City Church

It's not enough to plant individual churches in isolation from each other. The spiritual need and opportunity of our cities is too big for any one church to meet alone. Pastors Neil Powell and John James contend that to truly transform a city, the gospel compels us to create localized, collaborative church planting movements. They share lessons learned and principles discovered from their experiences leading a successful citywide movement. The more willing we are to collaborate across denominations and networks, the more effectively we will reach our communities for Jesus.

The most famous church in Jerusalem for nearly 2,000 years, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, often called the Church of the Resurrection, was built in the era of St. Constantine, and the church as a structure has no history separable from the city of Jerusalem and its environs. It is venerated as being on the site where Jesus was crucified and buried, and naturally, making it a crucial pilgrimage site for Christians, and it is now the home of the Greek Orthodox Jerusalem Patriarchate.

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.

April 13, 2006. A Jerusalem Post headline reads: "Jericho man murdered over home sale." The 42 year-old father of eight was kidnapped, shot seven times, thrown into his car, and set on fire, because he had sold his Jerusalem apartment to Jews. Radical Islam has long desired to seize Jerusalem and make it off limits to Christian and Jewish believers. In this revealing book, Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, reminds us that the war on terror is also a war on faith.

Falling in love with your best friend sucks—especially when they don't love you back. Liv needs help and Bryn is determined to give it to her. After a night out ends in a whole lot of embarrassment for Liv, she is faced with the fact that she might need some assistance in getting over her best friend and roommate, Jamie. When Bryn is forced to temporarily move in with Jamie and Liv, a night of drinking results in a possibly disastrous deal: All of Liv's decisions are now in Bryn's hands. The goal? Operation fall-out-of-love.

Leo isn't one for drama—let alone being the cause for it. So when his parents unexpectedly turn up in Sun City with his baby sister in tow, he's unprepared for the trouble he's accidentally unleashed on his own life. There were three problems: He might be in love with his best friend, Kit. His parents thought Kit was his boyfriend . . . probably because that was what he'd told them. Kit had no clue about either of these things.

Why are homosexual clergymen the biggest homophobes? Why do they hide sexual offenders behind clerical collars? Why do they hate Pope Francis so much? The answers to these and many other questions are what French sociologist F. Martel, looks for in his interviews with the clergymen. His book is a result of an investigation conducted in 30 countries. He finds that the Church has the biggest community of homosexuals in the world.

All Helena really wants is a better life for her 12-year-old son, Luke. To do that, she needs to get him into a good school, which isn’t easy to do when you are a single mother and a Catholic in a near-future United States where there is no more separation between church and state. States, even neighborhoods, are divided along religious lines, and Helena faces discrimination everywhere she goes. Adam, a teenager from her congregation, convinces Helena to leave everything behind and take him and her son across the new American landscape to New Secular City.