This book for youth leaders, pastors, and parents looks deep into the mirror of pop and church culture and asks the difficult, and often maddening, question, “Are those things we produce and consume defining us?” Author Stephen Ingram explores these themes of moralism, deism, meism, consumerism, pluralism, and therapeutic religion of pop culture, as well as current sociological and psychological data. Hollow Faith separates the values of the gospel from the cultural norms that have domesticated them including: How we believe we should act (The Andy Griffith Show) How we want to be known (Facebook) What we aspire to become (the American Dream) Ingram says that once we recognize these serious shifts in our faith, we can begin to have discussions, develop plans, and form actions to reclaim the vibrant, life-giving faith of the Bible. Includes a Parents Guide in the back.

Twenty-nine years, 7 months, 14 days, and the battle still rages. Jena Morrow has an eating disorder. It can kill her. Jena Morrow has a Savior. He came to give her abundant life. This is not a polished tale of victory but an honest, true story of fragility. Hollow recounts Jena’s daily struggle with anorexia and the God who is able and willing to reach down into the dirt. A central theme of Hollow is the surrender of control to Jesus Christ. His Word is interwoven throughout the story as rebuttals to the lies that besiege those engaged in any addiction. In addition to her point of view, Jena includes those of her friends, family, and former therapists providing an undercurrent of hope. Written in an easy conversational voice, Hollow will resonate with those in the midst of a struggle and those who stand beside them.

From the time I can remember, I grew up identifying as a Christian. At a very young age, I just knew that God was real. More importantly, growing up in the South, that was just the right thing to do. Everyone went to church, and pretty much everyone said they were a Christian. These values of mine held up for a while, until I became mature enough to engage in deductive reasoning.I got tired of being the "good christian" and not really knowing why, other than that's what I believed. As I read the Bible, I saw that everything about it was supernatural. There was only one problem: absolutely nothing about my life was! I wanted to know if the Bible I read was just a good book to be revered, or if the God I read about was still manifesting the same way he was years ago!In college, I wiped the slate clean. I no longer wanted to say I was a Christian because of what my parents, friends, or even preachers said. I wanted to see the power of God in my life. I challenged God to show himself to me if he was still the same God I read about, and boy did he show up. God catapulted me into the realm of the supernatural, and gave me answers as to why his children don't see more in life. If you want to know what I found out, look inside!

An NPR Best Book of the Year, Hollow is the story of a professor whose life is unended after an unspeakable tragedy. When Oliver Bonds, a revered religious studies professor at the University of Texas, loses his toddler son and undergoes intense legal scrutiny over his involvement, grief engulfs him completely. His life as he knows it is over; Oliver loses his wife, home, and faith. Three years after his son's death, Oliver lives in a shack without electricity and frequents the soup kitchen where he used to volunteer. It's only when befriended by Lyle, a con artist with a passion for theories of Hollow Earth, that Oliver begins to reengage with the world. Oliver too becomes convinced that the inside of the planet might contain a different realm. Desperate to find a place where he can escape his past, Oliver chases after the most unlikely of miracles. With unforgettable characters, wild imagery, and dark humor, Hollow explores the depths of doubt and hope, stretching past grief and into the space where we truly begin to heal. "With the kind of grace not usually seen in accessible modern fiction, Egerton also invokes many other things with this central metaphor . . . Ollie's voice is one of the most believable I've encountered this year, sustained by honesty, realism, and compassion. In his exile, Ollie has taken stock. His reckoning with the past creates the story's exquisite tension and makes the final scene bloom with tenderness . . . The core of Hollow is anything but." --NPR

Have Andy Griffith, Facebook, and the American Dream neutered the Gospel? Do you sense a church with Hollow Faith? Are you prepared to look in the mirror and examine your ministry? Inside you will find Youth Worker Training on how to face the following underlying conditions that are plaguing the North American Christian Church. Moralism Therapeutic Religion Modern Deism Self-Absorption (meism) Consumerism Pluralism Inside you will also find Curriculum to address these issues in your youth ministry and a Parents Guide. The following lessons seek to provide teachers with engaging and solid theological lessons to address the conditions above: What's Wrong with Being Nice? Getting (un)Comfortable with God The Inescapable God Jesus Loves Me This I Know... But What About Everyone Else? Three Little Birds and The Gospel of Enough Being Courageously Christian in a Pluralistic World After reading Hollow Faith, you will want to pass it along to your ministry volunteers and pastor. "Hollow Faith will add fuel to the passionate desire that a growing tribe of youth workers have toward embracing a more theologically robust and biblical focused ministry with young people in the North American Christian Church." Mike King, President of Youthfront Stephen Ingram is the "Steve Jobs of the Youth Ministry world." I'm hard pressed to recall anyone with the inventiveness and informed creativity of this young man. His laboratory has been his own ministry, where the principles of this book were formed, week-in and week-out in the rough-and-tumble reality of dancing with the alligators of church work, where simple answers never work." Mark DeVries, President of Youth Ministry Architects

The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. Hear the prophet's lament as the necessary corrective for Christianity's future.

In her moving spiritual memoir, Mary DeMuth traces the winding path of “thin places” in her life—places where she experienced longing and healing more intensely than before. As DeMuth writes, “Thin places are snatches of holy ground, tucked into the corners of our world, where we might just catch a glimpse of eternity. They are aha moments, beautiful realizations, when the Son of God bursts through the hazy fog of our monotony and shines on us afresh.”From losing her earthly father to discovering a heavenly Father who never leaves, from singing Olivia Newton-John songs to the sky to worshiping God under a French sun, from surviving abuse as a latchkey kid to experiencing the joy of mothering three children, DeMuth’s story calls readers to a deeper understanding of their own story. With unusual spiritual wisdom, she looks for God in the past so that she might experience him more profoundly in the present. Her powerful words invite readers to know God in a new way—a God ready to break through any ordinary day or extraordinary pain and offer a glimpse of eternity.