Some books are easiest to describe by saying what they are not. This is not a collection of devotions or meditations, not a “feel-good” journal about walking with God, and not a guide for self-improvement or personal spiritual growth. It is, very simply, a book about discipleship–about following Christ humbly, obediently, and with an open heart. And it is written by a man whose message ca…
These sermons were preached on consecutive Sunday mornings at Westminster Chapel and are here reproduced virtually as they were delivered. The need for them arose as the result of pastoral experience, and they are now published in book form largely as the result of repeated requests that they might be issued in this form.
"Church is not a meeting you attend or a place you enter," write pastors Tim Chester and Steve Timmis. "It's an identity that is ours in Christ. An identity that shapes the whole of life so that life and mission become 'total church.'" With that as their premise, they emphasize two overarching principles to govern the practice of church and being gospel-centered and being community-centered. Wh…
A careful and informed assessment of the “emerging church” by a respected author and scholarThe “emerging church” movement has generated a lot of excitement and exerts an astonishingly broad influence. Is it the wave of the future or a passing fancy? Who are the leaders and what are they saying? The time has come for a mature assessment. D. A. Carson not only gives those who may be unfa…
In this volume, Bahnsen has gathered the primary passages on apologetics from the vast body of works by Cornelius Van Til, arranged them topically, and added incisive commentary and analysis. The result is a carefully organized digest of all that Van Til taught about apologetics with running exposition by Bahnsen.
From 1962 to 1965, in perhaps the most important religious event of the twentieth century, the Second Vatican Council met to plot a course for the future of the Roman Catholic Church. After thousands of speeches, resolutions, and votes, the Council issued sixteen official documents on topics ranging from divine revelation to relations with non-Christians. In many ways, though, the real challeng…
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, commonly referred to as “the Doctor,” had a successful career in medicine before abandoning it all to become a preacher in London. His sermons—displaying the life-changing power of biblical truth—diagnosed the spiritual condition of his congregation and prescribed the gospel remedy. This study of Lloyd-Jones’s life will encourage and exhort readers to consider t…
John Newton is famous for his legendary hymn “Amazing Grace.” Many have celebrated his dramatic conversion from a life in the slave trade to his eventual work to end it. But often overlooked are Newton’s forty years as a pastor ministering to parishioners and friends unsettled by the trials, doubts, and fears of life. Newton is perhaps the greatest pastoral letter writer in the history…
"Reading this book was a profoundly moving experience.” —Derek W. H. Thomas, Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South Carolina; author, Let’s Study Revelation and Let’s Study Galatians John Stott was a twentieth-century pastor-theologian widely hailed for his heart for missions and expository preaching. Even today, Stott’s legacy continues to influence churches …
This comprehensive systematic theology by respected theologian Robert Letham covers the whole field of Reformed Christian doctrine from biblical, historical, and theological angles. Letham begins with God’s ultimate selfrevelation as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in indivisible union, continuing on with the works of God in creation, providence, and grace. He draws deeply from Sc…
Dramatically converted on the stormy seas, a slave-trader-turned-abolitionist penned the best-loved hymn of the Christian faith. A church father was arrested and martyred for teaching the truth about Christ’s incarnation. Captured by pirates and shipped off to Ireland, a priest baptized thousands of pagans, from paupers to princes. Now who ever said church history was boring? The Church Hi…
Outline: John Calvin's first catechism - originally written in French in 1537 and then in Latin in 1538 - provides a valuable, clear, and concise introduction to his thought. Now for the first time, readers have available Ford Lewis Battles's English translation of the 1538 Latin edition and a current discussion of it in the same volume. This commentary on the catechism also utilizes other sour…
Outline: Robert Traill's treatment of Christ's intercessory prayer for His people is a masterpiece of Puritan experiential doctrine. Mining the depths of John 17: 24, Traill discovers the comforts of the doctrine of election, the blessing of our hope of heaven, and the believer's delight in the glory of Christ - all founded on the immovable love of the Father of His Son. Traill's exposition is …
Outline: If you would like to be a Mentor, or find a Mentor, but don't know where to start, this is it. Mentoring is an invaluable way of teaching skills, traditions, and cultural nuances that can't be captured in the classroom. It helps you (as protege) reach you full potential, and gives you (as mentor) the satisfaction of seeing your skills and ideals carried forward to the next generation. …
Outline: "There is no correlation between the size and the strength of a church!" insists Rick Warren. "Big is not automatically better, and neither is being small automatically better. Healthy is better!" As a "pastor or pastors," Rick Warren has trained over 400,000 pastors from 164 countries, insisting that church health, not church growth, should be our focus. "If a church is healthy, growt…
Outline: Today's Church growth is centered Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and evangelicalism must adapt to changing demographics or risk becoming irrelevant. Yet many evangelicals behave "tribally," valuing the perspective of only those like themselves while also denying any evidence of racial attitudes in the church. Anthony Bradley has gathered scholars and leaders from diverse "tribes" - b…
Outline: Surveying the barriers that contemporary thinking has erected between the natural and the supernatural, between earth and heaven, Hans Boersma issues a wake-up call for Western Christianity. Both Catholics and evangelicals, he says, have moved too far away from a sacramental mindset, focusing more on the "here-and-now" than on the "then-and-there." Yet, as Boersma point out, the teachi…
Outline: Multiplied millions of women all over the world are looking over the church's shoulder, longing to see the freedom Jesus purchased for them at Calvary. Millions more have found freedom in Jesus but are still bound by human ideas - ideas that pressure a woman to let culture, not God, determine her place in the Kingdom. While hurting men and women outside the church cry out, "Is there an…
Outline: Working in tandem with the resources and videos found at churchcares.com, this handbook brings together top experts from various fields to help pastors and ministry leaders understand and implement the best practices for handling a variety of abuse scenarios in churches, schools, or ministries. Although the most comprehensive training is experienced by using this handbook and the video…
Outline: Although several Orthodox theologians have significantly influenced the development of Ecclesiology in the twentieth century, the contribution of (Archbishop) Stylianos Harkianakis remains, without doubt, a landmark in the history of that theological field today. Essentially, the author's consideration of the Church is that it is the most intimate and graced communion not only of huma…
Outline : How can we reconcile the ideal church described by theology with the broken church that we see in the world? In this book Joseph Small argues that the church’s true identity is known somewhere in the tension between the two. Small revisits familiar ecclesiological concepts—people of God, the body of Christ, the communion of the Holy Spirit—but rather than focusing on theological…
Outline : What is evangelical theology today? In response to increasing evangelical fragmentation, Kevin Vanhoozer and Daniel Treier offer a clarion call to reconceive to reconceive evangelical theology theologically by reflecting on the God of the gospel as mirrored in Scripture. Such "mere" evangelical theology will be an exercise in Christian wisdom for the purpose of building up the fellows…
Outline: In this new, completely rewritten edition of his major 1986 book, Francis Watson extends, updates, and clarifies his response to E. P. Sanders's view of Paul, in order to point the way beyond the polarization of "new" and "old" perspectives on the apostle. The Paul who comes to light in these pages is both agent and thinker, apostle and theologian. He is a highly contextual figure, yet…
Outline: The church is more than a building - it is an assembly of people joined together across distances and even through time to fulfill God's purposes in the world. Each local gathering of that assembly needs a vision to help its members accomplish the work God has called them to do. But how do you inspire your church to create and follow through on a vision? Mike Milton provides tested, bi…
Outline: THE CLIMAX OF BONHOEFFER'S THEOLOGICAL LIFE - according to Eberhart Bethge, Bonhoeffer's close friend and biographer - occurs in his meditative commentary on Psalm 119, even though his premature death prevented its completion. Here for the first time is Bonhoeffer's final great work, along with sermons and meditations on other selections from the Psalms. MEDITATING ON THE WORD displays…
Outline: The twenty-first century is marked by a renewed emphasis on the missional responsibility of individual Christians and local churches. Churches on Mission : God's Grace Abounding to the Nations is an attempt to explore the relationship between the local church and its missionary responsibilities. Through history, theology, case studies, and actual ministry practices, each author in this…
Outline: Today many pastors are struggling to adapt to a post-Christian culture without abandoing orthodox theology. How do we communicate the concepts of grace and substitutionary atonement in our globalized culture and context? In Center Church, Timothy Keller offers challenging insights and provocative questions based on over twenty years of ministry in New York City. This book outlines a th…
Outline: As a response to the unique challenges facing the tweinty-first-century American church, church planting has become a popular topic. But at a time when churches that spread the seed of the Word through preaching, the sacraments, when churches that spread the seed of the Word through preaching, the sacraments, and prayer are greatly needed, much of the focus has been on planting churche…
Outline : "Men despite religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true," declared Pascal in his Pensees. "The cure for this," he explained, "is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is." Motivated by the seventeenth-century view of the supremacy of human rea…
Outline: What was it like to be an ordinary Christian in the beginning decades of the Roman Empire? In this absorbing and authority book, Meeks analyzes the earliest extant documents of Christianity - the letters of Paul - to describe the tensions and the texture of life of the first urban Christians.
Outline: Having discovered this sad state of affairs, Craig Blomberg, a committed Evangelical scholar, and Stephen Robinson, a committed Mormon scholar, set out to listen to one another and to ferret out the genuine agreements and disagreements between them. In the conversation that develops, you will read what each believes about key theological issues - (1) the nature and bounds of Scripture,…
Outline: We have long been aware of the challenge of reaching the unreached peoples of the world. For many this seemed a daunting and almost impossible task.
Outline: Speaking the Truth in Love : The Theology of John M. Frame, is a festschrift honoring Professor Frame'a career in seminary teaching and publishing. Unlike many festschrifts, this book does not merely collect essays on subjects of interest to the honoree. Rather, it analyzes Frame's own work in the fields of theology, apologetics, ethics, worship, the church, and other areas. Containing…
Outline: The subject of Christ and Culture has occupied the church since its inception. Some emphasize the reality of redemption and the imperative of cultural transformation; others critize this approach because of the transient nature of this current life and the specific function of "kingdom" activity. This project focuses on the two competing compositions rooted in the Reformed tradition; n…
Outline: The Explorations in Biblical Theology series addresses the need for quality literature that attacts believing readers to good theology - and builds them up in their faith. Each title in the series combines satisfying content with the accessibility and readibility of a popular book. The result is a valuable addition to the library of any college senior, seminarian, pastor - indeed anyon…
Outline: By the year 2050 only one Christian in five will be non-Latino and white, and the center of gravity of the Christian world will have shifted firmly to the Southern Hemisphere. The Next Christendom is the first book
Outline: The Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference (EDC) takes place every second year. The Rutherford Centre for Reformed Theology, which runs the conference, has a present interest in studying the doctrine of the church (ecclesiology). After two years of pandemic, when most churches began to take new forms or develop new ways of meeting, many questions are being asked: What is the church, and what i…
Outline: More Christians have died for their faith in the 20th century, than in the previous 19 centuries combined. Here's what's happening, where it's happening, and what America's Christians must do to stop it.
Outline: Bringing alive the lost world of the Middle Ages - From the fall of Rome and the conversion of the Germanic tribes to the dawn of the Reformation, here is a rich and concrete exploration of the religious life ways and spirituality of medieval peasants and artisans, warriors and clerics, wives and children, and even the dead, in their daily interactions with each other, the church, the …
Outline: Christians encounter the modern spirit - After the Reformation, Christians found themselves living amidst wars of religion, Enlightenment, and colonization. The conflictive and fast-changing scene in which Christians of all allegiances were thrown yielded vase and distinct new challenges and venues to ordinary Christians. The spread of Christianity to lands outside Europe and the Middl…