Paul Hess

Trendy new missions strategies are a dime a dozen, promising missionaries monumental results in record time. These strategies report explosive movements of people turning to Christ, but their claims are often dubious and they do little to ensure the health of believers or churches that remain. How can churches and missionaries address the urgent need to reach unreached people without falling for quick fixes?

Across the church, there is a rift between theology and missions. Bad theology produces bad missions, and bad missions fuel bad theology. We wrongly think that we must choose between making a global impact and thinking deeply about the things of God. But the relationship between theology and missions is symbiotic—one cannot exist without the other. They walk hand in hand.

Does God know the future? Or is the future unknowable even to God? Open theists believe the search for biblical answers will spark a new Revolution. Are they right? Arguing that God interacts with his creatures spontaneously, the controversial new movement known as “open theism”, has called classic church theology up for reexamination. Confronting this view, classic theists maintain that God has complete foreknowledge and that open-theist arguments are unorthodox. Each view has implications for our vision of the future and of God’s dealings with humanity.

In A Theology of Biblical Counseling: Audio Lectures Heath Lambert unpacks the core convictions that underlie sound counseling and gives practical wisdom for our counseling practices today. These audio lectures show how biblical counseling is rooted in the Scriptures while illustrating the real challenges counselors face today.

In Unmasking Autism, Dr. Devon Price shares their personal experience with masking and blends history, social science research, prescriptions, and personal profiles to tell a story of neurodivergence that has thus far been dominated by those on the outside looking in. For Dr. Price and many others, Autism is a deep source of uniqueness and beauty. Unfortunately, living in a neurotypical world means it can also be a source of incredible alienation and pain.

The eternal God existing as three distinct persons - Father, Son, and Spirit - can be difficult to comprehend. While Christians often struggle to find the right words to describe this union, the Bible gives clarity concerning the triune God’s being and activity in nature (creation), grace (redemption), and glory (reward). In this concise volume, theologian Scott Swain examines the doctrine of the Trinity, presenting its biblical foundations, systematic-theological structure, and practical relevance for the church today.

The heart of the biblical understanding of idolatry, argues Gregory Beale, is that we take on the characteristics of what we worship. Employing Isaiah 6 as his interpretive lens, Beale demonstrates that this understanding of idolatry permeates the whole canon, from Genesis to Revelation. Beale concludes with an application of the biblical notion of idolatry to the challenges of contemporary life.

The Roman Empire became Christian in 323 AD; about two centuries later, the rest of Europe began to convert. Medieval culture blurred the line between the sacred and the secular. While political and religious hierarchies vied for influence, liberal arts education claimed to seek sacred truths through secular means. But when Aristotle's works were first translated from Arabic, there began a conflict between reason and faith. Franciscan John Duns Scotus was one philosopher who tried to bridge this gap.

The life of Elijah has gripped the thought and imagination of preachers and writers in all ages. His sudden appearance out of complete obscurity, his dramatic interventions in the national history of Israel, his miracles, his departure from the earth in a chariot of fire all serve to that end. He comes in like a tempest, who went out like a whirlwind. The first we hear from him is an oath and a threat. It is fitting that the lessons which may be drawn from Elijah's ministry should be presented afresh to our generation.

The enduring influence of the Catholic Church has many sources, but in the first half of the 19th century, the foundations upon which the church had rested were shaken. For many people, liberalism in the guise of liberty, equality, and fraternity was the quintessence of the evils that shook those foundations. At the Vatican Council of 1869-1870, the church made an effort to set things right by defining the doctrine of papal infallibility. Author John W. O'Malley draws us into the bitter controversies over papal infallibility that at one point seemed destined to rend the church in two.