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…
Outline: Division. Polarization. Strife. That's life-as-usual in today's world. But it shouldn't describe the church. It's time for Christians to listen, reach out, and work together for the common good. But how can God's people achieve true unity in a fallen world? What sort of cooperation is actually possible? Luder Whitlock has an answer - a good one - and an appeal. He shows how we can lear…
Outline: A key refrain in Reformed theology is that God's Spirit trumpets the message of salvation through Jesus Christ into every book and cranny of the universe - but now? And in what way does this cosmic truth touch and shape the mundane reality of our lives and our world? In this distillation of his Warfield Lectures, delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary in spring 2014, leading Refor…
Outline: Theodore Beza's A Clear and Simple Treatise on the Lord's Supper (1559) advances a tireless defense of the Reformed perspective on the Lord's Supper, responding chapter by chapter to specific arguments raised against John Calvin by his Lutheran opponent Joachim Westphal. Beza makes great use of the concept of metonymy, or a figure of speech, in his interpretation of the words of instit…
Outline: Richard Gamble's three-volume Whole Counsel of God explores the relationships between exegesis and hermeneutics, and between biblical, systematic, and historical theology. "He bridges the gap so many have identified between traditional systematic theology and biblical theology," Richard Pratt writes; not only that, he "penetrates beyond scholarly concerns to life issues that every beli…
Outline: Perspectives on Family Ministry makes the case that every church is called to some form of faamily ministry - but not just another program to add to an already packed schedule. According to Timothy Paul Jones, the most effective family ministries engage parents in the act of discipling their children, drawing family members together instead of pulling them apart. He writes here about t…
Outline: In this collection of forty-six letters and writings of John Calvin, newly translated into English, the reformer gives advice to individuals and groups about theology, ethics, worship, politics, economics, and church practices. Topics discussed include dogmatics and polemics, changes (and the need for changes) in religion, the worship of images, ecclesiastical discipline, marriage, and…
Outline: In the biblical drama of the living God's works in creation and redemption, no theme is more lustrous than that of God's gracious intention to enjoy communion with humans who bear his image and whose lives have been broken through sin. Cornelis Venema summarizes and defends a broad consensus view of the doctrine of the covenants in the history of Reformed theology, clarifying areas of …
Outline: The Larger Catechism stands as one of the three major doctrinal standards produced by the Westminster Assembly. Ofter overshadowed by the Shorter Catechism and the Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism exhibits the Assembly's most mature theological reflection and insight. In this remarkable volume, John Bower provides extensive historical background for the making of this colossal…
Outline: The Reformation was a time of tremendous upheaval, renewal, and vitality in the life of church. The challenge to maintain and develop faithful Christian belief and practice in the midst of great disruption was reflected in the theology of the sixteenth century. In this volume, which serves as a companion to IVP Academic's Reformation Commentary on Scripture series, theologian and churc…