Today, the mission of the church faces more challenges than ever before.From poverty to globalization, and the increased presence of pornography in our day-to-day lives, today’s world is filled with pressures that challenge our faith. While the church does not have control over the issues facing each generation, her response to them is a matter of kingdom stewardship.In Pressure Points, J.D. Payne gets to the heart of twelve of the most important c...

More than ever, North America is being flooded by people from all around the world, many of them here illegally. How should the church respond to these sojourners among us?In Strangers Next Door professor of evangelism and church planting J. D. Payne introduces the phenomenon of migrations of peoples to Western nations and explores how the church should respond in light of the mission of God. As we understand and embrace the fact that the least-reached people groups now re...

The Gospel Coalition 2022 Award of Distinction (Missions & The Global Church)A leading expert in the field of Christian missions encourages the church to recover the apostolic imagination that fueled the multiplication of disciples in the first century. J. D. Payne examines the contemporary practice of Western missions and advocates a more central place for Scripture in defining missionary language, identity, purpose, function, and strategy. He shows that an aposto...

Southwestern Journal of Theology 2025 Book Award (Evangelism / Missions / Global Church)When seeking to understand evangelism, it can be difficult to know where to begin due to the wealth of written material available on the topic. This one-stop textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to evangelism from an evangelical perspective. It draws from the diverse and vast literature on the topic to help readers share the gospel at home and t...

In Discovering Church Planting, J. D. Payne explores the biblical, historical, and missiological principles of global church planting as well as unfolding practical strategies for confronting contemporary challenges to our vital task in reaching a lost world.This comprehensive introduction to church planting shows the reader how to apply effective, international church planting practices to specific contexts. J. D. speaks from personal experience, research, and training an...

To understand evangelism, it can be difficult to know where to begin due to the wealth of material available on the topic. This one-stop textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to evangelism from an evangelical perspective. It draws from the diverse and vast literature on the topic to help listeners share the gospel at home and throughout the world.Understanding Evangelism emerges from the author's experiences as a pastor, missionary, evangelist, and professor of evan...

Making disciples is the primary calling of the church; however, in the past decades of American evangelicalism, there has been a breach of Christ's Great Commission (as found in Matt 28:19-20). Much of this failure can be attributed to the doctrine and practice within three modern church movements. The book offers a history and critique of modern American evangelical church movements, including the Church Growth, Emergent Church, and Missional Church movements. Each of these movements did ...

Peoples on the Move provides pastors, church planters, and missionaries with the tools they need to walk out their door and learn the unique dynamics of their neighborhoods in order to formulate effective strategies for ministry. The book takes a practical approach and contains many examples of how the research is done as well as how community research translates to ministry strategy. It reads like one is walking the streets with the author as he apprentices a new generation of church plan...

In our changing world, how do Christians come together in non-traditional ways?For the Christian, there's value in learning about expressions of our own beliefs that may be unfamiliar.In Kingdom Expressions, an expert takes a look at some of the most significant, gospel-advancing movements and trends to take place in the latter twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States, including:The Church Growth MovementMis...

**Features in Catalyst Services' "Best Missions Books of 2022" list"Payne offers a taste of a theology of mission that serves the church and beginners very well."--**ThemeliosGod's mission is on every page of ScriptureIn Theology of Mission: A Concise Biblical Theology, J. D. Payne traces the theme of mission throughout Scripture. The Bible is a story of God's mission. God takes initiative to dwell with humanity. H...

Church planting is one of the most challenging yet rewarding adventures you can embark on. Often zealous planters and their teams launch their new church prematurely, without taking time to lay a firm foundation for long-term fruitful ministry. Failure to do so often results in a weakened new church, or even the new church closing after a few years.Rather than focusing on methodology, the how to’s of church planting, this book gives attention to six foundational concerns wise plante...

Research shows that over time, most churches plateau and then eventually decline. Typically, they start strong and experience periods of growth, then stagnate and lose members. Since 1991, the North American population has increased by 15 percent while the number of "unchurched" people has increased by 92 percent. Large church houses that were filled in the 1950s and `60s now hold a fraction of their capacity.To counter this trend, authors Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson surveyed 300 ch...