Category: Book Collection
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How To Preach A Parable
In this practical and insightful guide, one of the nation’s most respected preachers shows how to use the structure of Jesus’ parables to preach highly effective sermons. During the past decade, New Testament scholars have done fresh and exciting work on the style and function of Jesus’ stories. Now Eugene L. Lowry – in clear,…
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Coming Clean
Coming Clean is a study guide that explores the issues of church transformation described in the groundbreaking book, Kicking Habits. Using a series of Bible studies, group discussions, and group exercises, participants can customize and apply the insights on thriving church life to their own congregational context. – Coming Clean means honest discernment of the…
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Unfreezing Moves
Prepares Christian congregations to fulfill their basic function – to make disciples who make disciples for Jesus Christ. This book is about helping ‘stuck’ and ‘unstuck’ churches either become unstuck or constantly improve their ministry of making disciples. This book is designed to help church leaders make profound changes in the way they do ministry…
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Entertainment Evangelism
The result of going public with the church’s ministry is entertainment evangelism. One of the best examples of this kind of innovative, public church is Community Church of Joy, a Lutheran congregation that has five different kinds of worship services. Walt Kallestad explains how worship is integrated with evangelism and how the result of this…
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Kicking Habits
Kicking Habits: Upgrade Edition is the groundbreaking book on systemic change that has literally birthed new congregations, rejuvenated tired leaders, and transformed declining churches. It tells the story of thriving church life through the experiences of the institutionally alienated, spiritually yearning public. It provides the big picture of thriving church life in the postmodern world.…
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Christian Chaos
Thomas Bandy continues his exploration of congregational life by arguing that the organization of a congregation – its boards and committees – constitutes a crucial ingredient in its vitality and mission. The way in which a church is organized will make all the difference in whether it becomes what Bandy has named elsewhere a thriving…
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Fragile Hope
Is your congregation concerned primarily with health and stability, or mission and outreach? Does it always or usually seek a pleasant sense of harmony and fellowship, or does it vibrate with an edgy energy? Are the members risk averse, or risk takers? In this innovative book Tom Bandy explains how harmony-the desire to minimize conflict…
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If It Could Happen Here…
In this informative book, Jeff Patton describes six ‘levers’ for transforming a small-membership church: prayer, discerning a clear vision, indigenous worship, growth groups, membership that means something, and by pastoring. Filled with solid insights on how the principles Patton has developed can be applied in different contacts, this book will offer hope to all leaders…
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Pastor
Ordained ministry, says Willimon, is a gift of God to the church–but that doesn’t mean that it is easy. Always a difficult vocation, changes in society and the church in recent years have made the ordained life all the more complex and challenging. Is the pastor primarily a preacher, a professional caregiver, an administrator? Given…
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Fling Open The Doors
In this book Paul Nixon paints a picture of what community-based ministry is all about. Drawing on his experiences within a congregation that has seen twenty-five years of increased worship attendance, he lays out practical steps that churches can take to plant themselves firmly within the lives of the communities they serve. He demonstrates how…
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Can Homophobia Be Cured?
In Can Homophobia Be Cured? Bruce Hilton focuses on the difficult questions Christians raise about the deeply divisive issue of homosexuality: – What if the real sin is not homosexuality but homophobia – fear and hatred of lesbians and gay men? – What will the church do with the growing scientific evidence that same-sex orientation…
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Faithquakes
FaithQuakes is for people who have the shakes and are looking to God’s future. With up-to-the-minute monitoring of changes and trends that affect our lives, Leonard Sweet provides refreshingly unconventional glimpses into the future that must be grasped by church leaders. We learn how to pursue a more effective, ‘go and tell’ evangelism that reaches…