this book is a freeing reassessment of the dating scene. Begin a whole new romantic adventure filled with hope, joy and a lot of laughter. Go on, dare to date.
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Messy Christmas : Three Complete Sessions And A Treasure Trove Of Ideas For
$25.99Add to cartChristmas can be complicated. Parties, gifts, and family tensions dominate the season. So maybe it’s time we explore what Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are really about. The Messy Church series provides resources to help your church bring together people of all ages and stages of faith, allowing them to experience a creative and fun-filled Christian community. Messy Christmas offers your church a tool to create a unique, come-as-you-are experience built on :
creativity-allowing space for all to play and create
celebration-worshiping God and his redeeming work in Jesus
hospitality-sharing a meal where all are welcomeThese three once-a-month sessions include Christmas prayers, global action suggestions, games and competitions, Christmas food crafts, and many other ideas to experience joy during this time of the year. This season, give your community the gift of a messy church!
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MultiChurch : Exploring The Future Of Multisite
$24.99Add to cartIs it time for your church to go multisite? It seems everybody is doing it these days, so how do you know if it is the right solution for your congregation? MultiChurch brings clarity to the multisite movement and assembles the lessons it has learned over the past fifteen years. It explores the opportunities presented by the various forms of multi-site church, identifies areas of concern, and concludes that multisite is not only a biblically sound ecclesiological model, but also a model that provides a compelling solution to contemporary reductionism in the church.
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Tears In The Desert
$13.95Add to cartAre you interested in Christian service or studying for the Christian ministry? This book is uniquely designed to help you prepare for the challenges ahead and is endorsed by a pastor who served his church for thirty-eight years and the presidents of two seminaries who will recommend it to their students.
Karl Heller’s new book, Tears in the Desert: Lessons from the Joys and Sorrows of God’s Call, provides an up-close and personal account from the frontline of pastoral ministry. This is a refreshingly candid account of why pastoral ministry is so very challenging and at the same time so very important. By recounting the triumphs and tragedies of his own ministry, Dr. Heller is an able and wise guide, especially for seminarians preparing for pastoral ministry.
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Ready Steady Grow
$15.99Add to cartDo you love your church and want to see it thrive?Are you keen to learn from someone whose own church has grown and started others too?Are you ready for the downsides as well as the inevitable joys?Ray Evans takes us on an interesting and exciting journey. He looks at the barriers to growth, as well as the hurdles of reorganization and structural changes that growing churches face. His findings are anchored in the Bible and the real world which we all inhabit.’Many have learned how to lead what they have,’ says Ray, ‘but they don’t know how to take it forward. You don’t see the glass ceilings until you crash into them, and the splinters bring pain everywhere.’In Ray, you will find a humble, wise and warm-hearted guide. This book will not only equip your church to grow, but will help prevent unnecessary disasters.
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Online Mission And Ministry
$14.99Add to cartMany clergy and churches are now taking to the internet and social media to promote their churches or ministries, but few have thought through some of the difficult pastoral and theological issues that may arise.’Virtual vicar’ Revd Pam Smith guides both new and experienced practitioners through setting up online ministries and considers some of the issues that may arise, such as:Are relationships online as valid as those offline? Is it possible to participate in a ‘virtual’ communion service? How do you deal with ‘trolls’ in a Christian way? What is it appropriate for a clergyperson to say on social media?
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What Clergy Do
$18.99Add to cartClergy have a pivotal role in creating and nurturing church communities in which all people can grow up into Christ. This book explores the nature of that role by considering key similarities with the essential but often conflicting demands of motherhood. Like mothers, clergy need to preserve and hold people faithfully, while encouraging them to grow, take initiatives and become more confident and self-supporting. This book will help clergy to think about how this is achieved through the myriad of ‘small’ things they do from day to day, highlighting skills such as comforting, cherishing and multi-attending – skills that are centrally important but often unarticulated and undervalued.
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Economics Of Neighborly Love
$20.99Add to cart13 Chapters
Additional Info
What does the good news of Jesus mean for economics?Too often, Christian teaching and ministry have focused only on the gospel’s spiritual significance and ignored its physical, real-world ramifications. But loving our neighbor well has direct economic implications, and in our diverse and stratified society we need to grapple with them now more than ever.
In The Economics of Neighborly Love pastor Tom Nelson sets out to address this problem. Marrying biblical study, economic theory, and practical advice, he presents a vision for church ministry that works toward the flourishing of the local community, beginning with its poorest and most marginalized members. Nelson resists oversimplification and pushes us toward more complex and nuanced understandings of wealth and poverty. If we confess the gospel of Jesus, he insists, we must contend anew with its implications for the well-being of our local communities. Together we can grow in both compassion and capacity.
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Messy Church : Fresh Ideas For Building A Christ Centered Community
$20.99Add to cartWe like the idea of community, but where do we start? The Messy Church series provides resources to help your church bring together people of all ages and stages of faith, allowing them to experience a creative and fun-filled Christian community. Messy Church, the first book in the series, offers your church a tool to create a unique, come-as-you-are experience built on:
creativity-allowing space for all to play and create
celebration-worshiping God and his redeeming work in Jesus
hospitality-sharing a meal where all are welcomeThis complete resource helps you share the love of God and his people with families in your community, creating an opportunity for connection and learning in a fun and welcoming environment. With instructions for starting a program at your church, Messy Church includes fifteen sessions for use throughout the year. Let’s get messy!
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Lay Servants As Christian Transformation Leaders Participants Book (Student/Stud
$18.00Add to cartBuilding on the previous Lay Servant course “Does Your Church Have a Prayer?”, this Participant’s Book will guide Lay Servants seeking to be more empowered to lead their congregations toward vitality. Written with two distinct purposes, “Lay Servants as Christian Transformational Leaders” will first define the three types of Christian transformational leadership and the four qualities of Christian transformational leaders. Then the course will focus on congregational vitality, organizational life cycles, assessing current realities, and leading transformational change. The accompanying Leader’s Guide is in PDF form and is also available for downloading here.
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Sharing Gods Blessing
$15.99Add to cartA tried-and-tested resource for the renewal of the local church. Faced with the unsustainability of many inherited patterns of church, the temptation may be to fall into despondency rather than seeking to regenerate patterns of mission and ministry. This book is the result of a two-year research project aimed at enabling local churches to regain a sense of confidence through exploring God’s blessing and how that might be shared with the communities they serve. In Part One, Robin explores the meaning of blessing and the power of face-to-face group conversations to transform church congregations. Part Two of the book contains outlines for five guided conversations for change on the theme of blessing. Part Three contains case study material of how this material has been used in different contexts, including for Mission Action Planning (MAP).
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Incarnational Ministry : Being With The Church
$27.99Add to cartOn the implications of “being with” for the ministry of the church
” With,” says Samuel Wells, “is the most important word in the Christian faith.”
In the Trinity, we see the eternal persons of the Godhead being with each other. In the Gospels, we see Jesus being with the people he encounters, mediating God’s grace to them with his own incarnational presence. Those in ministry, as Wells shows in this book, are also called to the task of being with with God, with the church, and with the created world and those who dwell in it.
Wells elaborates on the concept of being with in eight dimensions: presence, attention, mystery, delight, participation, partnership, enjoyment, and glory. His vivid narratives and wise reflections challenge readers to deeper discipleship and more vital ministry as they explore what it means to be with the troubled, the hurt, the afflicted, the challenged, the dying–and all who are embraced by the church’s incarnational ministry.
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Introverts In The Church (Expanded)
$20.99Add to cartIntroduction: Can Introverts Thrive In The Church?
1 The Extroverted Church
2 The Introverted Difference
3 Finding Healing
4 Introverted Spirituality
5 Introverted Community And Relationships
6 The Ability To Lead
7 Leading As Ourselves
8 Introverted Evangelism
9 Introverts In Church
Epilogue: Finding Our Place
Questions For Reflection And Discussion
Further Reading
NotesAdditional Info
Introverts are called and gifted by God. But many churches tend to be extroverted places where introverts are marginalized. Some Christians end up feeling like it’s not as faithful to be an introvert. Adam McHugh shows how introverts can live and minister in ways consistent with their personalities. He explains how introverts and extroverts process information and approach relationships differently and how introverts can practice Christian spirituality in ways that fit who they are. With practical illustrations from church and parachurch contexts, McHugh offers ways for introverts to serve, lead, worship and even evangelize effectively. Introverts in the Church is essential reading for any introvert who has ever felt out of place, as well as for church leaders who want to make their churches more welcoming to introverts. This expanded edition has been revised throughout and includes new research on how introverts lead and material for parenting and encouraging introverted children. Discover God’s call and empowerment to thrive as an introvert, for the sake of the church and kingdom. -
Forbearance : A Theological Ethic For A Disagreeable Church
$28.99Add to cartOffers a faithful, constructive way to deal with dissent
What happens when we approach disagreement not as a problem to solve but as an opportunity to practice Christian virtue?
In this book James Calvin Davis reclaims the biblical concept of forbearance to develop a theological ethic for faithful disagreement. Pointing to Ephesians and Colossians, in which Paul challenged his readers to “bear with each other” in spite of differences, Davis draws out a theologically grounded practice in which Christians work hard to maintain unity while still taking seriously matters on which they disagree.
The practice of forbearance, Davis argues, offers Christians a dignified, graceful, and constructive way to deal with conflict. Forbearance can also strengthen the church’s public witness, offering an antidote to the pervasive divisiveness present in contemporary culture.
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Developing A Powerful Praying Church
$8.95Add to cartBlackaby Ministries International
Today’s church faces challenges and crises it can only overcome through prayer. In their latest book, Blackaby and Fisher focus on the adjustments pastors and church leaders must make in their prayer life in order to see a rebirth of God-honoring, world-impacting …
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It Has Not Yet Appeared What We Shall Be
$49.99Add to cart1. The Problem And Its Setting
2. Literature Review
3. Exegesis Of Pertinent Passages
4. A Reconsideration Of The Imago Dei
5. Implications And Practical ApplicationsAdditional Info
The doctrine of the imago Dei has been criticized for technically excluding people who suffer from severe cognitive disabilities. With such people in mind, Hammond reexamines the doctrine and sets forth a more accurate and inclusive understanding. This work concludes with implications and practical applications to help seminary professors, pastors, and church members include, embrace, and welcome people with severe intellectual disabilities and their families. -
How To Become A Multicultural Church
$23.99Add to cartMany churches aspire to be more culturally diverse-but they find that they have no idea how to approach that goal practically. This book addresses that problem with ten ways churches can truly engage and welcome other cultures.
In 2014 Douglas Brouwer, a seasoned American pastor, took on the unique challenge of serving a multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural church in one of Europe’s largest cities. In this book Brouwer distills the lessons he has learned from that experience into timely wisdom on issues every multicultural church faces, including language barriers, theological differences, and cultural stereotypes. Honestly recounting his own questions and challenges in multicultural ministry, Brouwer shows how churches everywhere can adjust their attitudes and practices to embrace racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity.
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Restoring The Broken Walls Of Past Generations
$19.99Add to cartDeliverance is about setting the captives free. It’s about bringing liberty to the oppressed and freedom to those who are bound by chains of addiction, destructive cycles of behavior and patterns of oppression coming through childhood woundings. It is bringing mankind into the wholeness that God originally intended for him.
In Restoring the Broken Walls, you will discover how Satan and his hordes of hell never stop plotting and strategizing against God’s beloved creation. Discover the spiritual combat that is forever going on in the invisible realm between two forces — the powers of darkness and God’s army of angels over your soul and destiny. Eleanor Butkiewicz will help you understand the two invisible Kingdoms locked in mortal combat over your life. You will begin to comprehend the fullness of Christ’s triumph over Satan and move into the authority given to you through that triumph. Learn how to stop being a victim and become a victor. Find God’s strategy for Restoring the Broken Walls of our lives through the
breaking of generational curses. Enter into the abundant life. -
This Is Church
$8.99Add to cartWatersprings Media House
What is the Church? This is Church: Where You Fit In, explores what God intended the Church to be, how people fit into the Church and most importantly how the Church fits into our daily lives. This book is Ideal for individual bible study, small groups, new believer and/or discipleship classes.
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Caminos Olvidados – (Spanish)
$19.99Add to cartEl clasico cambio de paradigma propuesto por Alan Hirsch continua siendo la declaracion definitiva de la iglesia como un dinamico movimiento misional. El exito literario que fue la primera edicion, encendio una conversacion acerca de como aprovechar el poder de los movimientos para el crecimiento futuro de la iglesia. En esta edicion actualizada, Hirsch comparte conocimientos significativos obtenidos a lo largo del camino, proporciona nuevos ejemplos frescos de iglesias en crecimiento y reflexiona sobre los ultimos diez aos del movimiento misional. La nueva edicion ha sido completamente actualizada y revisada e incluye graficos, diagramas, un glosario ampliado de terminos, nuevos apendices, un nuevo prologo escrito por Ed Stetzer y un nuevo epilogo escrito por Jeff Vanderstelt. Conocido por su enfoque innovador a la mision, Hirsch es ampliamente reconocido como un lider pensador y estratega para iglesias en todo el mundo occidental. El considera a Caminos Olvidados como el trabajo guia para todos sus otros escritos. El libro cuidadosamente explora los factores que confluyen para generar movimientos de Jesus espiritualmente vibrantes, exponencialmente explosivos y de alto impacto en cualquier momento y en cualquier contexto. Esta amplia actualizacion del influyente trabajo de Hirsch ofrece un sistema de seis claves vitales para ver surgir un movimiento cristiano y estamos seguros que le dara forma al futuro del movimiento misional durante aos por venir.
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Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow
$17.00Add to cartBestselling, Easy-to-Use Spiritual Gifts
Resource for Group UseThis trusted spiritual gifts resources has been helping individuals and congregations learn about their unique giftings for generations. Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow is the quintessential group resource. Comprehensive and easy to understand, this guide includes the questionnaire and will help you and your group identify the gifts God has given you. More than that, you will discover how each gift works so that you and your group or congregation can use your unique gifts to help your church and community flourish.
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When Spirit And Word Collide
$12.99Add to cartJarrod Cooper explores the 1947 prophecy about revival attributed to Smith Wigglesworth and examines what it means for today’s Church. A new wave of extraordinary Spirit and Word churches are emerging. In this book he looks at the qualities that will set them apart and position them at the centre of a great move of God that will sweep our nation.
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New Day In The City
$20.99Add to cartFrederich Buechner once wrote, “Dreams of fame and fortune die hard, if they ever die at all.” Many mainline urban congregations remember the days of fame and fortune-days when their prominence downtown mattered. Population shifts, the decline of mainline congregations, and demographic changes have robbed many downtown churches of these dreams – but not all churches. Many congregations struggle to survive while others are positioned to thrive. These churches have learned to let go of nostalgic dreams and tired habits, to walk with God into a new day of vibrancy, mission, and ministry. Authors Donna Claycomb Sokol and Roger Owens have pastored urban congregations that have managed to grow again, reversing decades of decline. In A New Day in the City they share the stories of the churches they’ve served, and the lessons they’ve learned from other successful urban churches and pastors. Their aim is to help others join God in the deep and wide mission of embodying the Kingdom. Along the way, they challenge some cliches about church leadership, offering a fresh perspective on what congregational renewal can look like and how it can become a reality. The book does not offer easy answers, because churches can’t simply replicate what someone else has done. Rather, the book offers the framework for crucial conversations urban churches need to have in order to find their own way to renewal. The end of each chapter features a set of practical guidelines for leading a congregation to address the questions that matter most.
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Preaching In The Era Of Trump
$14.99Add to cartNow more than ever, it’s time to preach.
The election of Donald Trump left countless faith leaders across the country speechless. Now that he is president, silence must give way to prophetic preaching.
Christians have long debated whether politics should be addressed from the pulpit. Following Donald Trump’s controversial, divisive rise to power and the sweeping changes his fledgling administration has already proposed, that s no longer a question political preaching will be the order of the day, even for pastors who try to steer clear of controversy. It s up to preachers to make the church great again by leading it to embrace and embody God s concern for those whose lives are at stake in a Trump administration. Veteran teacher, preacher, and author Wes Allen offers a blueprint for addressing current events through a Gospel lens, persuasively and pastorally without engaging in divisive, antagonistic rhetoric.
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Unstuck Church : Equipping Churches To Experience Sustained Health
$16.99Add to cartAcclaimed church leader, blogger, founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan unpacks the lifecycle of a typical church, identifies characteristics of each phase, and provides practical next steps a church can take to move towards sustained health.
Think about your church for a moment. Is it growing? Is it diminishing? Is it somewhere in between? Acclaimed church leader, blogger, and founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan has identified the seven stages of a church’s lifecycle that range from the hopeful and optimistic days of launch, to the stagnating last stages of life support.
Regardless of the stage in which you find your church, it carries with it the world’s greatest mission-to “go and make disciples of all the nations . . .” With eternity at stake the Church should be doing most everything within its power to see lives changed forever. The Church should strive for the pinnacle of the lifecycle, where they are continually making new disciples and experiencing what Morgan refers to as “sustained health.”
In The Unstuck Church, Morgan unpacks each phase of the church lifecycle, and offers specific and strategic next steps the church leader can take to find it’s way to sustained health . . . and finally become unstuck.
The Unstuck Church is a call for honest an assessment of where your church sits on the lifecycle, and a challenge to move beyond it.
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Gospel DNA : 21 Ministry Values For Growing Churches
$15.99Add to cart22 Chapters
Additional Info
Acts chapter 20 tells how Paul sat down to train the elders of the Ephesian church he had planted some years before. The principles of gospel ministry he lays down are simple, but absolute dynamite.In 21 simple, practical principles, Richard Coekin sets out how this “Gospel DNA” should shape our approach to building churches today.
This book draws on his experience as Director of the London-based Co-Mission church-planting initiative in the UK. It will help you be part of a dynamic strategy for growing gospel churches today.
Includes a Foreword by D.A. Carson
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To Alter Your World
$22.99Add to cartIntroduction
1. God Groans Like A Woman In Labor
2. What’s Standing In Our Way?
3. A Divine Disruption
4. Midwives To The Birth Of The New Creation
5. Making Space For Birth To Happen
6. On Being Adaptive And Daring
7. How To Really Change The World
8. Changing The World Through Our Work
9. Changing The World Through Placecrafting
10. Being Changed As We Bring Change
11. Suffering Along The Way
Acknowledgments
NotesAdditional Info
In Christ, a new world is being born and the new creation is unfurling all around us. God is directing history toward the future restoration, repair, and renewal of all creation. And our job is to cooperate with God in being a sign and foretaste of that coming world. Renowned missional leaders Michael Frost and Christiana Rice introduce the bold metaphor of a midwife to depict us as God’s birthing assistants as the kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven. With groundbreaking ideas and practical illustrations from all corners of the globe, To Alter Your World will change the way you see how your church can partner in God’s world-altering mission. Nothing else could be more rewarding than laboring alongside a God who is birthing the new creation and inviting all to join in its benefits and blessings. -
Transcending Mission : The Eclipse Of A Modern Tradition
$40.99Add to cartPrologue
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Enigma Of MissionPart I: Justifying Mission
1. Partisans And Apologists
2. Reading Scripture As Mission
3. Presenting History As Mission
4. Rhetoric And TropePart II: Innovating Mission
5. Holy Conquest
6. Latin Occupation
7. Mission Vow
8. Ignatian MissionPart III: Revising Mission
9. Protestant Reception
10. Missionary ProblemsEpilogue: Toward Pilgrim Witness
Abbreviations
Works CitedAdditional Info
Mission, missions, missional, and all its linguistic variations are part of the expanding vocabulary and rhetoric of the contemporary Christian missionary enterprise. Its language and assumptions are deeply ingrained in the thought and speech of the church today. Christianity is a missionary religion and faithful churches are mission-minded. What’s more, in telling the story of apostles and bishops and monks as missionaries, we think we have grasped the true thread of Christian history. But what about those odd shapes, those unsettling gaps and creases in the historical record? Is the language of mission so clearly evident across the broad reaches of time? Is the trajectory of mission really so explicit from the early church to the present? Or has the modern missionary enterprise distorted our view of the past? As with every reigning paradigm, there comes a point when enough questions surface to beg for a close and critical look, even when it may seem transgressive to do so. In this study of the language of mission-its origin, development, and application-Michael Stroope investigates how the modern church has come to understand, speak of, and engage in the global expansion of Christianity. There is both surprise and hope in this tale. And perhaps the beginnings of a new conversation. -
Organizing Church : Grassroots Practices For Embodying Change In Your Congr
$24.99Add to cartWhat if congregations embraced community organizing? While many theories exist on how to plant or how to renew a church and its leadership, Organizing Church offers a unique perspective that brings together the tools of community organizing and a robust ecclesiology to suggest a new way forward for revitalizing and empowering churches. This book is a helpful field guide for pastors and other church leaders trying to build healthy congregations, create a deep culture of discipleship in their community, and to respond to the challenges presented by the global culture of the 21st century.
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Right Thinking In A Church Gone Astray
$16.99Add to cartKeeping the Church on Track in a Secular World
One of the greatest challenges to Christianity today is the pervasive influence popular culture has on the church. When Christians embrace a secular worldview, it causes division within the church and greatly diminishes its impact.
Right Thinking in a Church Gone Astray offers responses from trusted evangelical voices on 20 timely issues. With a careful look at God’s Word, you’ll gain wisdom and insights on highly relevant topics such as…
*countering the church’s celebrity culture
*ministering to the “Me Generation”
*discovering where science meets Scripture
*responding appropriately to homosexuality
*reclaiming the essentials of the Christian faithWith biblical guidance on these and other controversial matters, this resource provides much-needed clarity for today’s church.
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Church : Bruised, Wounded Oops Ssshhh, What’s Up
$9.95Add to cartIn this work Al Miller leaps over complicated theological jargon to deliver to us the simplicity of this vital component of the Church and leaves us wanting to pursue more about its purpose in contemporary society. I was inspired by this work and know that you will be also. The well though-out presentation of the author’s proposition guides us through to the conclusion that there is a vital place for the church in our post-modern world.”
– Dr. Myles Munroe
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Increase Your Anointing
$13.99Add to cartGod said that we are to do greater works. Most ministries are not even doing the works of Jesus. Things are about to change. God has spoken that what I have discovered is being made available so that we can all attain the prize of our high calling. It is time for us to flow in miracles signs and wonders. I’m talking about even in the local Church. Get ready for an increase of the anointing. Remember it is going to cost you something but it will be worth it. You are about to discover three life changing types of anointing. There is the revelatory, the breaker, and the kingly anointing. This is the most important things I discovered that brought a higher level anointing.
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Millions Of Churches
$12.99Add to cartWhether everyone will admit it or not, the traditional church is in deep trouble and has been struggling for years to survive. There is a small rise of some new, non-traditional churches that help us all realize that God truly has a new way of doing Church. There is no easy fixes but at the same time, there are real roots that are being revealed in this book. The Church does not need another program nor does it need another religious organization. We don’t need religious leaders but compassionate, Christ centered leaders. Bill is a prophet of God with a strong Word that all of the Church needs to hear. Bill reveals that there are so many Churches both big and small meeting and keeping silent while the World gets worse in many areas. The fact of the matter is the world and even some Churches are on the road to Hell. We must hear the urgency of all that God has laid on the heart of Bill Vincent and many prophetic voices like him. So many Churches in America why is America in such bad shape somebody is dropping the ball This why we can’t just go to Church as spectators when we’re asked to pray for a person or Country we need to take it seriously and really travail and intercede instead of shrugging it off and leaving it to the next person. This would be where someone would drop the ball. You know why bad things have happened in America because God is trying to wake this Country up and believe there is a higher power in this Country and it is not the President of the United States.
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Megachurch Accountability In Missions
$27.99Add to cartMegachurches are of relatively recent vintage. Their numerical strength invests them with social and financial power. To whom, if anyone, however, are megachurches accountable? What role do they play as innovators in missions? How have their enormous influence and financial strength been harnessed? What lessons can be learned? What course corrections ought to be made? Over the course of a week, the third meeting of the Korean Global Mission Leadership Forum (KGMLF), held in Korea in 2015, addressed these and related questions. Combining the insights of a rich mix of Korean and international megachurch leaders and scholars, Megachurch Accountability in Missions: Korean and Global Case Studies offers analysis, critique, and positive recommendations for future megachurch engagement in mission. This book is the third volume in KGMLF’s Accountability in Missions series.
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Race And Place
$24.99Add to cartWe long for diverse, thriving communities in our neighborhoods and churches, yet we see that racial injustice that are so entrenched in places and spaces. What we are missing is a recognition of the impact that physical structures and locations have on our quest for reconciliation. This book helps us understand the realities that divide us.
