Ministry Leadership

Logos Book of the Year. Meetings can sap our energy, rupture community and thoroughly demoralize us. They can go on forever with no resolution. Or they can rush along without consensus just to "get through the agenda." What if there was another way? Church boards and other Christian leadership teams have long relied on models adapted from the business world. Ruth Haley Barton, president of the Transforming Center, helps teams transition to a much more suitable model—the spiritual community that discerns God's will together.

Church Unique is written by church consultant Will Mancini - an expert on a new kind of visioning process to help churches develop a stunningly unique model of ministry that leads to redemptive movement. He guides churches away from an internal focus to emphasize participation in their community and surrounding culture. In this important audiobook, Mancini offers an approach for rethinking what it means to lead with clarity as a visionary. Mancini explains that each church has a culture that reflects its particular values, thoughts, attitudes, and actions.

At more than 78 million strong, the Millennials - those born between 1980 and 2000 - have surpassed the Boomers as the larger and more influential generation in America. Now, as its members begin to reach adulthood, where the traits of a generation really take shape, best-selling research author Thom Rainer (Simple Church) and his son Jess (a Millennial born in 1985) present the first major investigative work on Millennials from a Christian worldview perspective.

Becoming Brave offers a distinctly Christian framework for addressing systemic injustice. It challenges Christians to be everyday activists who become brave enough to break the silence and work with others to dismantle systems of injustice and inequality.

Taking his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity, Timothy Keller uncovers the essential message of Jesus, locked inside his most familiar parable. Within that parable Jesus reveals God's prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.

In this audiobook, you'll learn how to build a business partnership with God, changes you can make in your work habits, and the laws you should follow to reap the benefits of your partnership with God and others.

This illuminating and insightful audiobook analyzes problems with the culture's underlying worldviews and suggests how Christians can offer solutions to current problems as a way to rebuild culture and faith.

In Hero Maker you will learn how to bring real change to your church and community by developing the practical skills to help others reach their leadership potential. Drawing on five powerful practices found in the ministry of Jesus, Hero Maker presents the key steps of apprenticeship that will build up other leaders and provides strategies for how you can activate gifts, help others take ownership, and develop a simple scorecard for measuring your kingdom-building progress.

For 35 years Biblical Eldership has been the premier book explaining the biblical teaching on church eldership, which is shared pastoral leadership by a council of scripturally qualified, Spirit-placed elders. Biblical Eldership has helped ignite a worldwide awakening to this long-neglected and misunderstood subject. This new edition is a comprehensive revision. For those who love solid Bible exposition, this is a much-welcomed volume.

How do Christians account for the widespread presence of goodness in a fallen world? Richard Mouw, one of the most influential evangelical voices in America, presents his mature thought on the topic of common grace. Addressing a range of issues relevant to engaging common grace in the 21st century, Mouw shows how God takes delight in all things that glorify him - even those that happen beyond the boundaries of the church-and defends the doctrine of common grace from its detractors.

Our world has been torn asunder by racial, ethnic, and ideological differences. It is seen in our politics, felt in our families, and ingrained in our theology. Sadly, the church has often reinforced these ethnic and racial divides. To cast off the ugliness of disunity and heal our fractured humanity, we must cultivate spiritual practices that help us pursue beautiful community. In The Beautiful Community, pastor and theologian Irwyn Ince boldly unpacks the reasons for our divisions while gently guiding us toward our true hope for wholeness and reconciliation.

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.

Neither "everything's fine" nor "burn it all down", Stringer offers a thoughtful appreciation of evangelicalism's history, identity, and strengths, but also lament for its blind spots, toxic brokenness, and complicity with injustice. From this complicated space, we can move forward with informed vision rather than resignation and with hope for our future together.

Saint, slave or scholar? Patrick of Ireland is known as all three, but who is he really? Let K. C. Murdarasi bring to light the real life of this father of the Christian faith. Kidnapped from his home and family as a young boy you would think forgiveness would have been far from his mind.Yet with God's grace Patrick returned to the land of his captivity where he preached the good news of Jesus Christ to slaves and kings alike - and left a legacy of faith that would last for centuries.

Do you feel too overwhelmed to enjoy life, unable to sort out the demands on your time? Are you doing your best work as a leader yet not making an impact? Have you ever felt stuck, powerless to change your environment? In The Emotionally Healthy Leader, best-selling author Peter Scazzero shows leaders how to develop a deep, inner life with Christ, examining its profound implications for surviving stress, planning and decision-making, building teams, creating healthy culture, influencing others, and much more.

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.

In Reclaiming Church, J. J. Warren continues his call to reaffirm the Church be welcoming to all, including young people like those he led at Sarah Lawrence College who "didn't know God could love them because their churches said God didn't."

A revolution is moving through the body of Christ, challenging the spiritual status quo and redefining the very notion of corporate worship - a movement inspired by the divine design for holy fellowship. It's a fresh concept rooted in ancient history.

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.

In today's highly charged social and political environment, we often don't know how to talk well with others - especially with people whose backgrounds differ from our own. C. Christopher Smith, coauthor of the critically acclaimed and influential Slow Church, addresses why conversation has become such a challenge in the 21st century and argues that it is perhaps the most-needed spiritual practice of our individualistic age.