The field is ready to harvest, and to reap the rewards of your labor you need the right tools. David Covey's 8-step door approach and golden questions will orient missionaries toward fruitful finding, concrete committing, and meaningful member relations. Leave mediocre missionary work far behind as you discover skills specific to the conversion process and develop into a highly effective missionary.

How to live your best life, no matter your age? How best to approach the challenges and opportunities of middle to later life—like raising children, caring for parents, managing and inspiring others, and staying on top of your career and what comes next? In Live Life in Crescendo Stephen R. Covey sets out to answer these questions, outlining his vision for those in the prime of your life, whatever age you may be. To live life in crescendo is to continually grow in contribution, learning, and influence. In the same way that music builds on previous notes but leaves us anticipating the next note, a life builds on the past but unfolds in the future. The Crescendo Mentality urges readers to use whatever you have—your time, talents, skills, resources, gifts, passion, money, influence—to enrich the lives of people around you. Published posthumously, Live Life in Crescendo is a life-changing and life-affirming book infused with Covey’s generosity and wisdom.

Avery draws on a large body of correspondence for details of David's life and on his poetry to reveal his personality and emotional struggles. She tells of his mental deterioration, starting with a probable breakdown early in 1870 and ending with his death in 1904 in the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane in Elgin, where he had been confined for twenty-seven years.

“The reason you love Jamie (or are about to) is because she says exactly what the rest of us are thinking, but we’re too afraid to upset the apple cart. She is a voice for the outlier, and we’re famished for what she has to say.” --Jen Hatmaker, New York Times bestselling author of Of Mess and Moxie and For the Love Wildly popular blogger "Jamie the Very Worst Missionary" delivers a searing, offbeat, often hilarious memoir of spiritual disintegration and re-formation. As a quirky Jewish kid and promiscuous punkass teen, Jamie Wright never imagines becoming a Christian, let alone a Christian missionary. She is barely an adult when the trials of motherhood and marriage put her on an unexpected collision course with Jesus. After finding her faith at a suburban megachurch, Jamie trades in the easy life on the cul-de-sac for the green fields of Costa Rica. There, along with her family, she earnestly hopes to serve God and change lives. But faced with a yawning culture gap and persistent shortcomings in herself and her fellow workers, she soon loses confidence in the missionary enterprise and falls into a funk of cynicism and despair. Nearly paralyzed by depression, yet still wanting to make a difference, she decides to tell the whole, disenchanted truth: Missionaries suck and our work makes no sense at all! From her sofa in Central America, she launches a renegade blog, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, and against all odds wins a large and passionate following. Which leads her to see that maybe a "bad" missionary--awkward, doubtful, and vocal—is exactly what the world and the throngs of American do-gooders need. The Very Worst Missionary is a disarming, ultimately inspiring spiritual memoir for well-intentioned contrarians everywhere. It will appeal to readers of Nadia Bolz-Weber, Jen Hatmaker, Ann Lamott, Jana Reiss, Mallory Ortberg, and Rachel Held Evans.

Effective Engagement in Short-term Missions represents the single most ambitious effort to date to understand and improve upon patterns of ministry in STM. In six sections, the authors explore topics such as the links between STM and older patterns of long-term missions; engagement with people of other cultures; international partnerships; specialized ministries such as medical missions; legal and financial liabilities; and last but not least, the impact of STM on participants. The goal of this book is to improve the ways in which STM is carried out and to improve the understandings needed on the part of all who engage in the ministry. In short, this book attempts to provide a knowledge base for those who provide leadership within the short term missions movement. Youth pastors, mission pastors, lay leaders, college and seminary students, and missiologists will all find information that is helpful and relevant to their concerns.

How to Be a Powerful Modern-Day Missionary is written to break Preach My Gospel down into small, applicable bites for preparing missionaries. Matthew and Dakota discuss how to live with a companion 24/7, sustain a positive attitude, deal with disobedience, make effective daily plans, and more. Success isn't about high numerical success; it's about coming closer to Christ. As recently returned missionaries from the Singapore and Malaysia mission, Matthew and Dakota offer a fresh, modern-day perspective for turning missionary work into missionary work fun!