Social Ministry

In this provocative new contribution to public theology, world-renowned theologian Miroslav Volf (named "America's New Public Intellectual" by Scot McKnight on his Jesus Creed blog) and Matthew Croasmun explain that the intellectual tools needed to rescue us from our present malaise and meet our new cultural challenge are the tools of theology. A renewal of theology is crucial to help us articulate compelling visions of the good life, find our way through the maze of contested questions of value, and answer the fundamental question of what makes life worth living.

For those who want to know that their life has significance, that their choices matter, and that they can start a chain reaction in our world - this missional book is for you. Never Settle is a tangible reminder that every choice in your day is crackling with God’s redemptive power - you, yes you, are called to be a part of what God is doing in the world. Don’t settle for a lukewarm Christian life. Never Settle: Choices, Chain Reactions, and the Way Out of Lukewarminess explores a familiar passage in Revelation 3 where Jesus is warning the church in Laodicea.

In this sequel to his best seller, The Myth of a Christian Nation, Dr. Gregory Boyd issues a clear call to manifest God’s beauty and revolt against evil—with Jesus’ life as our example. Passionate theology and practical insight combine to create a guidebook for simple, radical, Christlike living.

Western civilization and the Christian church stand at a moment of great danger. Facing them both is a hurricane-force battle of ideas that will determine the future of Western civilization and the soul of the Christian church. The forces arrayed against the West and the church are destructive ideologies, policies, and worldviews deeply established among intellectual elites, the political class, and our schools. More menacingly, these forces have also invaded the Christian church.

Movies do more than tell a good story. They are expressions of raw emotion, naked vulnerability, and unbridled rage. They often function in the same way as prayers, communicating our deepest longings and joys to a God who hears each and every one. In this captivating book, Filmspotting co-host Josh Larsen brings a critic's unique perspective to how movies function as expressions to God of lament, praise, joy, confession, and more.

There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers. It's a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity, It's about what happens when Christians support, animate, and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from.

Politics are being transformed by religion, namely in China - within the next 30 years, one-third of this potential superpower could be Christian. If this religious transformation occurs, China would be one of the largest Christian nations in the world.

Pastor Skip Heitzig breaks apart the basic components of today's society and looks at the threats that believers face at every level: personally, family, communally, nationally, and globally. This series focuses on what God's word says about each of these levels of society and how we can best follow God's original plan for our lives, our family, and the rest of the world.

With so many people around the globe migrating, how should Christians and the church respond? Leading Latino-American biblical scholar M. Daniel Carroll R. helps listeners understand what the Bible says about immigration, offering accessible, nuanced, and sympathetic guidance for the church. After two successful editions of Christians at the Border, and having talked and written about immigration over the past decade, Carroll has sharpened his focus and refined his argument to make sure we hear clearly what the Bible says about one of the most pressing issues of our day.

Mission at Nuremberg is Tim Townsend's gripping story of the American Army chaplain sent to save the souls of the Nazis incarcerated at Nuremberg, a compelling and thought-provoking tale that raises questions of faith, guilt, morality, vengeance, forgiveness, salvation, and the essence of humanity.

Woven from Joseph Campbell’s previously unpublished work, this volume explores Judeo-Christian symbols and metaphors - and their misinterpretations - with the famed mythologist’s characteristic conversational warmth and accessible scholarship. Campbell’s insights highlight centuries of confusion between literal and metaphorical interpretations of Western religious symbols that are, he argues, perennially relevant keys to spiritual understanding and mystical revelation.

Best-selling author Peter Kreeft presents a series of brilliant essays about many of the issues that increasingly divide our Western civilization and culture. He states that "these essays are not new proposals or solutions to today's problems. They are old. They have been tried, and have worked. They have made people happy and good. That is what makes them so radical and so unusual today. The most uncommon thing today is common sense".

As news reports of the horrific December 2004 tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God’s power or God’s nonexistence, asking over and over, How could a good and loving God - if such exists - allow such suffering? In The Doors of the Sea, David Bentley Hart speaks at once to those skeptical of Christian faith and to those who use their Christian faith to rationalize senseless human suffering.

Follow Naomi as she talks to women working in brothels in Mumbai; survivors of an Indonesian tsunami in which more than 160,000 lives were lost; a young girl waiting on an operation to save her life; and victims of domestic violence horrifically burned by fire. Be still with her when she realizes the pain she feels in the face of these extreme injustices reveals a common struggle that exists within all of humanity. And rise with her as she wrestles with confusion over her identity, comes face to face with redemption, and then begins to understand her own story.

Best-selling author and professional certified life coach Valorie Burton knows the value of pausing and reflecting in critical moments as a way to drive personal growth. In her practice, she has developed life-changing questions to help you make meaningful choices that lead to authentic success. Valorie offers a fresh way to help you think about what matters, build the courage to follow through, and discover a vision for your relationships, career, money, health, and spiritual life that energizes you.

In Boundaries in Marriage, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, counselors and authors of the New York Times bestseller Boundaries, will show you how healthy marriages are marriages with boundaries. They promote love by protecting individuals.

Based on research from more than 10,000 surveys from children and parents of divorce, Collateral Damage presents parents with an overview of the impact that divorce has on their children and offers ways to better serve their needs at this critical time.

When police raided the Short Creek compound of the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1953, it soon became a political and publicity nightmare and eventually cost the governor of Arizona his job. From that point on, skittish public officials allowed the polygamist sect to practice its tenants unmolested for the next 50 years and turned a blind eye to child abandonment, kidnapping, statutory rape, incest, and massive tax and welfare fraud. But then Warren Jeffs, a new FLDS prophet, escalated the sect’s crimes to near madness.

More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Much has transpired in the half-century since, and progress has been made in the issues that were close to Dr. King’s heart. Thankfully, the burning crosses, biting police dogs, and angry mobs of that day are long gone. But in their place, passivity has emerged. A passivity that must be addressed. That’s the aim of Letters to a Birmingham Jail. A collection of essays written by men of various ethnicities and ages.

In this second volume of the Called Out of Darkness trilogy, Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., draws together some of the best advice given by Catholic spiritual masters across the ages and brings it into harmony with modern scientific research, offering practical ways to live out the gospel in our busy days. It is a road map to a deeper relationship with the Lord and to authentic transformation through the imitation of Christ. Giving evidence that Jesus established just one Church, with Peter as its head, Spitzer shows that the Catholic Church continues to be fertile ground for conversion.