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Surviving Religion 101

Author : Michael J. Kruger

Publisher : Crossway

Page : 251 pages

File Size : 48,71 MB

Release : 2021-03-22

Category : Religion

ISBN : 1433572109

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Book Description

"I can't imagine a college student—skeptic, doubter, Christian, struggler—who wouldn't benefit from this book." —Kevin DeYoung For many young adults, the college years are an exciting period of selfdiscovery full of new relationships, new independence, and new experiences. Yet college can also be a time of personal testing and intense questioning— especially for Christian students confronted with various challenges to Christianity and the Bible for the first time. Drawing on years of experience as a biblical scholar, Michael Kruger addresses common objections to the Christian faith—the exclusivity of Christianity, Christian intolerance, homosexuality, hell, the problem of evil, science, miracles, and the reliability of the Bible. If you're a student dealing with doubt or wrestling with objections to Christianity from fellow students and professors alike, this book will equip you to engage secular challenges with intellectual honesty, compassion, and confidence—and ultimately graduate college with your faith intact.



How to Survive and Thrive in Church

Author : Doug Batchelor

Publisher : Mountain Ministry

Page : 0 pages

File Size : 38,23 MB

Release : 1998-05

Category : Christian life

ISBN : 9780966810509

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Book Description

"The devil has come down with great wrath," and he is bent on catapulting Christians out of church fellowship. This lively book provides an excellent resource for just about anyone who has struggled in their relationship with the church. Regardless of your church experience, you will find every chapter oozes with practical principles helpful for surviving and thriving in a big, small, dead, divided, scandal-torn or gossip-ridden church. WARNING! Reading this book will probably cause laughter, tears and an enduring increase in love, courage and personal commitment!



Banished

Author : Lauren Drain

Publisher : Grand Central Publishing

Page : 211 pages

File Size : 16,39 MB

Release : 2013-03-05

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1455512435

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Book Description

Banished is an eye-opening, deeply personal account of life inside the cult known as the Westboro Baptist Church, as well as a fascinating story of adaptation and perseverance. You've likely heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. Perhaps you've seen their pickets on the news, the members holding signs with messages that are too offensive to copy here, protesting at events such as the funerals of soldiers, the 9-year old victim of the recent Tucson shooting, and Elizabeth Edwards, all in front of their grieving families. The WBC is fervently anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and anti- practically everything and everyone. And they aren't going anywhere: in March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the WBC's right to picket funerals. Since no organized religion will claim affiliation with the WBC, it's perhaps more accurate to think of them as a cult. Lauren Drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15, and then spat back out again seven years later. Lauren spent her early years enjoying a normal life with her family in Florida. But when her formerly liberal and secular father set out to produce a documentary about the WBC, his detached interest gradually evolved into fascination, and he moved the entire family to Kansas to join the church and live on their compound. Over the next seven years, Lauren fully assimilated their extreme beliefs, and became a member of the church and an active and vocal picketer. But as she matured and began to challenge some of the church's tenets, she was unceremoniously cast out from the church and permanently cut off from her family and from everyone else she knew and loved. Banished is the story of Lauren's fight to find herself amidst dramatic changes in a world of extremists and a life in exile.



It's Personal

Author : Brian Bloye

Publisher : Zondervan

Page : 254 pages

File Size : 50,61 MB

Release : 2012-04-23

Category : Religion

ISBN : 0310494559

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Book Description

A challenging and encouraging manual for day-to-day life in ministry written specifically for couples who want to do more than survive the process of church planting and leadership—who want to actually thrive and grow in faith together as a family. Though we may feel like we can't show it, every aspect of planting a church is personal. Church planters and those in ministry leadership roles give so much to starting and growing healthy, thriving churches that when some people inevitably criticize the church, or leave altogether, it's hard not to take it personally. Brian and Amy Bloye know firsthand the emotional and relational toll that planting churches can take. In It's Personal—part of the Exponential series, inspiring and equipping next-generation church planters—the Bloye's get personal about finding the right balance of family and ministry. Planting a church is more than a ministry—it's a calling that touches every aspect of your life in very personal ways. With intimacy and wisdom, Brian and Amy discuss topics like: How to protect your marriage while planting a church. How to respond to growth and change. How to lead well while still maintaining space and time for family. How to know when it’s becoming too personal. With a forward by Andy Stanley, It's Personal will challenge and encourage you to avoid some of the pitfalls of planting a church and be equipped to build both strong and prevailing ministries, and healthy marriages and families. Each chapter includes interviews with church-planting couples who share their personal joys and struggles, giving you authentic insight into the issues families face when planting a church.



Surviving the Church

Author : Amy Walker

Publisher : Amy Walker

Page : 212 pages

File Size : 45,64 MB

Release : 2012-04

Category : Religion

ISBN : 9781432791902

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Book Description

To a person of faith, the Church is the body of Christ created to extend God's love and grace here on earth. What can seekers and believers do when life inside the Church habitually drives them to seek sanctuary in the arms of the world instead? Countless people have experienced burnout and been subject to guilt trips and methods of manipulation in the name of ministry while their relationship with God suffers the consequences. What can you do when you become disenchanted with God's people? How can the Church win back the countless souls who have walked away in a desperate act of self-preservation? Is there a way to restore hope to your faith? Believers, seekers, pastors, leaders, the burned-out and the passionate are all invited to join the discussion. If you have not suffered the soul-crushing blows to your faith that can happen within the Church then chances are you know someone who has. It is a life-altering experience with eternal consequences. Together we can learn to recognize the pitfalls that subtly creep into our congregations enabling us to intervene BEFORE it%u2019s too late. Those who have already left the Church will see that all is not lost when their hope is in Jesus Christ. As the disenchanted endeavor to rebuild their faith, God will reveal a path to restoration and reconciliation. Inside this book you will find, among other things, topics like: -Personal, real-life stories about faith changing experiences -Insight about the descent into the cycle of burnout -Exposure of common pitfalls within the Church such as guilt trips and manipulation tactics -Biblical and practical steps the Church can take to help stem the tide of believers leaving the church over neglect, abuse, and offense -Realistic suggestions for the disenchanted believer for moving forward in healing and restoration -How the Church can recapture the hearts of the disenchanted



Surviving Ministry

Author : Michael E. Osborne

Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers

Page : 126 pages

File Size : 25,44 MB

Release : 2016-05-06

Category : Religion

ISBN : 1498280293

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Book Description

Being a pastor has its rewards and pleasures. But churches can be unsafe places. They are filled with broken, imperfect people. Many ministers of the gospel walk into a church naive about the potential hazards of their vocation. They are vulnerable to difficult people, unresolved conflict, incompatible visions, hidden agendas, mission drift, and sin--their own and that of others. Other pastors feel trapped in a ministry hurricane and don't know what to do. They feel like failures. They're thinking about leaving the ministry. They are looking for help and hope--not from an "expert" detached from the real world of ministry--but from someone who has suffered through church hurricanes and lived to share the story. Moreover, they need to know they are not alone. Surviving Ministry: How to Weather the Storms of Church Leadership includes the author's own story as well as true stories from other pastors who have been in the eye of the hurricane. Discouraged ministers looking for biblical, practical, gospel-centered advice for storm proofing their churches, homes, and hearts have found a friend. Surviving Ministry will equip them to stay resilient before, during, and after seasons of difficulty.



Surviving Me

Author : Jo Johnson

Publisher : Unbound Publishing

Page : 281 pages

File Size : 13,76 MB

Release : 2019-11-14

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1789650623

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Book Description

Tom has decided he doesn't want to live. Adam wishes he had a choice. Tom's lost his job and now he's been labelled 'spermless'. He doesn't exactly feel like a modern man, although his double life helps. Yet when his secret identity threatens to unravel, he starts to lose the plot and comes perilously close to the edge. All the while Adam has his own duplicity, albeit for very different reasons, reasons which will blow the family's future out of the water. If they can't be honest with themselves, and everyone else, then things are going to get a whole lot more complicated.



Church Behind the Wire

Author : Barnabas Mam

Publisher : Moody Publishers

Page : 249 pages

File Size : 22,32 MB

Release : 2012-05-01

Category : Religion

ISBN : 0802483151

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Book Description

From the oppression and terror of the killing fields in Cambodia, this is the story of how one man's conversion led to a rebirth of faith that brought hope to a nation. Commissioned by Communists to spy on a Christian evangelistic crusade, Barnabas Mam instead discovered Jesus and came to faith in Him. After spending four years in prison camps at the hands of the Khmer Rouge Barnabas emerged as one of only 200 surviving Christians in all of Cambodia. God raised him up to became the foremost evangelist and church planter in a land broken by genocide. An inspiring story on a personal, church, and national level, this is more than a narrative--it's a blueprint for success for church growth of the most powerful kind.



The New Copernicans

Author : David John Seel

Publisher : HarperChristian + ORM

Page : 272 pages

File Size : 42,74 MB

Release : 2018-01-16

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0718098889

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Book Description

"Our millennial children, as well as nonchurchgoing millennials, are both the church's greatest challenge and its most exciting new opportunity." —John Seel, PhD Warning: There is a fundamental frame of reference shift in American society happening right now among young adults. You may think of this group as millennials—those born between 1980 and 2000—but millennials resist this label for good reason: the national narrative on them is pejorative, patronizing, and just plain wrong. Here's what we do know: Of Americans with a church background, 76 percent are described as "religious nones" or unaffiliated—and it's the fastest growing segment of the population. Close to 40 percent of millennials fit this religious profile. Roughly 80 percent of teens in evangelical church high school youth groups will abandon their faith after two years in college. It's unlikely that the evangelical church can survive if it is uniformly rejected by millennials, and yet: Millennial pastors and youth ministers are disempowered; their perspective is often not taken seriously by senior church leadership. Most millennial research is framed in categories rejected by millennials; that is, left-brained, analytical communication is lost on right-brained, intuitive millennials. Evangelicals' bias toward rational left-brained thinking makes the church seem tone-deaf. What's next? Read on. John Seel suggests survival strategies—communication on-ramps for genuine human connection with the next generation. It can be done.



Resilient Ministry

Author : Bob Burns

Publisher : InterVarsity Press

Page : 314 pages

File Size : 44,35 MB

Release : 2012-11-30

Category : Religion

ISBN : 083086461X

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Book Description

Why does one well-equipped, well-meaning person in ministry succeed while another fails? Bob Burns, Tasha Chapman and Donald Guthrie undertook a five-year intensive research project on the frontlines of pastoral ministry to answer that question. What they found was nothing less than the DNA of thriving ministry today.