English Church

You hear about Israel in the news regularly, but beyond the many opinions and preconceptions, do you really know what to make of the conflicts and controversies in the Middle East? What Should We Think About Israel? exposes the main current issues and provides well-researched objective facts to help you learn the truth about Israel's past, present, and future. This compilation from experts including Walter Kaiser, Jr., David Brickner, Mitch Glaser, Michael Brown, Arnold Fructenbaum, and Steven Ger will help you answer the tough questions.

What's the point of the church anyway? The emerging generation is opting out of the church in large numbers. They're embarrassed at how the church is portrayed in the media and dismayed at what appears to be their options for participation. Is church really necessary anymore? Is it even possible? Tim Soerens sees this unsettled state of affairs as an extraordinary opportunity: The church, he says, is on the edge of a new possibility at the very moment so much of it feels like it's falling apart.

The key to growth as a church, youth ministry, or a business is getting first-time guests to come back. It's about hospitality. The Come Back Effect reveals to church, ministry, and even business leaders the secret to helping a first-time guest return again and again. Through an engaging, story-driven approach, they explain how service and hospitality are two different things, describe how Jesus practiced hospitality, and invite leaders to develop and implement changes that lead to repeat visits and, eventually, to sustained growth.

For decades, we set our hopes on technology, politics, and the appearance of peace. We wanted to believe we were headed somewhere better - that progress was happening. But now, as our technology ensnares and isolates us, our politics threaten to tear us apart and our cultural decline continues to accelerate, people are understandably distressed. But throughout history, these periods of decline traditionally precede powerful spiritual renewal - and even revival. What if all the bad news in this world is actually good news for the church?

Restless cowpoke Perley Gates wanted nothing more than to track down the grandfather who abandoned his family years ago. What he found was the crazy old sidewinder barely hanging on after a Sioux massacre. The old man’s dying wish was to make things right for deserting his kin — by giving his strong-willed grandson Perley clues to the whereabouts of a buried fortune in gold.

You know that nobody succeeds alone - you need a great team. But when you're the leader and you aren't sure how to nurture the best from your crew, where can you turn for help? In The Lasting Impact of Positive Leadership, best-selling author Stan Toler serves as your coach and reveals what it takes to build a successful team. As you examine the proven strategies of great leaders, you will learn how to effectively connect and communicate, and how to motivate people and inspire them to give their best every day.

Bruce Shelley's classic history of the church brings the story of global Christianity into the 21st century. Like a skilled screenwriter, Shelley begins each chapter with three elements: characters, setting, plot. Taking you from the early centuries of the church up through the modern era he tells a story of actual people, in a particular situation, taking action or being acted upon, provides a window into the circumstances and historical context, and from there develops the story of a major period or theme of Christian history.

On a hot summer night in Montauk, the bodies of two local bar patrons are discovered in the dunes, torn to shreds, their identities unrecognizable.... In another part of town, a woman's backyard is invaded by four terrifying creatures that defy any kind of description. What's clear is that they're hostile - and they're ravenous....

Since he was a small boy, Mosab Hassan Yousef has had an inside view of the deadly terrorist group Hamas. The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas and its most popular leader, young Mosab assisted his father for years in his political activities while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status...and power. But everything changed when Mosab turned away from terror and violence and embraced instead the teachings of another famous Middle East leader.

If you're not reaching the future of the church, your church has no future. As much sting as that statement has, it's hard to argue with. Yet many churches have no idea how to attract and retain younger generations. If you want to understand how to reach, teach, and empower young adults in your church, Jonathan "JP" Pokluda is ready to show you how.

In the dark shadow of the Prophecy Mountains lies the ramshackle town of Rattlesnake Wells, where dreamers come to make their fortunes, and desperados come to die. The streets of this little settlement are slick with mud and stained with blood, and it will fall to Bob Hatfield to sweep them clean. The town marshal, Hatfield has a young man’s face, but his eyes are those of a killer. He is a good man, but he has a secret that weighs on his soul.

To many in the West, Orthodoxy remains shrouded in mystery, an exotic and foreign religion that survived in the East following the Great Schism of 1054 that split the Christian world into two camps - Catholic and Orthodox. However, as the second largest Christian denomination, Orthodox Christianity is anything but foreign to the nearly 300 million worshipers who practice it. For them, Orthodoxy is a living, breathing reality; a way of being Christian ultimately rooted in the person of Jesus and the experience of the early church.

In this provocative new contribution to public theology, world-renowned theologian Miroslav Volf (named "America's New Public Intellectual" by Scot McKnight on his Jesus Creed blog) and Matthew Croasmun explain that the intellectual tools needed to rescue us from our present malaise and meet our new cultural challenge are the tools of theology. A renewal of theology is crucial to help us articulate compelling visions of the good life, find our way through the maze of contested questions of value, and answer the fundamental question of what makes life worth living.

Black women are the hidden figures in the church. Despite at times being rendered invisible, uninvited, and unprotected in a racist and sexist world, they are valued image-bearers and influential instruments in God’s redemptive plan. Church Girl invites you, as a Black woman, on a journey from the garden to the present day. Your unique story as a Black woman lies within the grand narrative of Scripture, and the message of the gospel is the light, lens, and love you need to help you see and live as God intends.

Christian organizations have come to be known mostly for what we're against. And all too often, that includes being against each other. But amid growing distrust of religious institutions, Christ-centered nonprofits have a unique opportunity to link arms and collectively pursue a calling higher than any one organization's agenda. Rooting for Rivals reveals how your ministry can multiply its impact by cooperating rather than competing with others, modeling Christlike love and generosity in the process.

There's always a man around the corner, and church trustee James Black should know - he's usually that very man. Meet a deliciously dysfunctional family in this riveting new novel, filled with intrigue, sex, and surprises.

In recent years, we’ve seen the “great resignation” in Church leadership and attendance, the devastation of spiritual abuse, and the breakdown of faith within our culture. In The House That Jesus Built, Natalie encourages all of us to recognize our role as Jesus’ disciples in rebuilding our churches, brick by brick. The House That Jesus Built will stir your heart to see God’s churches realigned with the Great Commission and the Great Command. As Natalie reminds us, we are the Church. We are the ones who can partner with Jesus to build something beautiful out of the rubble—and back on the Rock.

Though exceptions do exist, the reality is that church in America is failing one life at a time. Somewhere between pathetically predictable and shamefully entertaining, sadly sentimental and rarely authentic, church has become worst of all...godless. Vertical Church points to a new day where God is the seeker, and we are the ones found. In Vertical Church God shows up, and that changes everything.

Millions are satisfied to sit through hour-long, weekly religious services. Millions more have left the church, brokenhearted and cynical. But God is waking up his people - people who will risk everything and sacrifice anything to become the dynamic, powerful church seen in Scripture. We Are Church calls Christ-followers, young and old, to hold fast to their biblical roots while seeking radical change. Scripture promises an exuberant and unstoppable church. That wondrous early church of acts can be our reality today.

In 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically elected president - Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood - and subsequently led a brutal repression of the Islamist group. These bloody events echoed an older political rift: the splitting of nationalists and Islamists during the rule of Egyptian president and Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's leading authorities on the Middle East, tells how the clash between pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism has shaped the history of the region.