Mission Ministry

Persuaded is a collection of autobiographic stories highlighting the life, ministry, and thoughts of a missionary. Interspersed throughout is a theme suggesting change from modern missional practices to post-modern approaches.

Originally entitled “The Duty of Interesting Children in the Missionary Cause", Smyth charges parents to bring their children up with a missionary spirit and in a missionary practice. He lays out the means by which this desired goal will happen and gives encouragement to his readers with a vision of how God has used and can use children to bring sinners to himself. Every Christian parent will benefit from Smyth’s words of exhortation.

Filled with real-life stories and practical advice, Called to Care starts by helping you honestly assess your motivation to help - sometimes the wrong motivation sets the stage for an unsuccessful experience. From there, the book shows what adoption and foster care really look like in a variety of situations, from domestic and international adoptions to short-term foster care and foster-to-adopt arrangements. Also included is how churches and individuals can minister to refugees.

Everyone has ultimate questions. Questions like: Why did God create? Why is there evil? Was the devil created? Why do bad things happen to good people? Most of these questions have always gone unanswered. Now, Bob Sjogren attempts to answer these questions and more. He does it by thinking through one single verse which unlocks generational mysteries. It also allows us to understand, not only why were things created, but also in what order!

Governor Huckabee guides listeners through multiple facets of life and how to be an example that others will follow and carry forward to the future. Also includes reflection questions and discussion prompts.

Women have more education, more money, and more choices than ever before. Yet, research shows we are less happy than women 40 years ago. Today, we can "have it all". So why is happiness declining? In Happy Women Live Better, best-selling author Valorie Burton unlocks the secret to your personal happiness. She reveals 13 happiness triggers - choices that can boost your joy right now, even in the midst of deadlines, children, marriage, dating, and squeezing in a workout or girls' night out.

With high expectations, Vanguards of a Missionary Uprising calls on Christian African-American students to step forward and lead a new international missionary movement. Celebrating their leadership potential, a veteran urban missionary makes this positive challenge from Jesus Christ's Great Commission in the Bible.

Is your church a rowboat church or a sailboat church? Rowboat churches depend largely on human effort. When church budgets shrink and membership declines, rowboat churches frantically row harder against a current. Sailboat churches, on the other hand, take up the oars, hoist sails, and rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them. Arguing that churches should be "sailboats," Joan S. Gray encourages listeners to shift concern from the many daily, practical concerns of their local church to fresh ideas that can be found using the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

You are in the family of God....It can get messy. When you look at your church today, what do you see? A social organization that does good things for the community? A religious corporation with a CEO at the helm? A spiritual and self-help counseling center? Pastor Ross Parsley believes that none of these ideas captures God’s design. Instead, God sees us more like a family - a multigenerational group of real people who love each other and care for one another’s needs, no matter how messy. We are not consumers asking what the church can do for us. We are family members learning how to love deeply, fight fairly, and share selflessly.

We all want to know, "How can I help without hurting in this specific situation?" But there’s no one answer, and there’s definitely no shortcuts, but there are key principles—or ministry design principles. Think of these like the rules an improvising actor learns—the principles are crucial, but the actor must decide how to put them into practice based on the complexities of the situation. This book contains 20 ministry design principles. They’re in no way perfect, but they represent the very best ideas we have for how to do effective poverty alleviation in the kingdom of God.

At midlife, our perspective can become blurry. Midlife is a disruptive season where we collide with limitations on all sides. We recognize there is more of life in the rearview mirror than on the road ahead of us. We wonder if our lives so far have been worthwhile. We are uncertain about what lies ahead. But midlife is also an opportunity to recalibrate our vision. It's a time to look back, take stock of our lives so far, and refocus on new dimensions of identity and calling. Peter Greer and Greg Lafferty offer insight for navigating midlife with fresh clarity and purpose.

No relationship is perfect - but it can be better. The secret to stronger relationships isn't to become more charming or funny or to solve the world's problems or to just try harder. All you have to do is listen. It's that simple. Yet our noisy culture hasn't equipped us to do this. With warmth and a touch of humor, personal coach and expert communicator Becky Harling shares simple, practical listening tools that will help you become a person others are drawn to and want to spend time with.

What happened to the girl who was not afraid to climb to the top of the waterfall and jump? Who backpacked across Europe? Who took on any feat of bravery without batting an eyelash? You wouldn't recognize her - she's become that woman paralyzed by fear, scared to death to trust God, and trying to manage her family's hectic life, financial crises (yes, plural), and family issues on her own steam. Relatable, touching, and yet hopeful, On the Other Side of Fear is the beautiful story of how one young woman learned to live in God's will, without fear.

Eyes to See is the story of God's incredible grace and faithfulness to a missionary family as they journeyed with their son and brother into the world of blindness.

An essential guide for maintaining integrity and preserving the good standing of your church in the face of a crisis, Church on Trial will teach you how to maintain and earn congregational trust and unity; safeguard your church's reputation preemptively and proactively before it crashes and burns; implement best practices for crisis prevention and recovery; build relationships and collaborate with trusted legal advisors; and gracefully handle negative media attention and publicity.

In this follow-up book, Conversations on When Everything Is Missions, more than 15 contributors add their voices. Each brings research, analysis and experience to the table. They reflect on how we got to the place where many sincere Christians believe everything is missions and address what it might take to put the gospel and the Great Commission back at the center of our global outreach efforts.

The Japanese army's brutal occupation of the city of Nanking during the 1937 Sino-Japanese War is known, for good reason, as the rape of Nanking. As they slaughtered an estimated 300,000 people, the invading soldiers raped more than 20,000 women - some estimates run as high as 80,000. Hua-ling Hu presents here the amazing untold story of the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, whose unswerving defiance of the Japanese protected 10,000 Chinese women and children.

Matthew Ellison and Denny Spitters call us to refocus our gaze on the gospel and the Great Commission. They assert that thinking must come before doing and must shape our world mission practices and priorities. When Everything Is Missions is for church and ministry leaders and all who look to clarify their own answers to questions like these: What is the mission of God? What is the mission of the Church? Is every Christian a missionary?

Anticipating the arguments of modern libertarian political philosophers, Lipscomb presents a biblical view of a voluntary society. He questions the idea that governments are created for the public good and argues that peaceful civilization is not dependent on the state. Christians should not participate in politics but should attempt to persuade people to follow the laws of God rather than using force.

If you want to overcome life-controlling issues, then this brand-new book by Deb Runge reveals how every person can understand how to be redeemed. This book is written out of the obedience to the one who saved her life, her Lord and Savior Jesus.