Theology Missions

Trendy new missions strategies are a dime a dozen, promising missionaries monumental results in record time. These strategies report explosive movements of people turning to Christ, but their claims are often dubious and they do little to ensure the health of believers or churches that remain. How can churches and missionaries address the urgent need to reach unreached people without falling for quick fixes?

In Thom Rainer's latest book, he sets out to discover how churches that were once healthy but had stagnated in growth have broken out to become great churches impacting lives and entire communities.

Many believe Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn¿s The Body to be the watershed book of the past decade. It impacted the Church worldwide, encouraging Christians of diverse backgrounds to see themselves as part of the universal body of Christ. It challenged many to a new sense of unity, realizing that we blunt the Gospel message every time we divide over petty issues and personal turf.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). This declarative phrase introduces fundamental questions circling the minds of skeptics and believers of Christianity alike. What was God’s mission when he chose to create? And why, through the Savior’s death on the cross and the witness of his church, does he continue to redeem the very creation that rebels against him?

After his resurrection, the Lord Jesus revealed how his suffering, glory, and mission plan for the nations are in fact central to the biblical story of redemption. After Emmaus shows how Christology and missiology are integrally connected throughout Scripture, especially in the teaching of Jesus and the apostles. Brian Tabb explains what Luke 24:46-47 reveals about God’s messianic promises in the Old Testament, their fulfillment in the New Testament, and the purpose of the church.

Why is the city a battleground of hostile principalities and powers? What is the mission of the church in the city? How can the church be supported in accomplishing that mission? These are the questions that Robert Linthicum treats in his comprehensive and probing biblical theology of the city. In the Bible the city is depicted both as a dwelling place of God and his people and as a center of power for Satan and his minions. The city is one primary stage on which the drama of salvation is played out.

Theology shapes who we are and how we organize to transform the world. Especially written for required United Methodist classes, this accessible book uses a Wesleyan theological frame—connection—to help listeners understand United Methodism's polity and organization as the interrelationship of our beliefs, mission, and practice. The book is organized into four parts—United Methodist beliefs, mission, practice, and organization. Polity and organization are primary embodiments of The United Methodist Church.

In End-Times? MISSION, Pastor AJ Platt, DMin, reveals why you should steer clear of popular premillennial eschatology. He does this while showing you what the Bible actually says about Armageddon, the Great Tribulation, the rapture, the resurrection, and the return of Jesus. In place of fear, you'll be amazed at God's postmillennial plans for planet Earth, along with your role in things while we wait for Jesus. The great news is, it's all a lot easier to understand than you think—so jump in now and see for yourself!

In this new book, Patrick Madrid uses the example of St. Francis de Sales to illustrate the zeal, spiritual principles, and attitude of one who sets out to live and share the faith. Christ sent his apostles into the whole world to make disciples of all nations, and by virtue of our baptism, we, too, are called to be apostles on this same mission. But how do we start? How can we accomplish in today’s culture?

Charles E. Curran explores the social mission of the U.S. Catholic Church from a theological perspective, analyzing and assessing four aspects: the importance of social mission, who carries it out, how it is carried out, and the roles that the Church and individual Catholics play in supporting these efforts. In the early and mid-twentieth century the Catholic Church in the United States tended to focus its social mission on its own charities, hospitals, and schools.

Ever since Jesus' commission to make disciples in his name, Christianity has transformed lives and the world at large. To those watching, it must have looked like an upstart religion led by a group of men, most of whom were martyred for their beliefs. The voice of secular culture today is no louder and no more indulgent than it was in those days. And yet much of the Western church has settled for becoming just another mass media market that's adding to the noise, instead of a movement that continues to turn the world upside down.

The Monkey and the Fish decodes profound shifts and events taking place in the world today due to globalism, multiculturalism and technology, and introduces an original approach to ministry, church, and leadership known as The Third Culture. The book title refers to an Eastern parable that will challenge you to reexamine fundamental assumptions of the evangelical movement, including erroneous interpretations that have made the church increasingly irrelevant in North America and the global village.

There's got to be more to church than this. People around the world are seeking a community that focuses more on others than on themselves. Yet most don't know where to start. Drawing from his own journey, Brandon Hatmaker reminds us that serving the least is not a trendy act of benevolence but a lifestyle of authentic community and spiritual transformation. In Barefoot Church, Brandon offers practical ideas for creating service-based, missional communities and explains how the organizational structure of a church can be created or restructured for mission in any context.

Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary isn’t a book of theory. It’s an action plan to help you relate the message of Christ to the people you work around, live with, and call your friends. Using personal experiences, humor, compelling stories, biblical illustrations, and the latest research, Lee Strobel helps you to understand non-Christians and what motivates them.

Many Christians know they should be passionate about evangelism, but in reality they often find it daunting. In this concise version of God Shines Forth, Daniel Hames and Michael Reeves urge Christians to grow in their knowledge and enjoyment of God—as they know God more, they will be spurred on to authentic service through missions and evangelism. To illustrate how the nature of God influences evangelism and missions, Hames and Reeves address biblical themes such as the glory of God, Christ's sacrifice, the fallenness of man, and the church's future hope.

The gospel message transcends cultures, but human communication does not. In Transforming Communication missionary and professor Vee J. D-Davidson provides principles for the intercultural communication of Christ. Using her twenty-five-plus years of experience teaching as a Westerner in Asia as a starting point, Davidson provides transferable principles that encourage awareness of context-specific issues and that see opportunities for intercultural communication as wholly unique opportunities, regardless of any perceived communication barriers.

With specific principles and strategies to empower believers to combat demonic attacks and the temptation to return to old patterns, listeners will discover how to put on the full armor of God and develop a proactive strategy to maintain their deliverance, which includes removing everything from their lives that would give the enemy a legal right to put them back in bondage. Ruffin draws from her own experiences and gives specific strategies and warfare prayers to overthrow demonic plans, plots, and agendas to help Christians overcome the enemy.

Ministry Makeover examines the decline within the church, especially the United Methodist Church (UMC), and some causes for this decline. It calls for a reforming of United Methodist structure and polity by drawing more attention to the value of the bi-vocational model of ministry and a re-visitation of the Wesleyan/United Brethren view and historical perspective.

In A Burning House, Brandon Washington contends that American Evangelicalism is a house ablaze: burning in the destructive fires of discrimination and injustice. The stain of segregation remains prevalent, not only in our national institutions, but also in our churches, and this has long tarnished the witness of Christianity and hampered our progress toward a Christ-like vision of Shalom—peace, justice, and wholeness—in the world. Common doctrine may unite black and white evangelicals, but rifts such as social ethics and cultural influences still separate us.