Church planting has become a cottage industry. National conferences, hip planting organizations, and all-in-one resource kits celebrate the thrill of pioneering a church and inspire visions of glorious victories. Yet few who respond to the call are warned what they'll actually encounter: the relentless opposition they'll endure; the eventual scattering of their entire core group; the failure of their tried-and-true, field-tested system. Here's the dirty little secret of church planting: the roadside is strewn with casualties. Many have closed their churches. Some left ministry permanently. Others abandoned the faith altogether. Church planting is at once the greatest and most grueling ministry work on earth. This book is for those toiling in the trenches, those about to bail out, and those considering jumping in. It's for the church planters laboring and struggling, seeing little movement, and wondering what they're doing wrong or why God is failing them. It's also for mother churches, planting organizations, and denominations, as a challenge to rethink and re-calibrate the way they approach and measure planting endeavors. The Honest Guide to Church Planting is a fresh and candid conversation about the challenges and joys of planting new churches. Tom Bennardo speaks the truth so that those involved in church planting can embrace a more accurate and realistic picture of what planting a church is really like; one that not only enables them to survive, but to thrive in this wondrous work.

Revised introductory brochure for Natural Church Development

The Vision Books are one of the most popular and well-written series of saints' lives ever produced for young people. This Teachers' Guide now offers teachers and parents a practical means to stimulate both the spiritual growth and intellectual development of students through an organized, systematic study of seventeen biographies of holy men and women in the Vision Books series. This guide facilitates student interaction with the spiritual insights, moral lessons, and sound academic content found in each book. It is divided into sections, each of which contains an overview of the saint's life and activities that illustrate the person's impact on the Church and his time. These activities are destined to challenge student thinking, to promote the application of spiritual insights to the reader's personal life, and to expand the reader's understanding and appreciation of the holiness of the saints. Teachers can select any combination of activities for individual students, for small groups, or for class-wide discussion. The activities include chapter vocabulary, language in context, time line, outline maps, topics for written reports, biographical sketches, using Scripture and the Catechism, and discussion questions.

Partnering your church family with a public school can be a rewarding experience, but also presents some unique challenges. The Mission-Minded Guide to Church and School Partnerships offers practical steps that congregations can take to make a difference with the children in their community. From basic organization, training, safety, and planning helps leaders will learn how to share the vision and effectively recruit and train volunteers. Most importantly, leaders will discover practical steps they can take to begin a two way, trusting relationship with a school, principal and teachers. In addition, there are suggestions for sharing information through newsletters, presentations, and special Sundays for welcoming the schools, teachers, and principals, and more. Inspire your church family to embrace the power they have to change lives and make a difference in their community.

This all-in-one guide is designed to better equip clergy and the church leaders to meet their congregations' needs in a spiritually grounded and scientifically sound manner. Succinct, easy-to-read chapters summarize all a pastor needs to know about a given problem area, including its signs or symptoms, questions to ask, effective helping skills, and, most importantly, when to refer to a mental health professional. Synthesizing what research says about treatment approaches for mental health issues, this user-friendly reference is filled with guidelines, case scenarios, key points to remember, resources for further help, advice on integrating scripture and theology with the best available research, and tips on partnering with others to provide the best possible care for each church member. Each chapter is designed for quick lookup by problem area, empowering church leaders to understand and help meet the challenges facing the children, adults, families, and communities that they serve.