There is a spiritual hunger in the world today. Many people are seeking answers to life's hard questions. Many people come to church seeking inspiration, help for personal problems, or faith's perspective on life. They come seeking things you cannot find in a search engine. The church has exactly what they need, but too often there is a gap between our message and our ability to send it. Each week, as people pause to learn about faith and get a word of hope, a lot rides on the sermon. Susan Cartmell took a journey across the country to visit churches with great preaching and lively worship. What she discovered was that Evangelical Christians and Unitarian Universalists were using themed preaching effectively to attract new members. Working in her church over the last five years, she has designed a new system for preaching with themes in mainline Protestant churches. She shares her method and her journey in a story that invites you to consider new ways to preach faithfully without using the lectionary.

How can Christians today interact with those around them in a way that shows respect to those whose beliefs are radically different but that also remains faithful to the gospel? Join bestselling author Timothy Keller and legal scholar John Inazu as they bring together illuminating stories to answer this vital question. In Uncommon Ground, Keller and Inazu bring together a thrilling range of artists, thinkers, and leaders to provide a guide to living faithfully in a divided world, including: Lecrae, a recording artist, songwriter, and record producer Claude Richard Alexander Jr., senior pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina Rudy Carrasco, a program officer for the Murdock Charitable Trust Sara Groves, a singer and songwriter Shirley V. Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities Kristen Deede Johnson, a professor of theology and Christian formation at Western Theological Seminary Warren Kinghorn, a professor of psychiatry and theology at Duke University Tom Lin, president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Trillia Newbell, director of community outreach for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest at the Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania With varied and enlightening approaches to reaching faithfully across deep and often painful differences, Uncommon Ground shows us how to live with confidence, joy, and hope in a complex and fragmented age. Praise for Uncommon Ground: "For anyone struggling to engage well with others in an era of toxic conflict, this book provides a framework, steeped in humility, that is not only insightful but is readily actionable. I'm grateful for the vulnerability and wisdom offered by each of the twelve leaders who contributed to this book. The task of learning to love well--neighbors and enemies alike--is long and urgent, and it can be costly. And yet, as this book shows us because it is the work of Jesus, we can pursue this love with great hope." --Gary A. Haugen, founder and CEO, International Justice Mission

Pastor and preaching coach, Dr. Yancey Arrington offers a new paradigm for message preparation - one that focuses on seeing sermons emotionally, where preachers will be trained on discovering a message's emotional center, charting sermon bandwidth, and leveraging one's God-given personality in the preaching event. This innovative approach to preaching can produce more effective seasons in the pulpit where congregants are carried `down the mountain' of messages in such a way they can't wait to do it again!

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

In this complete guide to expository preaching, Bryan Chapell teaches the basics of preparation, organization, and delivery--the trademarks of great preaching. This new edition of a bestselling resource, now updated and revised throughout, shows how Chapell's case for expository preaching reaches twenty-first-century readers.

Their paths to God’s purpose led them together. Many know the heroic story of Jim Elliot’s violent death in 1956, killed along with four other missionaries by a primitive Ecuadorian tribe they were seeking to reach. Many also know the prolific legacy of Elisabeth Elliot, whose inspiring influence on generations of believers through print, broadcast, and personal testimony continues to resonate, even after her own death in 2015. What many don’t know is the remarkable story of how these two stalwart personalities—single-mindedly devoted to pursuing God’s will for their young lives, certain their future callings would require them to sacrifice forever the blessings of marriage—found their hearts intertwined. Their paths to God’s purpose led them together. Now, for the first time, their only child—daughter Valerie Elliot Shepard—unseals never-before-published letters and private journals that capture in first-person intimacy the attraction, struggle, drama, and devotion that became a most unlikely love story. Riveting for old and young alike, this moving account of their personal lives shines as a gold mine of lived-out truth, hard-fought purity, and an insider’s view on two beloved Christian figures.

You don't have to be perfect to do God's work. Look no further than the twelve disciples, whose many weaknesses are forever preserved throughout the pages of the New Testament. Join bestselling author John MacArthur in Twelve Ordinary Men as he draws principles from Christ's careful, hands-on training of the original disciples for today's modern disciple, you! Jesus chose ordinary men--fishermen, tax collectors, political zealots--and turned their weakness into strength, producing greatness from people who were otherwise unremarkable. The twelve disciples weren't the stained-glass saints we imagine. On the contrary, they were truly human, all too prone to mistakes, misstatements, wrong attitudes, lapses of faith, and bitter failure. Simply put, they were flawed people, just like us. But under Jesus' teaching and touch, they became a force that forever changed the world. MacArthur takes you into the inner circle of the disciples--their selection, their training, their personalities, and their incredible impact. As MacArthur took a closer look at the lives of the twelve disciples, he found himself asking difficult questions along the way, including: Why did Jesus pick each of the twelve disciples? How did Jesus teach them everything he could in just eighteen short months? Can the lessons that Jesus taught the disciples can still influence our faith today? In Twelve Ordinary Men, you'll learn that disciples are living proof that God's strength is made perfect in weakness. As you get to know the men who walked with Jesus, you'll see that if he can accomplish his purposes through them, he can do the same through you.