(Foreword by Mark Dever) A biblically functioning church requires intentional devotion to the New Testament model of the church. In this practical book, Phil Newton gives a definitive and biblical study of elder-based leadership.

Newton and Schmucker convincingly demonstrate that a return to the New Testament pattern of elder plurality best serves the shepherding needs of the local church. The authors suggest a workable process for improving a local church's leadership structure and making the transition to elder plurality. Stories of church leaders provide a narrative of how faithful elder leadership has strengthened their ministries in a variety of settings. Every local church can benefit from this useful resource for building a healthy leadership structure.

By inhaling deeply God's love, grace, mercy, and so much more and then exhaling our praise to Him, we realize that a rich, abundant life is not about doing better but about recognizing that God is better. We breathe because God gives us breath! We exist because God permits us! To inhale and exhale life is beyond a gift, it is an invitation to embrace a divine initiative that ushers promises of eternity to the here and now. Many seem to be grasping for so much more in life. They long for a deeper reality of the eternal but continue to face frustration, failure, and fatal realities. Breathe Again is for anyone who is exhausted from their routine lives. For anyone whose rhythm of life is crying out for a fresh wind, a fresh voice, a fresh reality of divine calling and purpose. For those exhausted from their personal efforts to keep the family going in the right direction, to run that company, to lead that congregation, or to impact their campus. Breathe Again is more than a motivational resource that simply challenges people to be more dedicated, disciplined, or devoted. Ed Newton helps readers realize a rich, abundant Christian life is not about doing better; instead, it's all about recognizing that God is better. He is better than all our empty attempts to create new and improved selves. Just as our Creator did when He breathed life into Adam, when He brought Scripture to life, or when Jesus breathed out His last breath so we could breathe in His salvation, God's supernatural intent and desire is to breathe upon your life for the purpose of a divine awakening.

Ministry Book of the Year--The Gospel Coalition 2017 Book Awards The critical missing element in Christian mentoring today: the congregation "Bringing up future leaders isn't just the job of the pastor but of the whole congregation. This is an urgently needed book in churches today." --R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Young, emerging leaders of the church, many of whom have gone through leadership training and traditional mentorship programs, still too often find themselves unprepared for the realities of ministry. Many leave the ministry altogether, overwhelmed. Phil Newton reveals a critical gap: single-source mentorship is incomplete. Mentoring must involve the congregation, not just senior pastors, in order to bring forth mature, resilient leaders prepared for all that ministry entails. The solid, practical solutions in The Mentoring Church offer churches of any size both the vision for mentoring future leaders and a workable template to follow. With insightful consideration of theological, historical, and contemporary training models for pastor/church partnerships, Newton is a reliable guide to developing a church culture that equips fully prepared leaders.

The debate over women's roles in the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative ascendance is often seen as secondary to theological and biblical concerns. Elizabeth Flowers argues, however, that for both moderate and conservative Baptist women--all of whom had much at stake--disagreements that touched on their familial roles and ecclesial authority have always been primary. And, in the turbulent postwar era, debate over their roles caused fierce internal controversy. While the legacy of race and civil rights lingered well into the 1990s, views on women's submission to male authority provided the most salient test by which moderates were identified and expelled in a process that led to significant splits in the Church. In Flowers's expansive history of Southern Baptist women, the "woman question" is integral to almost every area of Southern Baptist concern: hermeneutics, ecclesial polity, missionary work, church-state relations, and denominational history. Flowers's analysis, part of the expanding survey of America's religious and cultural landscape after World War II, points to the South's changing identity and connects religious and regional issues to the complicated relationship between race and gender during and after the civil rights movement. She also shows how feminism and shifting women's roles, behaviors, and practices played a significant part in debates that simmer among Baptists and evangelicals throughout the nation today.