Showing titles in Social Issues

As the longtime CEO of Johnsonville Foods, Ralph Stayer learned to let his workers lead. Love Your Neighbor shows that the real secret behind Johnsonville's success was a conscious decision to align the company's practices with God's plan for human flourishing. Love Your Neighbor defends and champions capitalism which continues to be under attack in America—and why faith-informed capitalism is the only vehicle that can bring prosperity and purpose to everyone. Love Your Neighbor is a blueprint for transformation based on Ralph's decades of experience as one of America's most successful CEOs.

Ostracized at school, Brandan thought he had finally found his community when he joined the local church. But he soon realized that they were as intolerant as his peers at school had been—if not more so. After agonizing years of repressing his true identity, he discovered that God’s table had always had a place for him. Jesus’ love knows no bounds, embracing everyone unconditionally.

From bestselling author Dr. Emerson Eggerichs comes an invigorating approach to communication in our modern, digital era—where every interaction can shape our lives. Whether you’re chatting with a friend, emailing a coworker, or having a heart-to-heart talk with your spouse, miscommunication can result in hurt feelings and misunderstanding. Speak Your Mind is your guide to navigating daily conversations with confidence, wisdom, and clarity. This book will help you master the art of communicating by teaching you to consider four essential questions before you speak or write.

The evangelical church is hemorrhaging. Over 40 million Americans have dechurched in the last 25 years alone, and multiple generations have been raised to believe the most spiritual thing they can do is follow God by following their heart—right out of the church. Yet, this shift is happening right as society is hitting record levels of loneliness, stress, and anxiety. In The Reason for Church, pastor Brad Edwards connects the dots of our current church crisis and provides compelling reasons to come back.

Few matters produce more public interest and public anxiety than sex and religion. Much of the political contention and division in societies across the world centres on sexual topics, and one-third of the global population is Christian in background or outlook. The issue goes to the heart of present-day religion.

Are you tired of living life scared or following the status quo? Heather Thompson Day challenges listeners to remember what it felt like to believe in themselves before the world told them who they should be and what they should do. What If I’m Wrong? explores the chasm between our dreams we once had and the reality in which we are now living. Writing from personal experience, Heather dives deep into what makes us feel overwhelmed or defeated by the hopes we once had, the disappointments we should have overcome, the goals we expected to accomplish, and the person we wanted to be.

As one of the nation’s leading anti-poverty organizers and moral voices, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis explores the largely untold history of poor people’s movements in the United States and traces her own journey through some of the most significant anti-poverty struggles of the past thirty years. In this book, Theoharis introduces us to the people leading the movement to end poverty.

Saving Face is a meditation on the divine face, and the meaning we get from the faces of others as we are trying to find our own. Deeply personal and contemplative, this book originated in a time of rising from disillusionment while still aching for a church. Today the church is in a state of transition. We see many leaving and deconstructing from harm, hypocrisy, abuse of power, and the absence of Christ and his love. It is a time of revealing. But Christ is not absent.

In an era in which religion can be perceived as a source of division rather than peace, Heaven Help Us by former Ohio governor and congressman John Kasich explores true, inspiring stories of American faith communities becoming fresh, surprising forces for the common good. More than a collection of "feel-good" stories, Heaven Help Us reminds us of the resourcefulness and ingenuity of our fellow congregants and religious leaders that make it possible to turn our good intentions into even better outcomes.

Countless Christians are deconstructing the fear-based faith they were handed, but many don’t want to give up on God—they want to love and be loved by Jesus without hateful or abusive theology. If you’re one of those believers, this feminist, anti-racist, LGBTQ-affirming devotional will take you on a journey of spiritual re-enchantment. Featuring 40 devotions on God’s radical and liberating salvation, it’s here to help you heal your church hurt, restore your sense of community, and embrace Jesus’s heart-healing forgiveness.

Life is full of mountains to ascend, driven by our dreams, ambitions, and callings. But it doesn’t take much for even the strongest climbers to grow weary or lose their way. It’s important to have a “mountain mindset” to help us establish goals, to make steady progress, to achieve success, to do big things for God. A great mission requires from us a little grind, a little hustle, a little competition. But also plenty of time in the valley.

How do we keep from drifting away from what makes us who we are? How do we even know we're drifting? In this provocative new book, Jared C. Wilson discusses the potentials and problems with evangelical departures from gospel-centrality. In a variety of ways, on both "the left" and "the right," Wilson outlines these threats from angles sometimes imperceptible at first glance.

Is our faith only about going to church, studying the Bible, and avoiding the most serious sins? Or does God expect more? Have we embraced the whole gospel or a gospel with a hole in it? More than twenty years ago, Rich Stearns came face-to-face with that question as he sat in a mud hut in Rakai, Uganda, listening to the heartbreaking story of an orphaned child. Stearns’s journey took much more than a long flight to Africa. It took answering God’s call on his life, a call that tore him out of his corner office, to walk with the poorest of the poor in our world.

You might feel like an outsider in a disorienting culture, but what makes you different can be what God gave you to share. Joyful Outsiders by Patrick Miller and Keith Simon guides you through six biblical ways to build God's kingdom in your life as you learn to live like Jesus in a changing world without sacrificing convictions or relationships.

Do you feel like you live life looking in from the outside? From the way you speak, to the color of your skin, to the way you vote, or the way you pray, you don't fit the mold. And yet you find yourself still trying to prove yourself to others. In Set Me Free, New York Times bestselling author Lecrae invites you on a poetic and artistic exploration of how you can persevere against the lies of unworthiness to experience the freedom given to you in Jesus.

Defiant Hope is his writings about the things he loved—humanity, God, his dog, and his boys. Essays feature the immensely complicated sadness when you drop your children off at college for the first time. Another is about his public battle of depression. He also includes chapters about men and women who formed this great procession of Christian Reformers—John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, William Wilberforce, and Olaudah Equiano—and the great causes to which they were devoted, from abolitionism to civil rights.

The Day God Saw Me as Black is a genre-defying, cultural critique of white supremacy in the Black Pentecostal religious experience through the lenses of race, gender, sexual expression, and class analyses. A narrative that weaves between critique and meditation, decolonization and reconciliation, the theoretical and the deeply personal, The Day God Saw Me as Black is an imagining of what could be if we stopped denying ourselves — and each other — full liberation.

Christian nationalism is a powerful and pervasive ideology, and it is becoming normalized. From Amanda Tyler, lead organizer of the Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign, comes How to End Christian Nationalism, your vital companion for countering this dangerous ideology. Tyler draws on her experiences, conversations with pastors and laypeople, research, Scripture, her Baptist convictions, and her work as a constitutional law expert to help us confront Christian nationalist fervor.

Becoming a Future-Ready Church is a blueprint to guide you through eight critical shifts to help lead your church into the future with wisdom and hope. It describes several major converging trends that will greatly impact the church in America over the next few decades: the Great Resignation of Boomer leaders from churches, the shrinking percentage of Christians in America, and the change in felt needs among rising generations shaped heavily by anxiety, skepticism, and fragmentation.

Hyper-individualism and consumerism are failing to satisfy our hunger for meaning. We face an identity crisis in which real community is increasingly hard to find. The culture wars have been painful and polarizing and have proved a poor way to agree any kind of moral standards. Is it even possible to find a vision for goodness that can bring us together? Rumors of a Better Country addresses our hunger for justice and a better way of living by awakening our moral imagination to the potential of a trusting community.