American evangelical Christianity has lost its way. While the witness of the church before a watching world is diminished beyond recognition, congregations are torn apart over Donald Trump, Christian nationalism, racial injustice, sexual predation, disgraced leaders, and covered-up scandals. Left behind are millions of believers who counted on the church to be a place of belonging and hope. As greater and greater numbers of younger Americans bleed out from the church, even the most rooted evangelicals are wondering, “Can American Christianity survive?”

It’s easy to dream about the “perfect” church - a church that sings just the right songs set to just the right music before the pastor preaches just the right sermon to a room filled with just the right mix of people who happen to agree with you on just about everything. This audiobook is a call to embrace the uncomfortable aspects of Christian community, whether that means believing difficult truths, pursuing difficult holiness, or loving difficult people - all for the sake of the gospel, God’s glory, and our joy.

Poverty is much more than simply a lack of material resources, and it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve it. When Helping Hurts shows how some alleviation efforts, failing to consider the complexities of poverty, have actually (and unintentionally) done more harm than good. But it looks ahead. It encourages us to see the dignity in everyone, to empower the materially poor, and to know that we are all uniquely needy - and that God in the gospel is reconciling all things to himself.

American life and politics are suffering from a raging knowledge crisis, and the church is no exception. In Untrustworthy, Bonnie Kristian unpacks this crisis and explores ways to combat it in our own lives, families, and church communities. Drawing from her extensive experience in journalism and her training as a theologian, Kristian explores social media, political and digital culture, online paranoia, and the press itself. She explains factors that contribute to our confusion and helps Christians pay attention to how we consume content and think about truth.

When it comes to the ethnic divisions in our world, we speak often of seeking racial reconciliation. But at no point have all ethnicities on Earth been reconciled. Animosity, distrust, and hostility among people from various ethnicities have always existed in American history. Even in the church, we have often built walls to divide God’s people from each other. In Intensional, pastor D. A. Horton steps into the tension to offer vision and practical guidance for Christians longing to embrace our Kingdom ethnicity, combating the hatred with the hope of Jesus Christ.

Pastor and author Dr. Derwin L. Gray believes there is a path to true happiness. It is a life lived with Jesus by embracing the Beatitudes found in Matthew 5:1-12. As you walk through these words, Jesus invites you into a new life-giving rhythm that cultivates a flourishing, happy, transformative life.

The world has changed in so many ways, and many of us no longer feel confident when it comes to evangelism, especially with the rise of hostility toward Christian points of view. Keeping quiet is becoming our default position. Yet the world has not changed in one way: It still needs Jesus. Renowned evangelist Becky Pippert draws on decades of conversations about Christianity around the world to call and equip ordinary Christians to share Jesus through their ordinary day-to-day conversations.

Life's inconveniences, disappointments, and trials can leave us confused, cynical, and eventually bitter. But the apostle Paul traces out the path of dying and rising with Jesus — what Paul Miller calls the “J-Curve” — as the normal Christian life.

Christians today live in an unsettling reality that is defined by a steady cultural drift toward blatant immorality and disregard for the truth. The economic and social instability of the past couple of years—not to mention the fear and confusion brought on by the global pandemic—have only added to the atmosphere of uncertainty and anxiety. But Jackson has a message of hope to share: God's kingdom is unshakeable. If we take hold of the fundamental truths of the gospel and decipher the gathering storm clouds through the lens of Scripture, the church will be empowered to prevail.

Why must everything be so black and white? Like many of us, Derwin Gray is weary of the racial divide in our society. He longs to see hurts healed, wrongs corrected, and trust replace distrust. The good news is that the Bible has a lot to say about how to heal our persistent racial divides. In this book, popular Bible teacher Derwin Gray walks us through Scripture, showing us the heart of God—how God from the beginning envisioned a reconciled multiethnic family in loving community, reflecting his beauty and healing presence in the world. This message is central to the gospel itself.

During our chaotic times, discover five forgotten values that can spark internal growth and help us reconcile our Christian faith with the complexities of race, sexuality, and social justice. Most believers live in the state of "being a Christian" without ever being deeply formed by Christ. Our pace is too frenetic to be in union with God, and we don't know how to quiet our hearts and minds to be present. Our emotions are unhealthy and compartmentalized.

The days of cultural Christianity are fading. It's time to rethink normal. Suffering and exclusion are normal in a believer's life. At least they should be. This was certainly Jesus' experience. And it's the experience of countless Christians around the world today. No matter your social location or set of experiences, the biblical letter of 1 Peter wants to redefine your expectations and reinvigorate your hope.

Lenny Duncan is the unlikeliest of pastors. Formerly incarcerated, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make all the headlines, but Duncan sees something else at work - drawing a direct line between the church's lack of diversity and the church's lack of vitality. The problems the ELCA faces are theological, not sociological. But so are the answers.

The prophets of old were not easy to listen to because they did not flatter. They did not cajole. They spoke hard words that often chafed and unsettled their listeners. Like the Old Testament prophets, and more recent prophetic voices like Frederick Douglass, Dr. Eric Mason calls the evangelical church to a much-needed reckoning.

Before you can resolve the issues of our day, you must be able to clarify them. Terms like same-sex marriage, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gay Christian are parts of daily discourse, yet enormous controversy surrounds them. They are the stuff of news headlines and vitriolic social media posts. But they also reflect stirrings of the heart in real people with real questions and concerns.

When it comes to the ethnic divisions in our world, we speak often of seeking racial reconciliation. But at no point have all ethnicities on Earth been reconciled. Animosity, distrust, and hostility among people from various ethnicities have always existed in American history. Even in the church, we have often built walls to divide God’s people from each other. In Intensional, pastor D. A. Horton steps into the tension to offer vision and practical guidance for Christians longing to embrace our Kingdom ethnicity, combating the hatred with the hope of Jesus Christ.

Shalom is what God declared. Shalom is what the Kingdom of God looks like. Shalom is when all people have enough. It's when churches, schools, and public policies protect human dignity. Shalom is when the image of God is recognized in every single human. Shalom is our calling as followers of Jesus' gospel. What can we do to bring shalom to our nations, our communities, and our souls? Through a careful exploration of biblical text, particularly the first three chapters of Genesis, Lisa Sharon Harper shows us what "very good" can look like today, even after the Fall.

Is real friendship too risky? We live in a world where real friendship is hard to find. Suspicious of others and insecure about ourselves, we retreat into the safety of our small, self-made digital worlds. Tragically, even the church can become a place that reinforces this isolation. Jesus models a much richer vision of friendship. Scott Sauls, pastor and teacher, invites you to see the breadth of Christ's love in this audiobook, Befriend.

We are living in historic times. Not since the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s has our country been as vigorously engaged in the reconciliation conversation. There is a great opportunity right now for culture to change, to be a more perfect union. However, it cannot be done without the church, because the faith of the people is more powerful than any law government can enact.

The world has changed in so many ways, and many of us no longer feel confident when it comes to evangelism, especially with the rise of hostility toward Christian points of view. Keeping quiet is becoming our default position. Yet the world has not changed in one way: It still needs Jesus. Renowned evangelist Becky Pippert draws on decades of conversations about Christianity around the world to call and equip ordinary Christians to share Jesus through their ordinary day-to-day conversations.

Where is the life God promised us? Life is busy. We live like slaves to our fast-paced, suffocating schedules. We spend our energy and time in triviality, relegating God to the background. He seems distant to us, and we resist the idea that God wants to give, say, and show us more; we dismiss it as rumor. But Jesus calls us to a better way. Another dream - an unimagined future. Close the gap between what you hear about and what you see.

A trailblazer in the civil rights movement, John M. Perkins led voter registration efforts in 1964, worked for school desegregation in 1967, and was jailed and tortured in 1970. He is no less zealous today as he sees a new generation of freedom fighters battling the same issues and the same systems he has spent his life working to correct.

Significant events such as birth, marriage, and death are milestones in our lives in which we experience our greatest happiness and our deepest grief. And so it is profoundly important to understand how to approach and experience these occasions with grace, endurance, and joy. In On Birth, Timothy Keller - theologian and best-selling author - helps us understand both physical and spiritual birth, as well as how baptism connects the two. Keller draws on 45 years as a pastor and a parent to consider what it means to receive a new birth as well as to be reborn.

Rachel Held Evans is widely recognized for her theologically astute, profoundly honest, and beautifully personal books, which have guided, instructed, edified, and shaped Christians as they seek to live out a just and loving faith. At the time of her tragic death in 2019, Rachel was working on a new book about wholeheartedness. With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other unpublished writings into a rich collection of essays.

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in the church. Not since the Reformation five centuries ago have so many Christians come together to ask whether the church is in sync with their deepest beliefs and commitments. These believers range from evangelicals to mainline Protestants to Catholics, and the person who best represents them is author and pastor Brian McLaren. In this much anticipated book, McLaren examines ten questions facing today's church - questions about how to articulate the faith itself, the nature of its authority, who God is....

Are you one of the millions who crave a new direction in the church, fed up with religious games, empty promises, and cultural Christianity? You are not alone. You are not crazy. Maybe Jesus is ready to interrupt your life. Snatching Jen Hatmaker from the grip of her consumer life, God began asking her questions like, "What is really the point of My Church? What have I really asked of you?" Transparent and imperfect, Jen will engage and inspire you to go beyond comfortable and answer for yourself the question she faced.

What is the way forward for the church? Tragically, in recent years, Christians have gotten used to revelations of abuses of many kinds in our most respected churches―from Willow Creek to Harvest, from Southern Baptist pastors to Sovereign Grace churches. Respected author and theologian Scot McKnight and former Willow Creek member Laura Barringer wrote this book to paint a pathway forward for the church.

So you believe in God. Now what? Just before he left, Jesus sent his followers into the world with a revolutionary mission: to change the world by proclaiming God’s truth and demonstrating his incredible love. But the single task he gave us to accomplish remains unfinished. Rich Stearns takes us on a breathtaking journey to rediscover the critical mission of Christ in our world today and the richness of God’s calling on our lives.

Is God a wrathful judge? A gentle healer? A father? Brother? Friend? In The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus, Brennan Manning brings you to a deeper understanding of the true nature of God. Through poignant and unforgettable stories and challenging observations, Manning helps you stretch your mind and reject simplistic explanations of who God really is.

In Jesus Feminist, Bessey shares her spiritual journey, which ranges from growing up in a post–gender-debate home to learning about the worldwide struggles of women and the obstacles even a well-meaning church can pose. Through disarmingly intimate storytelling, she tells how she grew to understand the story of God and the vastness of his work through women.