The mainline church in the past few decades has witnessed a ghettoization of youth within the church, segregating them off to a particular room, perhaps in the basement, where they engage in ministry in isolation from the rest of the congregation. They are assigned a “youth minister” or “youth director,” often the staff person with the least experience, freeing up the “real” ministers to serve the adults in the church. They seldom serve on church boards or governing bodies in anything othe...

Now in its second edition, this book introduces an approach to active system control. This approach, when applied through design and development improves our technological systems. It extends concepts of system control using data accumulation, state and structural dependencies. The authors define these properties in terms of reliability, performance and energy-efficiency, and self-adaption. They describe how they bridge the gap between data accumulation and analysis in terms of interpolati...

Nominated for a Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a First Novel."A stark and frightening novel. Horror fans should definitely seek this one out." – BooklistSome doctors are sicker than their patients.When a troubled psychiatrist loses funding to perform clinical trials on an experimental cure for schizophrenia, he begins testing it on his asylum s criminally insane, triggering a series of side effects that open...

"Kirk’s suspenseful and terror-driven novel employs supernatural elements to capitalize on the dread and horror of reality... [his] handling of visceral horror and human drama make for an immersive tale." - Publisher's WeeklyYou don’t read the book. It reads you.Rumors of a deadly book have been floating around the dark corners of the deep web. A disturbing tale about a mysterious figure who preys on those who read the book and sub...

***Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in the Anthology category***Want to see something weird?Embrace the odd? Satisfy your curiosity? Surrender to wonder?From Crystal Lake Publishing and the Bram Stoker Award-winning co-editor of the smash hit Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories comes Behold! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders.Sixteen stories and two poems take you into the spaces between...

A disturbing journey into the beauty that rests inside the very heart of darkness.From the Bram Stoker Award-winning Crystal Lake Publishing and the editing duo who brought you the critically acclaimed small-town Lovecraftian horror anthology Shadows Over Main Street, comes Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories.Awe meets ache.Terror becomes transcendence.Regret gives way to rebirth.Fifteen short stories and one poem span nearly every twisted corner of the h...

Bram Stoker Award-winner for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction!Nightmares come to life in this comprehensive how-to guide for new and established authors…Book two in Crystal Lake Publishing's The Dream Weaver series picks up where the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Where Nightmares Come From left off.It's Alive focuses on learning the craft in order to take your story from concept to completion.With an introduction by Richar...

After more than 25 years of ministry in Hawaii, Wayne Cordeiro knows how to do church as a team. In his signature style, he shares this expertise with pastors, lay leaders, and people in the pew who want to see their churches become more vibrant. The 12 practical steps include ways to help people become part of a community, develop a culture of serving, turn visitors into regular attenders, and much more. This short, easy-to-read book is one pastors will want to share with their leadership...

If you long to reach kids and see their lives changed by God, this 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. It will help you create a solid spiritual team that builds the foundations of the Christian faith into the hearts and lives of young peop...

An updated edition with two all-new chapters, a new introduction, and a fresh look, this book challenges widely accepted ideas about what it means to know God and offers fresh paths for pursuing genuine spirituality.This practical guide speaks to those who are weary of formulaic faith or who are haunted by nagging doubts about the church, as well as those who find the traditional spiritual disciplines impractical or even agonizing because of their personal wiring. ...

Over the next five to ten years, it's predicted that more than 50,000 strategic ministry leadership positions are going to be filled. Who will these leaders be? And more importantly, who will prepare them for these positions?Mentoring Leaders offers a unique angle on what it takes to prepare transformational leaders for today's church. While addressing the different phases of leadership development and mentoring, as well as the characteristics of a dynamic and effective leader, Car...

Youth ministry veteran and bestselling author, Duffy Robbins, offers an updated and revised edition of his book about the important, behind-the-scenes mechaincs of youth ministry. The tasks of budgeting, decision-making, time management, team ministry, staff relationships, conflict resolution, working with parents, and a range of other issues, are the things that keep a ministry together and functioning well. Nobody gets into youth ministry because they want to think about these things; bu...