Church Ministry

In a tiny, dilapidated trailer in northeastern Oregon, a young woman saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in an ordinary landscape painting hanging on her bedroom wall. After being met with skepticism from the local parish, the matter was officially placed "under investigation" by the Catholic diocese. Investigative journalist Randall Sullivan wanted to know how, exactly, one might conduct the official inquiry into such an incident, so he set off to interview theologians, historians, and postulators.

In Churchwork, Rodney Shaw provides pastors', ministry leaders', and volunteers' invaluable wisdom and insight to optimize the performance of ministry teams. With fresh perspectives on follower-centric leadership and courageous followership, this book will bring clarity to your vision. As you begin to implement the principles in this book, you can expect to see results.

Part one of the book reminds us that an individual or a church can teach sound doctrine, be faithful to the gospel, be morally upright and hard-working, and yet be lacking love and therefore, be displeasing to Christ. Love can grow cold while outward religious performance appears acceptable - even praiseworthy. Part two of Love or Die presents practical ways to cultivate love in the local church, including chapters that challenge us to study love, pray for love, teach love, model love, guard love, and practice love.

How to analyze and reevaluate your Christian beliefs and experiences in the church while keeping the core of your faith intact. The number of Christians leaving the church today is significant. Many feel there is no place for them within the faith—they no longer feel at home in their church...

Church Planting Thresholds explores both the why's and the how's of church planting, providing "Thresholds" that serve as progress mileposts along the church-planting journey. This simple guide will encourage ordinary Christians as they seek to fulfill the great commission through planting churches.

Evangelical Idolatry: How Pastors Like Me Have Failed the People of God is both a confession and a call to repentance. Reflecting on his twenty-year pastoral ministry with candor and humility, Mikels acknowledges the ways he enabled parishioners to develop destructive loyalties to cultural and political idols. As he works to reform his own worldview and embrace allegiance to Christ alone, he urges evangelical pastors and laypeople to join him in reforming their faith and living out the good news of the true gospel.

While much of church planting today is approached as an innovative new effort, church leaders can take comfort in the truth that they are simply stewards of what the faithful church has been doing for millennia. By rediscovering the foundations of our heritage, we are able to build healthier, more faithful, and more effective churches. At the same time, the act of planting new churches can breathe new life into these ancient traditions as they are applied to a variety of cultural contexts.

If you have suffered spiritual abuse from a toxic church, toxic organization, or toxic leader, your trust has been broken. You entrusted your life to someone you thought would care for you: someone who initially inspired you to know God, only to reject you in the end. Now you are left wounded and disillusioned, wondering if you can ever trust others, yourself, or possibly even God, again.

In addition to the regular demands of preaching and shepherding, modern pastors feel undue pressure to entertain congregants and increase attendance numbers. Often, churches resort to the latest business models to keep pace. But true, life-giving guidance lies in Scripture and the wisdom of those having come before us. Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls helps pastors to embrace a classic, biblical vision of ministry through the study of selected pastoral virtues and early church figures.

In Planting by Pastoring, author Nathan Knight challenges our view of church planting and centers the goal of pastoral ministry on a basic biblical foundation: a church plant is in fact a church, and a planter is in fact a pastor. A healthy church plant is not measured by size, speed, or level of self-sufficiency but by good pastoring that produces faith, fruit, and a flourishing community. Once pastors and church leaders redefine their plant as a church, their ministry will begin to align with Jesus's mission to shepherd the flock and bring glory to God alone.

Even if you don’t go to the city to minister, make no mistake—the city is coming to you. Regardless of your particular cultural or geographical context, you will need to consider the city when forming a theological vision that engages the people you are trying to reach. In Loving the City...

At the beginning of the book of the Revelation of St. John, John was commanded to "write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches". We know that these seven churches were named after cities in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). From the Book of Revelation itself, we have St. John's description of each Church:

Dodie Osteen, mother of Joel Osteen, gives readers a personal account of her extraordinary life and shares what she has learned about love, faith, and family. As the wife of forty-four years to the late Pastor John Osteen, founder of Lakewood Church, Dodie Osteen stood as a wife, mother, and...

Being a pastor is not a regular 9-to-5 job. There is an unending list of important things to do as you seek to serve others sacrificially. The demands of ministry make it difficult to find a healthy rhythm of life and work, and can leave you running on empty. How can we develop a sustainable pattern of ministry that both honors the Lord and the people we care for and that will also protect us from burnout?

Congregations often seek to combat the crisis of decline by using innovation to produce new resources. But leading practical theologian Andrew Root shows that the church's crisis is not in the loss of resources; it's in the loss of life—and that life can only return when we remain open to God's encountering presence. This new book, related to Root's critically acclaimed Ministry in a Secular Age project, addresses the practical form the church must take in a secular age.

In Becoming a True Spiritual Community (formerly titled The Safest Place on Earth), Larry Crabb explores such a place, where God can heal disconnected people and allow them to reconnect with each other and, ultimately, with Him. In today's frenetic society, people rarely develop intimate...

In today’s polarized context, Christians often have committed, biblical rationales for very different positions. How can Christians navigate disagreements with both truth and love? Tim Muehlhoff and Rick Langer provide lessons from conflict theory and church history on how to negotiate differing biblical convictions in order to move toward Christian unity.

Compiled with the intent to improve the preaching standards in churches at the time and to increase pastoral understanding of Christianity, Homilies is a comprehensive overview of Christian theology, the history and impact of the Reformation, and daily applications of faith and doctrine.

To disciple the youth in our student ministries today, we have to understand the unique characteristics of Generation Z and apply lessons learned from recent decades of youth ministry. Pastor and Professor Timothy McKnight brings a wealth of new insights, resources, and guidance for reaching today's adolescents.

The first section summarizes the case laws. The author tenderly illustrates how the law is for our good, and makes clear the difference between the sacrificial laws and those that apply today. The second section vividly shows the practical implications of the law. The examples catch the reader's attention; the author clearly has had much experience discussing God's law. The third section shows that would-be challengers to God's law produce only poison and death. Only God's law can claim to express God's "covenant grace in helping us."