Church Culture

There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers. It's a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity, It's about what happens when Christians support, animate, and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from.

The story of five best-selling novels beloved by evangelicals, the book industry they built, and the collective imagination they shaped. Who are evangelicals? And what is evangelicalism? Those attempting to answer these questions usually speak in terms of political and theological stances. But those stances emerge from an evangelical world with its own institutions - institutions that shape imagination as much as they shape ideology.

Designed to help church leaders and pastors, The Quest helps to identify and promote culture change within the church body so that members are equipped and empowered to help expand the Kingdom of God. Practical and powerful, your church will see its impact on your community grow exponentially.

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?

With 2.5 million viewers at any given moment, the streaming platform Twitch is in the lead and often well beyond mainstream networks like CNN and Fox during primetime. On Twitch, the Amazon-owned tech behemoth, the biggest personalities, like Kai Cenat, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, and Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, can earn millions per year by firing up their internet connection and going live.

Satan's transformation from opaque functionary to chief antagonist is one of the most striking features of the development of Jewish theology in the Second Temple Period and beyond. Once no more than an "accuser" testing members of the human community, Satan, along with his demons, is presented by Jewish apocalyptic texts and the New Testament as a main source of evil in the world. In Satan and the Problem of Evil, noted scholar Archie Wright explores this dynamic in both its historical and theological trajectories.

Impeccably researched, thought challenging, and leavened by wit, Getting Religion, the highly anticipated new book from Kenneth L. Woodward, is ideal for listeners looking to understand how religion came to be a contentious element in 21st-century public life. Here the award-winning author blends memoir (especially of the postwar era) with copious reporting and shrewd historical analysis to tell the story of how American religion, culture, and politics influenced each other in the second half of the 20th century.

Following the example of John the Baptist and with a careful look at the teaching of Scripture, Tim Suttle dares church leaders to risk failure by chasing the vision God has given them - no matter how small it might seem - instead of pursuing the broad path of pragmatism that leads to fame and numerical success.

Alone among the creatures of the world, man suffers a pang both bitter and sweet. It is an ache for the homecoming. The Greeks called it nostalgia. Post-modern man, homeless almost by definition, cannot understand nostalgia. If he is a progressive, dreaming of a utopia to come, he dismisses it contemptuously, eager to bury a past he despises. If he is a reactionary, he sentimentalizes it, dreaming of a lost golden age. In this profound reflection, Anthony Esolen explores the true meaning of nostalgia and its place in the human heart.

Renewable Wellbeing reveals how re-discovering the Jesus way of wellbeing is our best hope for a tired church in a broken world. Examining episodes from Jesus’ life as seen in John’s Gospel, Ruth Rice unpacks the five culture shifts she believes the church needs today to renew wellbeing in our churches: connecting with our identity, learning the new economy of the kingdom, getting active in community, taking notice of simplicity in our habits, and giving in renewable ways and sensing our call to serve.

Many people today think the most effective means to reach this postmodern world for Christ is for the church to become more attractive and relevant to the culture. It must reinvent itself, adjust its gospel message, be less dogmatic, more therapeutic, tolerant, and entertaining. It must pander to the culture, take up its social causes, even conform to it - but never oppose it. Yet such a position is totally foreign to scripture and therefore mitigates the power and blessing of God.

The viral upswing of the "spiritual but not religious" trend has cast religion as going rapidly out of style. Yet even in his own desert of deconstruction, Zach couldn't shake his desire for a spiritual home. His search ultimately led him to look behind the statistics, where Zach found an astonishing undercurrent subversively at work.

More people live in cities now than at any other time in human history, presenting a historic opportunity for Christians to influence the majority of the world. Unfortunately, most Christian literature about the city focuses solely on its problems (crime, homelessness, etc.), rather than providing a comprehensive analysis of the city that informs, instructs, and inspires. Using sociological research and data, urban pastors Justin Buzzard and Stephen Um lay out the vision and rationale for church planting, cultural engagement, and missionary impulses in our world’s cities as they provide a solid foundation for motivation.

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.

Has God abandoned Israel? Has the Church “replaced” Israel? What does the Bible say? As we watch the world events, it is clear that Israel is following her prophetic scenario, and a new chapter is about to be written - and there may be a big surprise on our near horizon!

Things are chaotic in America. Liberal policies are advancing. A rash of executive orders appears to be moving the nation closer to socialism and a one-world government. And conservatives, including many Christians, are being censored as never before. In some ways, Christians cancel each other in debates over non-essentials. There is no going backward if we want to remain effective and engaged. We can take the initiative and move forward from where we are. This book will assess and affirm the different approaches playing out.

Your church's sermons often include a call to evangelize. You've held evangelism training events. You give out invites to your Christmas and Easter services. So… where are all the new Christians? Is your church actually reaching the lost with the gospel? For many of us, despite having the best intentions our churches struggle to reach out with the gospel effectively. J.A. Medders and Doug Logan, Jr. have decades of experience in leading churches and mentoring pastors, and here they outline six principles for cultivating a genuine evangelistic culture throughout your church.

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.

For many pastors and church leaders, ministry is an exhausting, frustrating, and even fruitless endeavor. Driven by programs and cultural trends, churches are competing to stay relevant and effective in a hostile world. What if there were a better way - a way of rest and of power - the way of abiding?

The Bible tells us that the congregation gathered around God's heavenly throne will be "a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language," all singing the praises of the Lamb. God's intention has always been to delight for all eternity in a redeemed community of ethnic diversity. But this diverse community shouldn't have to wait until eternity to begin! It can be a reality in our own local churches here and now. Patterned after a worship service, In Church as It Is in Heaven gives biblical warrant for such a community.