Religion Community

In Nothing More to Give James Skeen invites listeners on a profound journey from transactional obedience to transformational relationships. This audiobook challenges conventional beliefs and inspires listeners to embrace a relationship with God grounded in grace, not merit.

First-century Christians knew what it meant to live in vital community with one another, relating with a depth and commitment that made "the body of Christ" a perfect metaphor for the church. What would it take to reclaim that kind of love, joy, support, and dynamic spiritual growth? Listen to this book and find out.

Leadership in Community is a spiritual formation curriculum designed to provide a theological and practical foundation for Christian leaders committed to the mission of God in a vastly changing world. It engages new or seasoned missional leaders in the foundations of missiology, leadership theory, and leadership practices and tools. The curriculum explores three interrelated themes that build effective missional leadership: the missiology, community, and ethics of missional leadership.

Our bodies are designed to heal. But while our skinned knees easily heal, it can sometimes feel like our emotional and relational wounds are left gaping open, broken beyond repair. If our bodies instinctively know how to heal physical injuries, could they also help us understand how to restore painful emotional and relational ruptures? Physician Jennie McLaurin and scientist Cymbeline T. Culiat present Designed to Heal: a fascinating look at how the restorative processes of the body can model patterns we may adapt to heal the acute and chronic wounds of our social bodies.

Like so many saints before him, Samuel Rutherford did his best work while he was imprisoned for the gospel. While in exile from his hometown, he wrote hundreds of letters to his friends and members of his congregation. Christians of all walks have drawn strength from Rutherford's letters, which were printed several years after his death in 1661 and have been called “the most remarkable series of devotional letters that the literature of the Reformed churches can show.” The Loveliness of Christ is a collection of short excerpts from these letters.

In every position of power—from executives and world leaders to church elders and parents—lies the potential for life-giving leadership or destructive corruption. Driven by sinful pride or opportunism, many people abuse their God-given authority, harming the ones they're called to lead and contributing to a skeptical attitude toward leadership. The answer to bad authority, however, is not no authority, but good authority—the kind that, according to Scripture, causes those under it to flourish.

Today, a new movement is under way, bringing Christians of every denomination, age, race, and sexual orientation together around dinner tables. Men and women nervous about stepping through church doors are finding God in new ways as they eat together. Kendall Vanderslice shares stories of churches worshiping around the table, introducing listeners to the rising contemporary dinner-church movement. We Will Feast provides vision and inspiration to listeners longing to experience community in a real, physical way.

With all the hostility boiling just under the surface of our world, we need a renewed vision of Jesus as the Lamb of God who can lead us in the peaceable ways of the Kingdom. When we fail to keep Jesus at the center of our lives, we lean into the desires of our hearts more than the desires God has for us. As a result, our entire spirituality becomes driven by the self and for the self. We need renewed practices of centering Jesus in our hearts and minds. Derek Vreeland invites you to imagine what it looks like to keep Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of three key areas of our lives.

Jesus told a parable that has been a guide for me over the years. If you can develop the four characteristics inspired by the parable of the four soils, you will discover your calling and bring about so much good in our broken world. A spiritually receptive, tenacious, intentional, and proactive person will experience the presence and peace of God and have a hundred times the impact.

Sometimes when we look for black and white, all we find is more grey. Sometimes we are waiting on God to answer our prayer before we feel like we can trust he’s even listening. Toby Slough, a seasoned leader and pastor of a large church, shares candidly about his public battle with anxiety and depression. Through his story, you will find God at work in the most unlikely, “un-churchy” things.

What does the good news of Jesus mean for economics? Too often, Christian teaching and ministry have focused only on the gospel's spiritual significance and ignored its physical, real-world ramifications. But loving our neighbor well has direct economic implications, and in our diverse and stratified society we need to grapple with them now more than ever. In The Economics of Neighborly Love pastor Tom Nelson sets out to address this problem.

The Teaching of the Heart has been given to Mankind as a Great Revelation of the Cosmic Light Forces standing guard over not only the planet Earth, but the entire Solar System too. The Messengers of Distant Worlds and unknown star systems, the Masters of Wisdom have Revealed the secret Treasures of Shambhala to you that store secret scrolls since time immemorial.

During his time at Oxford, a friend asked Paget Wilkes one day, “I say, Paget, do you tackle everyone who comes into your rooms about his soul?" “Yes," answered Paget, “if he comes in alone." Wilkes was convinced that even the humblest Christian is responsible for bringing men to Christ. “If we have been forgiven and know it, if we have been made new creatures in Christ Jesus, then we...are commissioned to minister this same salvation unto men and to witness of all these things which Jesus our Savior has revealed to us. Hallelujah!"

Fighting, disagreements, hatred, dissension, and silence. These things seem common in the wider Christian community today. Politics, theology, and even personal preference create seemingly insurmountable rifts. It’s hard not to see ourselves as “at war” with each other. We’re not doomed to be stuck here, though. There is a twofold path out of this destructive war, out of seeing our brothers and sisters as enemies―and into a spacious place of loving each other even as we disagree.

Our Teaching is an abridged version of the teaching of the Holy Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community as laid down in his book Kashti-e-Nuh [Noah’s Ark]. This book is addressed primarily to members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community for their moral and spiritual education. Its contents, however, are so spiritually-inspiring that anyone in search of truth and spirituality can derive benefit from it. It is a must listen for anyone who wishes to understand the essence of Ahmadiyya beliefs.

Back in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation took Europe by storm. The havoc wreaked saw the split of churches and the emergence of the Amish, led by Jakob Ammann. By the 18th century, a group of Amish had crossed the seas to the United States, where they made their home, and today the Amish are now one of the fastest-growing populations in the world.

In the Bible, God set Ezekiel down in the middle of a valley full of bones. If reviewed on a travel website, that valley wouldn’t get more than a single star. But many of us don’t stop at a visit. We pitch a tent and buy a tract of that desolate land for ourselves—before passing it on to our children and grandchildren. Generations become mired in the valley of dry bones.

A cross-section of five frontline leaders in the controversial emerging church movement shed informative light on their beliefs and basic message to help us understand whether it’s all about new methods or a new message or both.

Hyper-individualism and consumerism are failing to satisfy our hunger for meaning. We face an identity crisis in which real community is increasingly hard to find. The culture wars have been painful and polarizing and have proved a poor way to agree any kind of moral standards. Is it even possible to find a vision for goodness that can bring us together? Rumors of a Better Country addresses our hunger for justice and a better way of living by awakening our moral imagination to the potential of a trusting community.

"Let me do something for you." Carrie Stephens offers these words of hope from the heart of God in Jesus, Love, & Tacos as she uses vibrant metaphors and comical self-deprecation to tell the story of lordship, community, and mission. These three ancient values will offer you help and hope as they shape your spiritual life, define how to gather in unity, and lead you to God's missional love in action.