Grateful Disciples


Book Description

"Stewardship is an expression of discipleship, with the power to change how we understand and live out our lives." This simple yet compelling statement from Stewardship: A Disciple's Response captures the importance of forming people to grow as good and faithful stewards. Grateful Disciples is a unique and comprehensive guide for stewardship leaders. The Grateful Disciples guide is only part of the story. The Grateful Disciples website equips leaders with all they need to establish and sustain stewardship in the parish.




Raising Disciples


Book Description

Every child—from infancy to adolescence—is being discipled by someone or something. The question is: Are you willing to disciple them for Jesus’ sake? Accessible and actionable for parents of children birth to 13 years old, Raising Disciples offers a detailed discipleship map and directional markers to nurture your child’s spiritual growth with Christ. During her more than 25 years in children’s ministry alongside her academic work training up children’s ministry leaders, Dr. Teresa Roberts noticed that parents and even children’s ministry leaders seemed to struggle with knowing how to disciple children past the more-intuitive preschool ages. A foundational family and ministry resource, Raising Disciples reflects the developmental needs that will empower children to grow in their knowledge of God’s Word, develop a vocabulary of faith, engage in spiritual practices, and cultivate a deep, personal relationship with God. Featuring intuitive, quick-reference visual aids, researched expertise, real-life examples from the ministry of Jesus, and relational warmth, Raising Disciples is a must-have resource to give you a discipleship pathway for raising spiritually grounded children in today's complex world. Includes additional tools: Discipleship map from birth to adolescence Discipleship reference by age level Resource list for continued discipleship and training in biblical interpretation Discussion questions for children’s ministry leaders and volunteers Learn how to equip your child with tools to navigate life’s challenges and make their Christian faith a personal and lasting commitment.




Grateful


Book Description

The Wilbur Award-winning book Grateful is now available in paperback and with an updated subtitle. If gratitude is good, why is it so hard to do? In Grateful, Diana Butler Bass untangles our conflicting understandings of gratitude and sets the table for a renewed practice of giving thanks. We know that gratitude is good, but many of us find it hard to sustain a meaningful life of gratefulness. Four out of five Americans report feeling gratitude on a regular basis, but those private feelings seem disconnected from larger concerns of our public lives. In Grateful, cultural observer and theologian Diana Butler Bass takes on this “gratitude gap” and offers up surprising, relevant, and powerful insights to practice gratitude. Bass, author of the award-winning Grounded and ten other books on spirituality and culture, explores the transformative, subversive power of gratitude for our personal lives and in communities. Using her trademark blend of historical research, spiritual insights, and timely cultural observation, she shows how we can overcome this gap and make change in our own lives and in the world. With honest stories and heartrending examples from history and her own life, Bass reclaims gratitude as a path to greater connection with god, with others, with the world, and even with our own souls. It’s time to embrace a more radical practice of gratitude—the virtue that heals us and helps us thrive.




Saturate


Book Description

What does living for Jesus look like in the everyday stuff of life? Many Christians have unwittingly embraced the idea that “church” is a once-a-week event rather than a community of Spirit-empowered people; that “ministry” is what pastors do on Sundays rather than the 24/7 calling of all believers; and that “discipleship” is a program rather than the normal state of every follower of Jesus. Drawing on his experience as a pastor and church planter, Jeff Vanderstelt wants us to see that there’s more—much more—to the Christian life than sitting in a pew once a week. God has called his people to something bigger: a view of the Christian life that encompasses the ordinary, the extraordinary, and everything in between. Packed full of biblical teaching, compelling stories, and real-world advice, this book will remind you that Jesus is filling the world with his presence through the everyday lives of everyday people... People just like you.







Growing in Gratitude


Book Description

How to grow as thankful women of God. As women, we are often encouraged to "count our blessings". But truly biblical gratitude is much more than this. Mary K. Mohler unpacks Scripture to help us grow in gracious gratitude (thanking God for who he is) as well as natural gratitude (thanking him for his blessings) - and to identify and deal with some of the things that hinder us - to help us rediscover the joy of a thankful heart. This thoroughly Bible-centred unpacking of the reasons for gratitude builds on Mary K. Mohler's 25 years experience in mentoring seminary wives at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make this book ideal for group use as well as for individuals.




Gospel Discipleship Congregation Guide


Book Description

Each congregation has a unique mission field. Several tools for developing disciples and for engaging in discipleship are available to churches; however, the resources assume that the churches using them are similar to the church that created them. With Gospel Discipleship, individuals and churches learn how to engage in self-reflection, which then defines a path that fits their context. The discipleship path for each individual disciple is assessed and determined through the Gospel Discipleship Participant Guide while this Gospel Discipleship Congregation Guide guides the implemntation of the program and assesses the discipleship path for the congregation as a whole. Therefore, the program leader(s) needs the congregation guide while individual particpants need their own participant guide. With Gospel Discipleship, churches can identify a pathway for discipleship applied from one of the four Gospel storytellers: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each had a distinct approach to discipleship which can be applied to a given church's identity, vision, and mission. As disciples are encouraged by the church to step beyond the door and engage the needs of people, they can be sent forth confidently with an awareness of personal, unique gifts, and insights into the actual mission field where they participate with God in changing the world.




More Disciples


Book Description

Church Planting Movements have reshaped the mission world. More Disciples introduces the topic, unveils the history, and offers current best practices in getting to multiplying disciples.




Deep Discipleship


Book Description

Everyone is being discipled. The question is: what is discipling us? The majority of Christians today are being discipled by popular media, flashy events, and folk theology because churches have neglected their responsibility to make disciples. But the church is not a secondary platform in the mission of God; it is the primary platform God uses to grow people into the image of Jesus. Therefore, as church leaders, it is our primary responsibility to establish environments and relationships where people can be trained, grow, and be sent as disciples. There are three indispensable elements of discipleship: Learning to participate in the biblical story (the Bible) Growing in our confession of who God is and who we are (theology) Regularly participating in private and corporate intentional action (spiritual disciplines) Deep Discipleship equips churches to reclaim the responsibility of discipling people at any point on their journey.




Why I Love the Apostle Paul


Book Description

"Besides Jesus, no one has kept me from despair, or taken me deeper into the mysteries of the gospel, than the apostle Paul." —John Piper No one has had a greater impact on the world for eternal good than the apostle Paul—except Jesus himself. For John Piper, this impact is very personal. He does not just admire and trust Paul. He loves him. Piper gives us thirty glimpses into why his heart and mind respond this way. Can a Christian-killer really endure 195 lashes from a heart of love? Can a mystic who thinks he was caught up into heaven be a model of lucid rationality? Can an ethnocentric Jew write the most beautiful call to reconciliation? Can a person who lives with the unceasing anguish of empathy be always rejoicing? Can a man's description of the horrors of human sin be exceeded by his delight in human splendor? Can a man with a backbone of steel be as tender as a nursing mother? If we know this man—if we see what Piper sees—we too will love him. Paul's testimony is a matter of life and death. Piper invites you into his relationship with Paul in the hope that you will know life, forever.