Author(s): David Sliker
Publisher: Chosen Books
Price: $1.99       (Ends Jul 8)

Discover Hope–and the Heart of Jesus–for the Days Ahead

The world is angry and afraid. Humankind is on a trajectory away from God, against His Church and into increasing darkness–with the darkest hours still ahead. Yet the Father has an unexpected and compassionate answer for the rise of ugliness and violence: a beautiful unified Church of wholehearted followers of Jesus who will put Him on full display for all the world to see.

In these pages you’ll discover how to become part of a Church that counters anger with kindness and mercy, loves its enemies, overcomes bitterness and offense, and lays hold of the Lord’s beauty via revelation and transformation. When we–as a united Body and as individual members–do these things, we (more…)

Author(s): Kyle Duncan and Esther Fed
Publisher: Chosen Books
Price: $1.99       (Ends Jul 8)

A Harrowing, Intimate Look into the Most Devastating War in Eight Decades

Part narrative, part wartime dispatch, Hope for Ukraine transports you into the gritty reality of war-torn Ukraine–and the front lines of faith, survival, and miraculous intervention. From scrambling to escape the bombs leveling their neighborhoods to fleeing sex traffickers in the chaos of border crossings to rescuing orphans trapped by Russian tanks, these stunning firsthand accounts tell the stories of real Ukrainians enduring terrible hardships with grit and grace.

Join bestselling writer Kyle Duncan and his co-author Esther Fedorkevich–both with deep family ties to Ukraine–as they take you inside the conflict with dramatic boots-on-the-ground stories and eyewitness accounts of Ukrainian refugees, aid workers, soldiers, and families affected by the conflict.

As (more…)

The Judas Effect
Author(s): Amy Hawk
Publisher: Cascade Books
Price: $2.99 (Ends May 31)

In 2016, Amy Hawk was a hyper-patriotic, Jesus-loving, white, evangelical, church-attending, and ministry-leading wife and mom living in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. She came into the election determined to vote Republican, but when she saw the video of Donald Trump mocking a disabled journalist, she hurled herself off the Trump train and never looked back. Shunned by some in her conservative evangelical community, her world was shattered and her faith tested as she was forced to reevaluate the Christian institutions she devoted her life to. Disoriented and confused by the church’s embrace of a man who is the antithesis of Jesus, Hawk turned to the Scriptures for answers.

Part Bible study and part personal faith journey, The Judas Effect is about the selling out of Christian values for political gain. It’s about how, buoyed by Trumpism, the message ringing from church bells across America has morphed from “goodwill toward men” to “it’s us against them.” By sharing her own faith crisis, Hawk casts a vision for the evangelical church that steers us away from Judas’s power lust, toward a Christ-centered mission of servitude, humility, compassion, and kindness.

Swimming with the Sharks: Leading the Full Spectrum Church in a Red-and-Blue World
Author(s): Jack Haberer
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Price: $2.99 (Ends May 31)

Building on a string of Haberer family harrowing encounters, Swimming with the Sharks presents a framework for addressing the sharks among us: those on the other side of the divide in American church life. What is characterized as the separation between blue progressives and red conservatives is shown to be a sellout to a political model and a false witness about the facts and faith on the ground. Believers do see things differently but not in simplistic, binary parties—rather in an overlapping set of five understandings of Jesus’ heart and passion for God’s mission in the world. Each is faithful, each is true, and yet, when huddling in their enclaves of agreement, likeminded folks become stupid, duped by their shared blind spots. All five living together become iron sharpening iron. And while we still may diverge on hot-button controversies, we do converge and, indeed, take flight through the Holy Spirit’s filling, empowering, gifting, calling, and commissioning of every believer in a culture, a movement, a full-spectrum revolution of mutual giftedness in mission.

Practical implications get spelled out (e.g., less pastor-driven, more member-driven), and then conclude with blunt explications: “Not all church consultants need to be ignored, but many do.”And while we still may diverge on hot-button controversies, we do converge and, indeed, take flight through the Holy Spirit’s filling, empowering, gifting, calling, and commissioning of every believer in a culture, a movement, a full-spectrum revolution of mutual giftedness in mission.

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church
Author(s): Rachel Held Evans
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Price: $3.99 (Oct 7 only)

Are you struggling to connect with your church community? Do you find yourself questioning the core beliefs that you once held dear? Searching for Sunday, from New York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans is a heartfelt ode to the past and a hopeful gaze into the future of what it means to be a part of the modern church.

Like millions of her millennial peers, Rachel Held Evans didn’t want to go to church anymore. The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals–to her, it was beginning to feel like church culture was too far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing Evans back to church.

Evans found herself wanting to better understand the church and find her place within it, so she set out on a new adventure. Within the pages of Searching for Sunday, Evans catalogs her journey as she loves, leaves, and finds the church once again.

Evans tells the story of her faith through the lens of seven sacraments of the Catholic church–baptism, confession, holy orders, communion, confirmation, the anointing of the sick, and marriage–to teach us the essential truths about what she’s learned along the way, including:

Faith isn’t just meant to be believed, it’s meant to be lived and shared in community
Christianity isn’t a kingdom for the worthy–it’s a kingdom for the hungry, the broken, and the imperfect
The countless and beautiful ways that God shows up in the ordinary parts of our daily lives
Searching for Sunday will help you unpack the messiness of community, teaching us that by overcoming our cynicism, we can all find hope, grace, love, and, somewhere in between, church.

Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear
Author(s): Jinger Vuolo
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Price: $3.99 (Oct 7 only)

When Jinger Duggar Vuolo was growing up, she was convinced that obeying the rules was the key to success and God’s favor. She zealously promoted the Basic Life Principles of Bill Gothard,

fastidiously obeying the modesty guidelines (no shorts or jeans, only dresses),
eagerly submitting to the umbrella of authority (any disobedience of parents would place her outside God’s protection),
promoting the relationship standard of courtship, and
avoiding any music with a worldly beat, among others.
Jinger, along with three of her sisters, wrote a New York Times bestseller about their religious convictions. She believed this level of commitment would guarantee God’s blessing, even though in private she felt constant fear that she wasn’t measuring up to the high standards demanded of her.

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