Join our list
Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.
Author(s): J.R. Briggs
Publisher: Intervarsity Press
Price: $4.99 (Ends Oct 9)
2014 Best Books About the Church from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore
“I thought God had called me to plant this church. Why did we have to shut our doors after only three years?”
I was at my breaking point. Then I got the news that our nine-year-old daughter had leukemia. I would have quit ministry forever, but I had no other employable skills.”
“False accusations were made against me and my family, wrecking our reputation permanently and forcing us to leave not only the church, but move out of the area.”
“I’ve served my church for the past 27 years and I’ve grown that church from 150 to 24 people.”
What do we do when we’ve failed? Some ministries are shipwrecked by moral failures like affairs or embezzlement. But for most of us, the sense of failure is more ordinary: disillusionment, inadequacy, declining budgets, poor decisions, opposition, depression, burnout. Many pastors are deeply broken and wounded, and we come to doubt that God has any use for us.
J.R. Briggs, founder of the Epic Fail Pastors Conference, knows what failure feels like. He has listened to pastors who were busted in a prostitution sting or found themselves homeless when ejected from ministry. With candid vulnerability, Briggs explores the landscape of failure, how it devastates us and how it transforms us. Without offering pat answers or quick fixes, he challenges our cultural expectations of success and gives us permission to grieve our losses. Somehow, in the midst of our pain, we are better positioned to receive the grace of healing and restoration.
- Share
- Like
- Tweet
- Digg
- Delicious
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Author(s): Tremper Longman III & John H. Walton
Publisher: Intervarsity Press
Price: $4.99 (Ends Oct 9)
“The flood continued forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth . . . and the ark floated on the face of the waters” (Gen 6:17-18 NRSV). In our modern age the Genesis flood account has been probed and analyzed for answers to scientific, apologetic, and historical questions. It is a text that has called forth flood geology, fueled searches for remnants of the ark on Mount Ararat, and inspired a full-size replica of Noah’s ark in a biblical theme park. Some claim that the very veracity of Scripture hinges on a particular reading of the flood narrative. But do we understand what we are reading? Longman and Walton urge us to hit the pause button and ask, what might the biblical author have been saying to his ancient audience? The answer to our quest to rediscover the biblical flood requires that we set aside our own cultural and interpretive assumptions and visit the distant world of the ancient Near East. Responsible interpretation calls for the patient examination of the text within its ancient context of language, literature, and thought structures. And as we return from that lost world to our own, we will need to ask whether geological science supports the notion of flood geology. The story of Noah and the flood will continue to invite questions and explorations. But to read Longman and Walton is put our feet on firmer interpretive ground. Without attempting to answer all of our questions, they lift the fog of modernity and allow the sunlight to reveal the true contours of the text. As with other books in the Lost World series, The Lost World of the Flood is an informative and enlightening journey toward a more responsible reading of a timeless biblical narrative.
- Share
- Like
- Tweet
- Digg
- Delicious
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Author(s): David E. Fitch
Publisher: Intervarsity Press
Price: $2.99 (Sept 24-27)
The Lord’s Supper
Reconciliation
Proclaiming the gospel
Being with the “least of these”
Being with children
Fivefold ministry gifting
Kingdom prayer
- Share
- Like
- Tweet
- Digg
- Delicious
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Author(s): Amy Simpson
Publisher: Intervarsity Press
Price: $3.99 (Sept 24-27)
Advanced Writers and Speakers Association’s 2015 Golden Scroll Merit Award (Nonfiction)
12th Annual Outreach Resource of the Year Recommendation (Counseling)
Our culture is frantic with worry. We stress over circumstances we can’t control, we talk about what’s keeping us up at night and we wring our hands over the fate of disadvantaged people all over the world, almost as if to show we care and that we have big things to care about. Worry is part of our culture, an expectation of responsible people. And sadly, Christians are no different.
But we are called to live and think differently from the worried world around us. The fact is, worry is sin, but we dont seem to take it seriously. It is a spiritual problem, which ultimately cannot be overcome with sheer willpower―its solution is rooted entirely in who God is.
How can we live life abundantly, with joy, as God has called us to do, when were consumed by anxiety? We are commanded not to worry, not only in the well-known words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 6, but also throughout the Old Testament and the epistles to the church. The Bible makes it clear that the future belongs only to God, who rules and is not subject to the limitations of time. To live with joy and contentment, trusting God with the present and the future, is a countercultural feat that can be accomplished only through him.
Challenging the idolatrous underpinnings of worry, former Christianity Today executive Amy Simpson encourages us to root our faith in who God is, not in our own will power. We dont often give much thought to why worry offends God, but indulging anxiety binds us to mere possibilities and blinds us to the truth. Correctly understanding the theology of worry is critical to true transformation. This is a book not just for people who worry; this is a call to the church to turn its eyes from the things of earth and fix its eyes on the author and completer of our faith.
- Share
- Like
- Tweet
- Digg
- Delicious
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Author(s): Stanley J. Grenz & Jay T. Smith
Publisher: Intervarsity Press
Price: $2.99 (Ends Sept 27)
Ethics is as old as the city-state and as new as cyberspace. Guided by the wagon tracks of moral tradition, it nevertheless rides the cutting edge of science and technology. Increasingly it is moving into the corner offices of law, business, medicine, science and technology.
But few of us arrive in our first ethics class–or take our seat on an ethics committee–with a grip on the range of ideas and thinkers, perspectives and pitfalls that make up this ancient conversation about what is good and right and moral. We may feel like college math students who slipped through high school without learning algebra.
The Pocket Dictionary of Ethics is a convenient boost to help you catch up.
Among the 300 definitions provided by Stanley J. Grenz and Jay T. Smith are
terms, from altruism to virtue
issues, from animal rights to war
ethicists, from Saint Augustine to Peter Singer
perspectives, from Aristotelianism to utilitarianism
marketplace specialties, from advertising to technological ethics
Not only does this brief and convenient reference book take you where your desktop dictionary was not designed to go, it doubles as your basic A-to-Z survey or refresher course in ethics.
- Share
- Like
- Tweet
- Digg
- Delicious
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Author(s): N. T. Wright
Publisher: Intervarsity Press
Price: $3.99 (Ends Sept 27)
Merit Award, 2007 Christianity Today Theology/Ethics Book
With every earthquake and war, understanding the nature of evil and our response to it becomes more urgent. Evil is no longer the concern just of ministers and theologians but also of politicians and the media.
We hear of child abuse, ethnic cleansing, AIDS, torture and terrorism, and rightfully we are shocked. But, N. T. Wright says, we should not be surprised. For too long we have naively believed in the modern idea of human progress. In contrast, postmodern thinkers have rightly argued that evil is real, powerful and important, but they give no real clue as to what we should do about it.
In fact, evil is more serious than either our culture or our theology has supposed. How then might Jesus’ death be the culmination of the Old Testament solution to evil but on a wider and deeper scale than most imagine? Can we possibly envision a world in which we are delivered from evil? How might we work toward such a future through prayer and justice in the present?
These are the powerful and pressing themes that N. T. Wright addresses in this book that is at once timely and timeless.
- Share
- Like
- Tweet
- Digg
- Delicious
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Author(s): Chad Meister & James K. Dew Jr.
Publisher: Intervarsity Press
Price: $4.99
The question of evil―its origins, its justification, its solution―has plagued humankind from the beginning. Every generation raises the question and struggles with the responses it is given. Questions about the nature of evil and how it is reconciled with the truth claims of Christianity are unavoidable; we need to be prepared to respond to such questions with great clarity and good faith.
God and Evil compiles the best thinking on all angles on the question of evil, from some of the finest scholars in religion, philosophy and apologetics, including
Gregory E. Ganssle and Yena Lee
Bruce Little
Garry DeWeese
R. Douglas Geivett
James Spiegel
Jill Graper Hernandez
Win Corduan
David Beck
With additional chapters addressing “issues in dialogue” such as hell and human origins, and a now-famous debate between evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig and atheist philosopher Michael Tooley, God and Evil provides critical engagement with recent arguments against faith and offers grounds for renewed confidence in the God who is “acquainted with grief.”
- Share
- Like
- Tweet
- Digg
- Delicious
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link