The Church

Enjoy sharing your faith naturally and consistently by making small adjustments in just the right places, you can set off a chain reaction that will redefine the landscape of your life. Dreams really do come true when you learn how to take little steps that make a big difference.

Who are unchurched Harry and Mary? He or she cold be the neighbor who is perfectly happy without God. Or the co-worker who scoffs at Christianity. Or the supervisor who uses Jesus' name only as profanity. Or the family member who can't understand why religion is so important. Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary isn't a book of theory. It's an action plan to help Christians relate the message of Christ to the people they work around, live with, and call their friends. Using personal experiences, humor, compelling stories, biblical illustrations, and the latest research, Lee Strobel helps Christians understand unbelievers and what motivates them.

This practical guide to the biblical art of sharing your faith offers refreshing insight into the many ways, spoken and silent.

Every church is driven by some controlling force: tradition, finances, programs, events, personalities, or even the building itself. But author and pastor Dr. Rick Warren, the founder of Saddleback Valley Community Church in California, believes that a church can only be truly healthy if it becomes "purpose-driven": built around the five goals Jesus stated in the New Testament. Dr. Warren's illuminating work outlines a proven five-part strategy that will enable your church to become warmer through fellowship, deeper through discipleship, stronger through worship, broader through ministry, and larger through evangelism. By shifting the focus away from church-building programs, Dr. Warren emphasizes a people-building, inclusive process that will allow your church to grow without compromising its message and mission.

“I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” Too often, these words of Jesus from John 17:20-21 seem like an unreachable ideal.

Just as a rock climber’s handhold enables him to master the mountain, a firm grasp on God’s Word empowers us to traverse the challenging, risky slopes of life. Grasping God’s Word helps college students, beginning seminary students, and other serious readers get a grip on the solid rock of Scripture--how to read it, how to interpret it, and how to apply it. Filling the gap between approaches that are too simple and others that are too technical, Grasping God's Word starts by equipping listeners with general principles of interpretation, then moves on to apply those principles to specific genres and contexts. (This product is an audio lecture by the authors recorded before a live audience, and is based on the text of the book Grasping God's Word.)

This audiobook provides pastors, worship leaders, programming directors, and arts ministry leaders with the vision and core values necessary for building arts teams that can create the potential for transformational moments in church.

A behind the scenes analysis of twenty key principles of leadership illustrated with stories and examples from the life of Billy Graham.

In Sticky Church, author and pastor Larry Osborne makes the case that closing the back door of your church is even more important than opening the front door wider. He offers a time-tested strategy for doing so: sermon-based small groups that dig deeper into the weekend message and tightly velcro members to the ministry. It’s a strategy that enabled Osborne’s congregation to grow from a handful of people to one of the larger churches in the nation—without any marketing or special programming.

What is the gospel?  Author and pastor Andy Stanley brings to life from Scripture and over 25 years of pastoral experience the irresistible nature of the greatest movement ever launched – The Church.

Dangerous churches should be norm. Church leaders and church people alike shrink back from danger because we want safety. Jesus said that he's overcome the world and its troubles. Dangerous churches put everything on the line for the one thing that matters most: reaching lost people.It's dangerous not to be a dangerous church. The book is less about methods or even the message of God, but about a church that risks everything it has to reach lost people. Living Hope was birthed 8 years ago and has grown from five families to 5000 attendees, grown from one to 19 services on many campuses, and baptized 5,000 people along the way. A dangerous church sees what 'only God' can do when it acts upon what the church is supposed to be. It risks everything to reach people.God wants us to live on the edge of our margin when it comes to mission and methods. So much of Living Hope's journey has been going back to the Book of Acts and trying to live authentically with the givens of who they were, where they were and what they had to work with. They learned to abandon agendas and short-sighted human plans, especially ones that copy what other churches are doing. That's when they found God's blessing. 'We went from being a good church to being God-honoring church,' he reports. Drawing insight from the book of Acts, this book unfolds the very personal journey of a pastor, and then his entire church, when they finally began to live a dangerous faith. The transition had a dramatic impact on the pastor's life and marriage, as well as on the congregation and its outreach. It opened a new sense of mission and incredible spiritual fruitfulness. The pastor is not only a radically different person today, but the entire church has become an atmosphere that values taking dangerous steps of faith. It will lead Christ's followers to become risk-takers who change the world through a revolution that begins with a dangerous grace. The book is story-rich with examples of the grace-filled culture from Living Hope Church through the experiences of its pastor, John Bishop. It will avoid a smug attitude that implies 'we've arrived,' 'we're the first to live out grace' or 'we're the best at giving grace.' Instead, the book will convey a humble attitude of 'we've got a lot to learn,' including examples of mistakes the church has made along the way. The rapid transition of Living Hope will not be projected as a speed for other churches to follow (lest the book invite a crash-and-burn outcome at other churches). Thus the book will find its primary story in and from Living Hope.In 2007 Outreach Magazine ranked Living Hope as the seventh fastest growing church in the US. They have also been listed among the 50 most influential churches in America.

God Is Up to Something Big The Bible dedicates more space to prophecy than to any other subject. These prophetic portions of Scripture have received an enormous amount of literary attention throughout the history of the church. Over the past fifty years alone countless books have been written about the biggest global trends of our day and whether they are signs of the coming end times. But one sign has been inexplicably neglected—revival. Wallace Henley believes such a spiritual awakening is not only possible today but probable—and likely a harbinger of the end times. Where are we on the timeline of human history? Are we approaching the rapture of the church? Henley presents a meticulously researched and compelling case that the Welsh Revival and the historical cycle revealed in God’s redemptive interactions with nations, make it highly likely that our contemporary world is ripe for the lightning of another revival. Henley is confident that we will be a part of that worldwide event, perhaps moving all creation nearer to its sudden glorious conclusion and rebirth.

If you long to reach kids and see their lives changed by God, this updated, comprehensive guide shows you how. Purpose Driven® Youth Ministry will do for youth ministry what Rick Warren's Gold Medallion award - winning The Purpose Driven Church is doing for pastoral ministry. It's an indispensable guide to creating and maintaining youth ministry for the long run.

This insightful history explores the stereotype of Dallas Theological Seminary as an anti-intellectual stronghold of fundamentalism and dispensational premillennialism. The tenures of the school’s five presidents reveal the tensions that DTS, a blend of differing heritages and of opposing traditions, has experienced amid changes in American religious and cultural life.