Living Our Story explores how good narrative work—the retrieval, construction, and performance of valued stories—takes place in ministry. Authors Larry A. Golemon, Lee Ramsey, N. Graham Standish, Tim Shapiro, Carol Johnson, Mike Mather, Niles Elliot Goldstein, and Diana Butler Bass examine this question from a variety of perspectives, including the role of the pastor or rabbi as narrative leader, the sacred and mundane stories that shape congregational life and identity, storytelling as a ...

Close to 60 percent of young people who went to church as teens drop out after high school. Now the bestselling author of unChristian trains his researcher's eye on these young believers. Where Kinnaman's first book unChristian showed the world what outsiders aged 16-29 think of Christianity, You Lost Me shows why younger Christians aged 16-29 are leaving the church and rethinking their faith.Based on new research, You Lost Me shows pastors, chur...

Ministers David Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy, along with an all-star cast of Bible scholars and top church teachers, provide a primer to a church movement that encourages every Christian to “live the questions” instead of “forcing the answers.” Based on the bestselling DVD course of the same name, Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity includes commentary from such bestselling authors as Diana Butler Bass, John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Brian ...

Where did Adam and Eve's kids find spouses? Does God justify violence in scripture? Does the Bible call for sexual purity? (and what qualifies as pure and impure?) Ever get the feeling that you can't ask those kinds of questions at church? But if we can't ask the tough, keep-you-awake-at-night questions within our faith communities, then what good are those communities? Listen in as more than a dozen contributors-whose ranks include a recovering consumer, a religious satirist, and a semina...

Is the Bible really true? How can I prove it? This book is especially helpful for newer Christians just coming to grips with the implications of the gospel in all areas of their lives.What do you say when someone at work asks you why the gospel stories differ? How do you answer your neighbor when she asks what you think about all those "errors" in the Bible? Glenn Pearson offers simple, accessible principles that provide any Christian with the tools he or she needs...

“FOLLOW ME.”These two words echo the heart-defining call of our Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples.Sadly, this life-changing invitation has lost much of its original meaning. Immersed in a society that worships success, we have succumbed to a trendyfixation with leadership. In I Am a Follower, author Leonard Sweet explains how Christians in a twenty-first-century corporate-obsessed culture have shifted away from a Jesus art of following tow...

A professor of religion offers an "engrossing and excellent" look at how the Good Book has changed—and changed the world—through the ages ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).In a lively journey from early Christianity to the present, this book explores how a box of handwritten scrolls became the Bible, and how the multibillion-dollar business that has brought us Biblezines and Manga Bibles is selling down the Book's sacred capital.Showing us how a...

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...

Is it possible that the division between the clergy and the laity is unnecessary and, in fact, harmful to the church? In Organic Leadership, Neil Cole fervently says yes and shows how this causes great harm to all. But rather than doing away with the clergy, Cole argues that the answer is to raise up organically grown leaders from ordinary Christians and make everyone "a priest."Using examples from modern cinema, personal experience, and the Bible, Cole sets out to change o...

Planting Missional Churches is an instruction book for planting biblically faithful and culturally relevant churches. It addresses the “how-to” and “why” issues of church planting by providing practical guidance through all the phases of a church plant while taking a missional look at existing and emerging cultures.

"A pre-modern baseball umpire would have said something like this: 'There's balls, and there's strikes, and I call 'em as they are.' The modernist would have said, 'There's balls, and there's strikes, and I call 'em as I see 'em.' And the postmodernist umpire would say, 'They ain't nothing until I call 'em.'" With that humorous quote, Ravi Zacharias illustrates the challenge postmodernism poses to Christians passionate about evangelism. How do you communicate truth to a world that isn't su...

Belief can exist in isolation, but faith requires a relationshipWhy wade in the shallows of belief when you can plunge into the depths of faith? Belief involves a different way of thinking, but faith brings about a new way of living. It grows through direct experience and a close relationship, both of which come as you follow Jesus.As Christians we often talk about developing a “personal relationship” with Christ, but instead of pursuing a relationship, we ...