While we were sleeping...Satan was taking over our pulpits...While we were dancing he slid right in the back door...While we were practicing our traditions...he's been destroying our children...While we were caught up in religion...he's been stealing our identities...While we were crying...he's been laughing...While we've remained spiritually impotent...he's been taking over THE WORLD...
Acclaimed church leader, blogger, founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan unpacks the lifecycle of a typical church, identifies characteristics of each phase, and provides practical next steps a church can take to move towards sustained health. Think about your church for a moment. Is it growing? Is it diminishing? Is it somewhere in between? Acclaimed church leader, blogger, and founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan has identified the seven stages of a church's lifecycle that range from the hopeful and optimistic days of launch, to the stagnating last stages of life support. Regardless of the stage in which you find your church, it carries with it the world's greatest mission—to "go and make disciples of all the nations . . ." With eternity at stake the Church should be doing most everything within its power to see lives changed forever. The Church should strive for the pinnacle of the lifecycle, where they are continually making new disciples and experiencing what Morgan refers to as "sustained health." In The Unstuck Church, Morgan unpacks each phase of the church lifecycle, and offers specific and strategic next steps the church leader can take to find it's way to sustained health . . . and finally become unstuck. The Unstuck Church is a call for honest an assessment of where your church sits on the lifecycle, and a challenge to move beyond it.
Not too long ago, there was no coming back from death. But now, with revolutionary medical advances, death has become just another serious complication as David Casarett shows in this compelling volume. The entire history of resuscitation, from ancient times to today, is here explored, thus revealing exactly how malleable the term 'dead' actually is.
Raising the Dead is a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary exploration of death’s relation to subjectivity in twentieth-century American literature and culture. Sharon Patricia Holland contends that black subjectivity in particular is connected intimately to death. For Holland, travelling through “the space of death” gives us, as cultural readers, a nuanced and appropriate metaphor for understanding what is at stake when bodies, discourses, and communities collide. Holland argues that the presence of blacks, Native Americans, women, queers, and other “minorities” in society is, like death, “almost unspeakable.” She gives voice to—or raises—the dead through her examination of works such as the movie Menace II Society, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits, and the work of the all-white, male, feminist hip-hop band Consolidated. In challenging established methods of literary investigation by putting often-disparate voices in dialogue with each other, Holland forges connections among African-American literature and culture, queer and feminist theory. Raising the Dead will be of interest to students and scholars of American culture, African-American literature, literary theory, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.
In 2001, as Reinhard Bonnke debated whether or not to move his ministry to America, he did something he had never done before: he prayed for a sign to confirm that God truly was calling him to go to America. God was about to answer that prayer. A few days later, a woman brought her husband to the Nigerian church where Bonnke was preaching, in hopes that his partially embalmed body would be raised from the dead after three days in a coffin. Although Bonnke was unaware of this and never even prayed for the man, the woman’s husband, lying in the church basement, began to breathe again during the sermon. In front of thousands of witnesses, this man, who still couldn’t move because of rigor mortis, was raised back to life. After his message, Bonnke was besieged by a crowd yelling, “He’s breathing! He’s breathing!” This incredible miracle, now detailed for the first time, is part of a movement of God, birthed in a small African church and stretching around the world to America. It is the beginning of a work of God that will confirm His word to Bonnke: “America shall be saved.”
With over three billion people who profess to be Christians, why is the world so dark? Where has our mighty spirit been buried? And why have so many believers become socially ineffective? The truth is, most of the individuals who have accepted Christ are alive in the flesh and dead in the spirit. In this book, the church will receive ten crucial keys to unlock its former influence, reactivate its authority, and bring positive change to the people around them. If you desire to reawaken spiritually, develop a greater connection with God, discover your true identity, exercise your faith at a deeper level, and walk in your highest potential, Reviving the Dead will lead you in the right direction.
It was a beautiful, warm summer day, the day Danny died. Suddenly Wren was alone and shattered. In a heartbroken fury, armed with dark incantations and a secret power, Wren decides that what she wants—what she must do—is to bring Danny back. But the Danny who returns is just a shell of the boy Wren fell in love with. His touch is icy; his skin, smooth and stiff as marble; his chest, cruelly silent when Wren rests her head against it. Wren must keep Danny a secret, hiding him away, visiting him at night, while her life slowly unravels around her. Then Gabriel DeMarnes transfers to her school, and Wren realizes that somehow, inexplicably, he can sense the powers that lie within her—and that he knows what she has done. And now Gabriel wants to help make things right. But Wren alone has to undo what she has wrought—even if it means breaking her heart all over again.
This book shows that the key to effective leadership is learning how to influence in a way that engenders greater trust, stronger partnerships, and more impactful endeavors. Anyone can make an impact. All you need is influence—the most potent professional asset on the planet. The problem is that influence is also the most underused asset on the planet. And the primary reason is that the enemy of influence is a universal human trait: self-preservation. You guard your ideas, your status, and your reputation. Within your self-constructed walls you must cast safer visions, take smaller risks, and accept shallower relationships to ensure the security of all you are protecting. This is the downside of self-preservation: While your walls protect you and yours from demise, they also restrict your influence. You must break down your walls of self-preservation and sacrifice your security for the sake of others. Only then does the escalating paradox of personal generosity come into play: The more you give, the more you receive. This book shows that the key to effective leadership is learning how to influence in a way that engenders greater trust, stronger partnerships, and more impactful endeavors.
OVER 400,000 COPIES SOLD! Revival isn’t just an emotional experience. It’s a complete transformation. It can happen in your heart, in your home, in your church, and in your world. Restore your first love. Develop a heartfelt desire for God’s Word. Resolve conflicts. Repair relationships. Remove bitterness, fear, and worry. Refresh your spirit. Renew your mind. Reenergize your life. You can get back your passion and zeal for the Lord. Begin by Seeking Him! "Seeking Him was transformative for me. ... It brought me nearer to the Father and helped me learn how to seek Him with joy. I totally believe it can do the same for everybody else." Jackie Hill Perry, Author, speaker, artist "Every pastor’s dream. Finally! A guide to assist every member in personal revival and every church in corporate revival." Tony Evans, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship "An intimate and insightful guide to holy living, a heaven-blessed soul, and a happy heart that can’t help but to be on fire for the Lord Jesus!" Joni Earackson Tada, Joni and Friends
Over the past few years, John Pavlovitz's blog, Stuff That Needs To Be Said, has become a virtual hub for millions of people from all over the world, drawn there by his clear, compelling words on compassion, equity, love, and justice. This expansive, like-hearted community transcends race, orientation, gender, religious tradition, political affiliation, and nation of origin--and finds its affinity in the deeper place of our shared humanity, which is the True North of his writing. This collection lovingly pulls together some of John's most widely-read and most beloved essays on faith, politics, grief, and the elemental parts of being human. It is an encouraging, inspiring, challenging storehouse of "stuff that needs to be said."
