The Myth of the Dying Church
The Myth of the Dying Church

Author: Glenn T. Stanton

Publisher: Worthy Books

Published: 2019-06-18

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1546015167

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Stop believing the false narrative that Christianity is declining, and discover the truth about the health of the church in America and around the world. Much has been made of the so-called "nones" - those who claim no spiritual affiliation. Media has spun the nones into a chicken-little the sky is falling narrative. The nones are an infamously difficult subsection to understand and there is a lot of false information on them. Glenn Stanton believes the nones story has become overblown and has become "a thing" due to curiosity and repetition of their supposed irreligiosity. THE MYTH OF THE DYING CHURCH digs deeply into the research concerning spirituality in America and reveals the hope and truth about the vitality and future of the church.

Without Flesh
Without Flesh

Author: Jonathan Fisk

Publisher:

Published: 2020-02

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9780758666444

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Have the times really changed? Is the Church actually dying? Are we truly in danger of being subsumed beneath a new, ominous culture of evil? Or is the only real change the fact that we have convinced ourselves that times have changed? It is no secret that Christianity has been ceding ground to secular worldliness and exotic spiritualities for years. The front lines of the battle waged against the present darkness have experienced retreat after retreat, each time with people wagging their heads and saying, "If only we can rethink our strategies for mission, we can turn this tide and win the lost for Jesus." But for all our "rethinking," we haven't "rethought" nearly so much as it might seem. Perhaps the real out-of-the-box thinking we need is not out-of-the-box at all, but inside it. In Without Flesh, Jonathan Fisk proposes that we don't need something new. Instead, he writes that we need something old-very, very old. Like...the most important words Jesus ever said. Fisk's solution is more simple than we may think. Maybe the only problem is that we just don't want to believe it's true. "Do this," He said. -- Back Cover.

The Myth of a Christian Nation
The Myth of a Christian Nation

Author: Gregory A. Boyd

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0310267315

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Arguing from Scripture and history, the author makes a compelling case that getting too close to any political or national ideology is disastrous for the church and harmful to society.

You Found Me
You Found Me

Author: Rick Richardson

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2019-06-18

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0830864547

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New research from the Billy Graham Center Institute shows that unchurched Americans are still remarkably open to faith conversations and the church. Researcher and practitioner Rick Richardson sheds light on the study's findings and shares best practices for how churches are effectively approaching unchurched "nones" and moving them to faith.

The Myth of Persecution
The Myth of Persecution

Author: Candida Moss

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2013-03-05

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0062104543

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An expert on early Christianity reveals how the early church invented stories of Christian martyrs—and how this persecution myth persists today. According to church tradition and popular belief, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. But as Candida Moss reveals in The Myth of Persecution, the “Age of Martyrs” is a fiction. There was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still invoked by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. By shedding light on the historical record, Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get them.

Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson
Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson

Author: Ron Dart

Publisher: Lexham Press

Published: 2020-03-25

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1683593634

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Popular philosopher Jordan Peterson has captured the imagination of Western world. For some, Peterson represents all that is wrong with patriarchal culture; for others, he is the Canadian academic prophet who has come to save civilization from dizzying confusion. Regardless of how one feels about him, his influence in North America--and beyond--is difficult to deny. While the "Peterson phenomenon" has motivated numerous articles and responses, much of what has been written is either excessively fawning or overly critical. Little has been produced that explores Peterson's thought--especially his immensely popular 12 Rules for Life--within the context of his overall context and scholarly output. How is one to understand the ascendency of Jordan Peterson and why he's become so popular? Does his earlier Maps of Meaning shed light on how one might understand his worldwide bestseller, 12 Rules for Life? In Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, scholars across various disciplines explore various aspects of Jordan Peterson's thought from a Christian perspective. Both critical and charitable, sober-minded and generous, this collection of ten essays is a key resource for those looking to faithfully engage with Jordan Peterson's thought.

God Has a Name
God Has a Name

Author: John Mark Comer

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2024-10-15

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1400249570

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What you believe about God sets the foundation of the person you will become. In God Has a Name, pastor and New York Times bestselling author John Mark Comer invites you to rethink many of the prevalent myths and misconceptions about God and weigh them against what God actually tells us about himself. After all, what you believe about God will ultimately shape the type of person you become. We all live at the mercy of our ideas, and nowhere is this more true than our ideas about God. The problem is many of our ideas about God are wrong. Not all wrong, but wrong enough to form our souls in detrimental and disheartening ways. God Has a Name is a simple yet profound guide to understanding God in a new light--focusing on what God says about himself in the Bible. This one shift has the potential to radically alter how you relate to God, not as a doctrine, but as a relational being who responds to you in an elastic, back-and-forth way. John Mark Comer takes you line by line through Exodus 34:6-8--Yahweh's self-revelation on Mount Sinai, one of the most quoted passages in the Bible. Along the way, Comer addresses some of the most profound questions he came across as he studied these noted lines in Exodus, including: Why do we feel this gap between us and God? Could it be that a lot of what we think about God is wrong? Not all wrong, but wrong enough to mess up how we relate to him? What if our "God" is really a projection of our own identity, ideas, and desires? What if the real God is different, but far better than we could ever imagine? No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, God Has a Name invites you to step into a fresh and biblically rooted vision of who God is that has the potential to alter your life with God and shape who you become.

The Universal Christ
The Universal Christ

Author: Richard Rohr

Publisher: Convergent Books

Published: 2019-03-05

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1524762105

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives. “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.