Loneliness is increasingly recognized as a major public health crisis that is on the rise and impacting people of all ages. Addressing the crisis of loneliness from a fresh perspective, this book introduces belonging as an overlooked but critical aspect of a flourishing Christian life.Eric Jacobsen shows how three pieces of glass--the car windshield, TV, and smartphone--are emblematic of significant societal shifts that have created a cultural habit of physical isolation. We feel i...

Outreach Magazine**'s 2012 Resource of the Year Award Winner2012 Book of the Year Award,** Foreword MagazineThe entire material world can be divided between the Natural Environment and the Built Environment. Over the past forty years, the Natural Environment has received more attention of the two, but that is beginning to change. With a renewed interest in "place" within various academic disciplines and the practical issue...

Readers' Choice Award WinnerBest Books About the Church from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds BookstoreFast food. Fast cars. Fast and furious. Fast forward. Fast . . . church?The church is oftenidealized (or demonized) as the last bastion of a bygone era, dragging our feet as we're pulled into new moralities and new spiritualities. We guard our doctrine and our piety with great vigilance. But we often fail to notice how quickly we're ...

How can the life and teachings of Jesus impact the most critical global problems in our world today?For the last twenty years, Brian McLaren has been unable to escape this life-shaping question. In Everything Must Change, he unveils a fresh and provocative vision of Jesus and his teachings, and how his message of hope can ignite purpose and passion to change the economic, environmental, military, political, and social crises that have overtaken our world.The Good N...

A new brand of apostolic ministry for today's worldThe Permanent Revolution is a work of theological re-imagination and re-construction that draws from biblical studies, theology, organizational theory, leadership studies, and key social sciences. The book elaborates on the apostolic role rooted in the five-fold ministry from Ephesians 4 (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teacher), and its significance for the missional movement. It explores ...

As Helen Keller observed, "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."To Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, so much of how we have learned to experience and understand the faith has been divorced from the overarching adventure inherent in our God and in our calling. This book is a corrective...

Many pastors and church leaders have heard the term "missional" but have only a vague idea of what it means, let alone why it might be important to them. But what does it actually mean? What does a missional church look like and how does it function? Two leading voices in the missional movement here provide an accessible introduction, showing readers how the movement developed, why it's important, and how churches can become more missional.Introducing the Missional Church ...

Dallas Willard, the author of the bestselling spiritual classic, The Divine Conspiracy, now fulfills his revolutionary vision of how the kingdom of God is made real on earth in this sequel, the last book he was working on before his recent death.In The Divine Conspiracy, revered Christian philosopher and scholar Dallas Willard critiqued the church's obsession with "sin management" and revolutionized our understanding of true Christian discipleship and spiritual fo...

Everyday theology is the reflective and practical task of living each day as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. In other words, theology is not just for Sundays, and it's not just for professional theologians. Everyday Theology teaches all Christians how to get the theological lay of the land. It enables them to become more conscious of the culture they inhabit every day so that they can understand how it affects them and how they can affect it. If theology is the ministry of the...

Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture.We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, mor...

What should the church look like today?What should be the focus of its message?How should I present that message?We live in as pivotal and defining an age as the Great Depression or the Sixties–a period whose definition, say some cultural observers, includes a warning of the church’s influence. The result? A society measurably less religious but decidedly more spiritual. Less influenced by authority than by experience. More attuned to images than to words.How does the church adapt to such ...

In a time when the need for and the relevance of the Gospel has seldom been greater, the relevance of the church has seldom been less. The Shaping of Things to Come explores why the church needs to rebuild itself from the bottom up. Frost and Hirsch present a clear understanding of how the church can change to face the unique challenges of the twenty-first century. This missional classic has been thoroughly revised and updated.