Community Ministry

Discipleship can feel like a meandering journey - we don’t know what we want, and none of the programs offered seem to get us anywhere. We need something to orient ourselves and something to direct our steps toward a clear destination. Simple Discipleship, with its companion assessment tool, offers a plan for discipleship that is tailored to your real life and your personality and clearly pointed in the way of Jesus.

For every person who has felt lonely or isolated, The Sacred Us explores a new way of living through the practice of biblical community. In a world that celebrates individuality and autonomy, too many of us struggle to form deep, meaningful relationships. Loneliness is the norm, rich friendships are rare, and the church is no exception. We long for real community but often don’t know how to get there. What will it take to develop healthy friendships?

Drawn from the personal experience of the authors and current research, The Heart of Recovery calls us to set aside judgment and mend recovering addicts and their families with the stuff God uses to heal: compassion and community. It's a call to serve the ones who cannot repay, to forgive 70 times 7, to fling the door wide open to the prodigal, and to remember the purpose of grace. A supportive community - family, friends, the church, and more - encourages and sustains long-term recovery. Through compassion, we bring hope for healing.

With all the hostility boiling just under the surface of our world, we need a renewed vision of Jesus as the Lamb of God who can lead us in the peaceable ways of the Kingdom. When we fail to keep Jesus at the center of our lives, we lean into the desires of our hearts more than the desires God has for us. As a result, our entire spirituality becomes driven by the self and for the self. We need renewed practices of centering Jesus in our hearts and minds. Derek Vreeland invites you to imagine what it looks like to keep Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of three key areas of our lives.

Indispensable Church provides you and your church real-world, hands-on steps to create a revolution of service to your local community in the name of Christ. By exploring the life of Jesus and the strategic ways he modeled serving the people around him, pastor Chris Sonksen shows you how to put love into action in your neighborhood and your city. The step-by-step instructions, biblical challenges, and teaching resources will help you take love to the streets and make an impact right where you live.

In Build Neighbors, Jimmy tells his story of discovering a life of community. What began as a simple effort to serve people in need led to relationships that not only changed his perspective of others, but also challenged his own inner brokenness. This collection of story-based lessons is aimed at helping anyone who wants to live more fully in community with friends and neighbors. Relational serving focuses on meeting physical needs but also sharing the love God holds for us.

First-century Christians knew what it meant to live in vital community with one another, relating with a depth and commitment that made "the body of Christ" a perfect metaphor for the church. What would it take to reclaim that kind of love, joy, support, and dynamic spiritual growth? Listen to this book and find out.

Bill Willits and best-selling author Andy Stanley share their successful approach, which has resulted in nearly 8,000 adults becoming involved in small groups at North Point Community Church in Atlanta . Simply put, the five principles clearly described here have passed the test. This is not just another book about community; this is a book about strategy - strategy that builds a small group culture.

Doug Ruffle writes A Missionary Mindset using the timeless principles of E. Stanley Jones and transfers them for use today. Teaching us to approach the mission field as if we were from a different country and learning a new culture, a new way of communicating, and a new way to connect people to the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For those who declare that Sunday school doesn't work anymore, here is a book that can revitalize this often neglected ministry. Steve Parr encourages churches to re-energize traditional Sunday school by making it intentionally evangelistic, using proven methods and strategies already implemented in hundreds of growing churches. He guides churches through the process of analyzing their present programs and moving in a new direction to fulfill the Great Commission.

A Christianity Today survey identified the most common self-described leadership weaknesses to be in strategizing, visioning, and entrepreneurial skills. But there is a tension that exists between dreaming, vision-casting, and being able to actually pull it off. What is from God, what is from our own imaginations, how do we recognize the difference, and then what do we do with it? In Pastorpreneur, pastor and speaker John Jackson equips pastors to employ businesslike strategic planning and innovation skills to enhance their congregational leadership.

Jesus cared the most for people - especially vulnerable people - and he calls us to do the same. Because relationships change lives, You Can Mentor will help you build positive, lasting, and life-changing relationships with the kids who need it the most. With stories of how his life was turned around by mentors, executive director of Forerunner Mentoring and podcast host Zach Garza shares practical tips for cultivating a godly mentoring mindset, engaging and sustaining a healthy mentoring relationship, and the tools to overcome difficult mentoring obstacles.

This revolutionary yet practical book addresses the causes of burnout many Christians face and empowers them to join God in a joy-fueled movement of Jesus! Vibrancy and joy are what Christians are promised. Yet, many have experienced the opposite: a guilt-ridden, duty-based, judgmental culture that has left them still searching for the life Jesus promised.

We all have "weeping years", seasons where the trials seem to come one after another. For Ashleigh and her husband, their weeping years included miscarriage, multiple job losses, feelings of betrayal, panic attacks, anti-depressants, cross-country moves, and even suicidal thoughts. Loss is a constant of life, but the intensity of those years changed Ashleigh, altering how she understood and responded to grief. This book tells her story.

This is a powerful collection of poems, calling out to contemplatives and interfaith grandmothers, church members, artists, athletes, patients, and all manner of humans desiring to sense the sacred in the many textures of life.

When it comes to Christ-centered recovery, we, the church, have work to do. Our legalistic, box-checking, one-size-fits-all programs produce astonishingly high failure rates—which means far too many people are left to fight addiction, mental health problems, and suicidal thoughts on their own. The goal of The Uncovery is to help the church—and the world—see recovery through a grace-laced, gospel lens. Every single one of us has some trauma or issue from our past that may still be affecting our life today. This book offers listeners nudge to go deeper in the recovery space.

How can the people of God develop churches in ways that help and don't hurt poor neighborhoods? Pastors and church planters interested in Christian community development will find here practical insights into the power of the local church, which is often underrated. Churches can serve their communities and improve the quality of life of every facet of the neighborhood.

You may be a new believer and wonder what it means to belong to a church; you may be reluctant to commit to your church because of past experiences; you may have recently relocated and want to find a church where you feel at home; or you may love your church and desire to commit to it more deeply and serve it more fully. Whatever the case, this book will help you to see that belonging to a church is a good gift from God, the outworking of our identity as brothers and sisters in Christ, and worth your time, love, and commitment.

An effective new voice in the contemporary church movement shares important lessons from his failures and successes in building a community that reaches out with maximum impact within an emerging culture. Over the past decade, Mike Tatlock has been on a journey to examine the life of Jesus with a view to developing a church that truly makes a difference. His hard-won lessons have shaped a ministry philosophy that is connecting people in community to engage the world around them.

The rules of Benedict and Basil show us how to live in community with one another. Though written for monasteries over 1500 years ago, these rules contain timeless wisdom about Christian community. Greg Peters has combined and reorganized the rule of Benedict and the rule of Basil for modern listeners so that we too can meditate on, enjoy, and apply the insights of two of the most influential Christians ever to have lived.