Church Life
Showing 501–530 of 530 results
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End Of Christian Psychology
$13.00Add to cartEastgate Publishers Title
What can be wrong with “Christian psychology”? When it is comprised of the same confusion of contradictory theories and techniques as secular psychology. “Christian” psychologists have simply borrowed their theories and techniques from this world’s wisdom. Packed with biblical and scientific evidence, this book thoroughly demonstrates that professional psychotherapy with its underlying psychologies is questionable at best, detrimental at worst, and a spiritual counterfeit in any event.
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Crisis In The Church
$29.95Add to cartDrawing on his wealth of experience as both a seminary professor and minister, John Leith identifies and confronts the contemporary crisis in theological education. He argues that the crisis in the seminaries is interwoven with the crisis in the church, and that the secularization of educational institutions has led seminaries to move away from their primary responsibility – preparing pastors for ministry.
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Life And Thought Of Kanzo Uchimura 1861-1930 A Print On Demand Title
$25.99Add to cartWhile staying in the United States in 1884 at the age of 23, Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) felt a sense of religious calling that led him to devote the rest of his life to Christian mission in Japan. His subsequent life and work earned him recognition as one of the most important Japanese thinkers, essayists, and theologians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Uchimura claimed that Japan adopted Western civilization at the reopening of the country in the late nineteenth century but did not adopt Christianity itself – the very cause, spirit, and life of Western civilization. This was the origin of all the difficulties Japan had been experiencing. There is no question that Uchimura believed Christianity would save Japan and the Japanese; the real question was “What kind of Christianity?”
In his view Christian faith entails a radical dependence on the gospel; baptism, communion, and the other sacraments are not necessary. He also believed that God’s truth can be revealed directly to each individual, so that an intermediary between God and people, such as a minister, priest, or pope, is not required. This argument led Uchimura to start the Mukyokai-shugi (Non-churchism), a denial of the institutional church. Miura here explores in depth this theme in Uchimura’s thought as well as Uchimura’s particular vision of Japan’s mission to the world.
This study not only offers Western readers new information about Kanzo Uchimura and the Japanese Non- church Movement; it also provides important insights into the way Christianity can be indigenized in a new culture, such as that of modern Japan.
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Connecting To God
$23.00Add to cartAlthough spiritual growth occurs within an individual, Ware explains that it is the calling of the congregation to be a community of support and encouragement. Indeed, it is amidst the support of a group that an individual learns how to live out personal faith. Ware provides a very practical and accessible model of spiritual formation for self-directing groups that can be led by clergy or laity. Includes thorough guidelines, do’s and don’ts, and ground rules for the successful pursuit of spiritual growth in small groups. See also Ware’s helpful book on spiritual type on next page.
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Interventionist
$27.99Add to cartThe most effective way to influence both individual and institutional behavior is to ask questions. The Interventionist provides a conceptual framework for asking questions about congregations, and it classifies various syndromes that prevent a church from making the changes that are needed for new life. It will help church leaders find a good match between the needs of the congregations and the gifts, skills, experience, personality, leadership style, and priorities of the candidate. The book is also a productive guide for the trained, career interim minister who comes purposely for six to twenty-four months to sort out the issues and syndromes that plague a congregation.
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White Soul : Country Music The Church And Working Americans
$22.99Add to cartWhite Soul examines the social, political and religious foundations of country music as the soul music of the white, working-class Americans. Country music gives voice to an economically battered subculture of hard-living and hard-working people who find self-expression in the music of honky-tonks and heartaches. It celebrates the “wild side of life” as a form of populist anarchism and escapist festivity. This unusual medley of sociology, theology, and country music history is also a compelling critique of the elitism of “good taste” in the dominant culture. Tex Sample challenges the church to reach out to working-class people, who have often been ignored and demeaned by churches held captive to the tastes and lifestyles of the upper middle class.
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Partners In Prayer
$14.99Add to cartForeword By Max Lucado.
1. Unleashing The Potential Of Prayer.
2. Getting To Know Your Father
3. Developing Practical Prayer Skiffs
4. Avoiding Personal Prayer Killers
5. Expanding Your Prayer Focus
6. Protecting And Partnering With Your Pastors
7. Praying Your Church To Its Potential
8. Organizing A Prayer Partner Team:
Afterword: Anticipating RevivalSpecial Section: Releasing God’s Power Through Fasting By Bill Bright
Appendices: How To Start A Prayer Partner Ministry In Your Home Church
A: Planning Your Prayer Partner Retreat
B: Preparing Prayer Partner Breakfasts
C: Creating Prayer Partner Guides And LettersAbout The Author P. 179
Additional Info
“John, I believe God has called me–a layrnan–to disciple, encourage, and pray for pastors. And the reason I came here today is so that I could pray for you.”With those words, respected leader, speaker, and author John Maxwell saw his agenda replaced by God’s agenda. The stranger who felt God’s calling to pray for this pastor fulfilled a need in Maxwell that he didn’t even know he had–and fourteen years later, the results are evident at the 3,500 member Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, California.
Partners in Prayer, the first book in the John Maxwell Church Resources series, shows church leaders and lay people how to unleash the potential of prayer on behalf of themselves, one another, and the church. If your church–or private devotional life–is starving in the area of prayer and you want to tap into the power and protection prayer provides, Maxwell gives practical insight into
–the fundamentals of prayer
–improving personal prayer life
–praying for others, including church leaders
–building a prayer partners ministry in the local church
–encouraging prayer revival nationwide
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* Are you missing out on God’s gift and blessing of prayer? Is there someone you know who would benefit from your committed prayers on their behalf. Despite God’s promise of the power of prayer to change our world, many of us never experience it. John Maxwell shows you how to strengthen your prayer life and reap the benefits awaiting those who become Partners in Prayer. -
Alabadle : Hispanic Christian Worship
$20.99Add to cartBy looking at the wide variety of Hispanic Christian worship that exists within the Hispanic community, Alabadle! highlights the cultural, generational, and denominational elements that comprise the spectrum of Hispanic worship.
Justo L. Gonzalez and seven other contributors provide an insightful look into the variety of worship styles that exist among numerous church traditions including Assemblies of God, United Methodist, Catholic, American Baptist, Presbyterian, and Disciples of Christ. And yet, in the midst of this variety, is a common thread of excitement – about worship and about the gospel!
Anyone interested in exploring worship, music, and liturgy styles from a particular Hispanic perspective will find Alabadle! a valuable learning tool.
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New Complete Server
$11.95Add to cartThis classic guide helps servers to perform with confidence and reverence, allowing the liturgy to unfold in a smooth and prayerful manner. A glossary of words and objects accompanies illustrations of vessels, linens, altar preparation, vestments, posture symbols, and examples of processions. Also contains easy-to-draw symbols that servers can use to make a diagram of their sanctuary’s layout for study and practice.
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Church For The Unchurched
$22.99Add to cart6 Chapters
Additional Info
CHURCH FOR THE UNCHURCHED
A rebirth of the apostolic way.This work shows that there is an apostolic way for a congregation to live out the gospel. This book calls for revolution–the revolution that must take place if the churches in America are to thrive and to fulfill the Great Commission. Church for the Unchurched is about the “abolition” of the laity.
God’s dream for his church from the earliest time has been that we practice the priesthood of all believers, that we be a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6). In its first 300 years of history, the church had no clergy. Rather, it was made up of believers who understood they were to be apostles, sent on mission by the living Christ. With the phenomenal growth of that early church, both numerically and in influence, two classes of Christians emerged, leaders and spectators. The spectators were supposed to learn sound doctrine, to pray, sing, listen to sermons, and pay the bills. But when the question is asked, as it often is, “Why doesn’t the church do something about…,” “the church” is synonymous with “the clergy.”
This book studies a number of apostolic congregations from various traditions and assorted geographical locations that are successfully reaching the unchurched. It is full of recipes that any serious congregation could copy and use. Reading this book could result in a Copernican revolution in the church-the empowerment of the laity.
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Team Ministry : Putting Together A Team That Makes Churches Grow
$16.99Add to cartUsing a step by step approach, Dick Iverson explains the biblical pattern for local chruch admisistration – a plurality of elders led by God’s “set man”. He provides a method for establishing a team ministry within any local chruch that includes 12 principles on how to maintain the leadership team once it is put into place. He concludes the text with information on how to discover and train young leaders within the church.
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Effective Keys To Successful Leadership
$14.99Add to cartLearn, from this dynamic model, what it takes to build an effective leadership team and healthy local church. Common ministry temptations and tensions are candidly discussed, emphasizing the need for personal vision and mission in your ministry.
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Economic Empowerment Through The Church
$24.99Add to cartThe Kingdom of God is not only spiritual — it is intensely practical. The church today must move beyond its traditional role if it is to truly fulfill its mission. It can no longer respond only to spiritual needs and speak only to people’s hearts. The church is called to be a force for change in the world, especially where the needs are greatest: the inner-city neighborhoods where crime, violence, and unemployment are the order of the day. Economic Empowerment Through the Church is a practical book that shows churches how to become a force for revitalization in their community by means of “economic empowerment”– by becoming involved in the everyday, economic life of their communities. It shows churches how to structure themselves, how to avoid tax problems, what businesses they can operate without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status, and step-by-step guidelines for implementing ancillary operations such as real estate, day care centers, drug abuse rehabilitation centers, housing projects, and others. The book includes checklists that help churches avoid missing crucial steps, as well as sample documents and forms.
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Hard Living People And Mainstream Christians
$22.99Add to cartIf you can’t stand four-letter words, you shouldn’t read this book. This book contains expletive language used by hard living people, so that readers will better understand the hard living culture and discover ways to minister within it. “Through stories of hard-living people and pastors who minister with them, Tex Sample challenges mainline churches to break the yoke of middle-class captivity and join with the Christ who lives among the poor and marginalized. The book is inspirational, analytical, and practical in its treatment of an issue too long ignored by contemporary church leadership.” – Kenneth L. Carder, Resident Bishop, Nashville Area, The United Methodist Church
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Church Confident
$21.99Add to cartKeck shows how the church is suffering from malaise brought on by oversecularization in aspects of church life including worship, theology, ethos, and communication.
This penetrating clarion call to renewal cuts through the conventional ideological labels of “liberal” and “conservative.” Keck argues with passion that mainline churches today must neither pretend to be culturally triumphant nor whimper in fear. Rather, the church has grounds to be confident about its proper nature and mission.
Keck envisions a renewed church that has recovered a sense of what is basic to its nature and purpose–restoring the praise of God to the center of worship.
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How To Attract And Keep Active Church Members
$28.00Add to cartThis book is a study of church growth and membership retention. The author argues that if a church is to survive, it must concentrate on keeping its current members as well as attracting new ones. He interviews people from six hundred churches of various sizes and reviews the causes of membership decline and retention in those churches. Smith addresses the assimilation of new members, congregational vitality and church growth, and conflict management and its impact on membership retention.
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After Christendom : How The Church Is To Behave If Freedom Justice, And A C
$23.99Add to cartLiberal/conservative and modern/postmodern concepts define contemporary theological debate. Yet what if these categories are grounded in a set of assumptions about what it means to be the church in the world, presuming we must live as though God’s existence does not matter? What if our theological discussion distracts us from the fact that the church is no longer able to shape the desires and habits of Christians? Hauerwas wrestles with these and similar questions constructing a theological politics necessary for the church to be the church in the world. In so doing, he challenges liberal notions of justice and freedom.
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Shaped By The Bible
$15.99Add to cartShaped by the Bible offers sound information about the ways congregations are formed and reformed by the biblical message and the living Word. William Willimondiscusses the ways Scripture can form us, reform us, and challenge us, as well as the ways we hide from, close our ears to, and evade the Bible’s claims on us.
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Prewrath Rapture Of The Church
$26.99Add to cartCONTENTS
PART 1: JESUS IS COMING
1. The Tension And Anguish Surrounding A Consideration Of The Timing Of The Rapture
2. The Ultimate Absolute Of History
3. The Options Of “When” Laid Out
4. The Conflict That Makes It Necessary
5. But First The Counterfeit
6. The Background That Must Be Understood
7. The Question That Had To Be Answered
8. And What Of The Tribulation Period?
9. And Then The Day Of The Lord
PART 11: THE DAY OF THE LORD
10. Cosmic Disturbance
11. Elijah Must Appear First
12. The Day Of His Wrath
13. The 144,000 And A Great Multitude No Man Could Number
14. The Last Trump
15. The Apostasy And The Man Of Sin
PART III: THE PREWRATH RAPTURE
16. The Coming And The End
17. Kept From The Hour
18. Are Pretribulation Rapture Arguments Really Unanswerable?
19. The Prewrath Rapture: Why This View Now?
20. The Prewrath Rapture: Catalyst For Holy Living
Benediction
Notes
Scripture Index
About The AuthorAdditional Info
For thirty years a confirmed pretribulationist, he now believes that the Church will have to endure the persecution of the Antichrist: “God never promised Hs children immunity from the trials of this godless world or the assault of the Antichrist. He did promise, ‘greater is he [the Holy Spirit] that is in you, than he that is in the world’ (1 John 4:4). ” In view of the fact that Christians will not escape all of the oppression of the “Tribulation” period, Rosenthal urges godly living in light of a clear understanding of the last days so that we will be prepared for Satan’s intense opposition. Rosenthal does, however, believe that the Church win escape the wrath of God, which will be poured out beginning with the opening of Revelation’s seventh seal sometime during the second half of the “Tribulation” period. “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:9). -
People In The Presence Of God
$26.99Add to cartIs there one correct way for the people of God to worship him? It turns out that Scripture offers many models and forms for worship, all of which are acceptable but not necessarily appropriate or functional in a particular setting. Barry Liesch, a professor of music at Biola University, helps his readers to grasp that fact and it’s implications for worship in the church today. This is a one-of-a-kind book for many kinds of readers in all kinds of churches. It offers biblical perspective, historical awareness, musical and artistic sensitivity, authentic reverence, and creative stimulation for worship leaders, church musicians, study groups, pastors, worship committees, and a host of others who are interested in appreciating and renewing worship according to biblical models. Within each of the twenty chapters the author shares many suggestions for enhancing and transforming worship in the church today. Not only does he present the various biblical models and offer a wealth of suggestions, he takes up some of the major concerns of worship leaders, planners, and participants — concerns such as the role of music, uses of symbolism, the appropriateness of dance, modes of celebration, expressions of reverence, and many others.
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Church Leadership : Following The Example Of Christ
$32.99Add to cartAs the body of Christ, the church is basically an organism, not an organization. This fact is full of implications for the way the church organizes itself and the way leadership functions in the church. No book on church leadership has become as controversial as this one. Nor is there a book that spells out so clearly the scriptural implications of the present rule of Christ in the church and the calling of church leaders to be, first of all, servants. This is must reading for pastors, elders, church staff members, and students preparing for ministry in the church.
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Tithing : Call To Serious Biblical Giving
$19.99Add to cartR. T. Kendall believes that all Christians are called to tithe. What is more, he is convinced that the church would be revitalized and the world transformed if all Christians did begin to tithe. Dr. Kendall combines this bold claim with biblical, theological, and practical implications of tithing. Tithing is sometimes regarded as threatening, but it emerges in this book as both challenging and inspiring. Numerous exciting testimonies are told, all demonstrating in individual lives the principle that underlies tithing. “You cannot outgive to the Lord.”
