George Barna, Harry Jackson Throughout our nation hundreds of vibrant African-American churches are leading people to deep, life-changing spiritual transformations. With visionary leadership, powerful worship, challenging faith formation strategies and a strong sense of community and mission, these churches form the backbone of American spirituality. What generates this vitality? And how can you bring that same passion, energy and impact to your church? In "High-Impact African-American Churches", researcher George Barna and Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. combine their research knowledge and experience to describe what these churches do that is changing lives. TRIM SIZE: 8.5 x 11

Jim Belcher Feel caught between the traditional church and the emerging church? Discover a third way: deep church.

C. S. Lewis used the phrase "deep church" to describe the body of believers committed to mere Christianity. Unfortunately church in our postmodern era has been marked by a certain shallowness. Emerging authors, fed up with contemporary pragmatism, have offered alternative visions for twenty-first-century Christianity. Traditionalist churches have reacted negatively, at times defensively.

Jim Belcher knows what it's like to be part of both of these worlds. In the 1990s he was among the pioneers of what was then called Gen X ministry, hanging out with creative innovators like Rob Bell, Mark Oestreicher and Mark Driscoll. But he also has maintained ties to traditionalist circles, planting a church in the Presbyterian Church of America.

In Deep Church, Belcher brings the best insights of all sides to forge a third way between emerging and traditional. In a fair and evenhanded way, Belcher explores the proposals of such emerging church leaders as Tony Jones, Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt. He offers measured appreciation and affirmation as well as balanced critique. Moving beyond reaction, Belcher provides constructive models from his own church planting experience and paints a picture of what this alternate, deep church looks like—a missional church committed to both tradition and culture, valuing innovation in worship, arts and community but also creeds and confessions.

If you've felt stuck between two extremes, you can find a home here. Plumb the depths of Christianity in a way that neither rejects our postmodern context nor capitulates to it. Instead of veering to the left or the right, go between the extremes—and go deep.

George W. Bullard Jr.

Diana Davis Syndicated columnist and pastor's wife Diana Davis has been compiling new ways of conducting various church programs for decades—paying close attention to everything from how a church interior is best utilized to how congregations most effectively engage in community outreach.

These creative methods are generously compiled in Fresh Ideas for Your Church, a handy guide to inspire "how your church does church." Featuring seventy-five unique categories and scores of ideas within each one, this resource will help everyone in the church from volunteers to the senior pastor.

A sampling of topics: Baptism, Children's Area, Christmas, Fall Festival, Greeters, Library, New Member Assimilation, Prayer Ministry, Scripture of the Year, Sports Evangelism, Web Site, Youth, and more.

Mark DeYmaz Through personal stories, proven experience and a thorough analysis of the biblical text, Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church illustrates both the biblical mandate for the multi-ethnic church as well as the seven core commitments required to bring it about. Mark DeYmaz, pastor of one of the most proven multi-ethnic churches in the country, writes both from his experience and his extensive study of how to plant, grow, and encourage more ethnically diverse churches. He argues that the "homogenous unit principle" will soon become irrelevant and that the most effective way to spread the Gospel in an increasingly diverse world is through strong and vital multi-ethnic churches.

Carl S. Dudley

Randy Frazee This book explores the three essential elements of real community and helps readers put into practice the fifteen principles that undergird those essentials.

Craig Van Gelder Rather than beginning with successful contemporary models of what churches are doing, The Essence of the Church encourages readers to rethink the nature of the church. The author draws on three decades of experience to address the challenges facing todays church and urges readers to think deeply yet practically about the church.

Thoughtful and readable, this book integrates insight from a variety of disciplines and enables readers to root their methods and programs in sound biblical, theological, and theoretical principles. Diagrams help to illustrate the concepts.

Ken Hemphill In this landmark book, Ken Hemphill sidesteps a generation of outreach seminars and market-driven formulas to rediscover the true source of all sustained church growth: a spiritual commitment to God. By identifying eight characteristics of growing, healthy congregations, he makes specific recommendations for evaluating and shoring up the spiritual foundations of your congregation, building its spiritual life on the unique needs and capabilities of your church.

Aubrey Malphurs There is no shortage of books these days on new ways of "doing church." New church models have been both warmly embraced and roundly criticized. What are church leaders and others concerned about the state of the church to make of all this? Does the Bible prescribe a standard model for doing church? Or is there freedom within certain guidelines? In A New Kind of Church, respected church consultant Aubrey Malphurs addresses these important questions and suggests that there is room for new ways of doing ministry while being true to Scripture. In the process, he offers a theological and interpretive framework for evaluating any church model, new or old. He also offers suggestions for implementing change in the local church.

Will Mancini Written by church consultant Will Manciniѡn expert on a new kind of visioning process to help churches develop a stunningly unique model of ministry that leads to redemptive movement. He guides churches away from an internal focus to emphasize participation in their community and surrounding culture. In this important book, Mancini offers an approach for rethinking what it means to lead with clarity as a visionary. Mancini explains that each church has a culture that reflects its particular values, thoughts, attitudes, and actions and shows how church leaders can unlock their church's individual DNA and unleash their congregation's one-of-a-kind potential.

Erwin Raphael McManus An Unstoppable Force will excite and inspire readers about being part of the Church that God had in mind! A "force" created to change the world. A Church that is engaged with its community, daring to cut itself free from atrophied practices and programs to flourish in creative and compelling worship. A Church that risks reaching out to our jaded culture with "outside the box" expressions of faith and love.

Gene Mims You will never find the full meaning of your church or the pathway to a healthy, successful church in methods, conferences, or overhead transparencies. You will only find the full understanding of your church’s life and mission in the heart of God and His will for you. Success doesn’t come from copying someone else’s ideas or methods, but from knowing the biblical model of a church and understanding how to conform your church—regardless of size, location, resources, history, or any other variable—to that biblical pattern.

The Kingdom-Focused Church will give you everything you need to achieve your church’s full potential—and relief from the smorgasbord approach that does more harm than good by distracting you from the unique focus, nature, and mission of the church God has saved for you alone.

"If you’re not ready to believe this yet, I don’t blame you," Mims admits. "I only hope you’ll read on to learn why a Kingdom focus will work when everything else fails."

Milfred Minatrea Discover the tools to create a new kind of church and move from merely surviving to thriving. Drawing on an extensive two-year field study of 200 churches from a variety of denominations and geographic regions, Milfred Minatrea—a missiologist, urban strategist and practioner in minister—presents the best practices for re-energizing Christian spirituality in a congregational setting. He provides readers with the tools for assessing their congregation’s position on the continuum between maintenance and mission and for determining the actions that will move them toward becoming a missional community. He also outlines key strategies that successful churches have used to become relevant in a postmodern society without losing what is distinctly Christian in their spiritual practices.

Milfred Minatrea (Irving, TX) is Director of the Missional Church Center for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

Mark Mittelberg This is a vision for turning every church—new or old—into a contagious church that is a powerful magnet for attracting and influencing unchurched people.

Thom S. Rainer, Eric Geiger Ya ha comenzado la revolución de lo sencillo. Las ideas sencillas están cambiando el mundo. Una prueba de ello es el diseño del reproductor de música iPod y la discreta página inicial del buscador Google en Internet.

El libro Iglesia simple convoca claramente a los cristianos a volver a los métodos sencillos de evangelización de Jesús. Por decirlo de algún modo, "sin bombos ni platillos".

Los autores, Thom Rainer y Eric Geiger, se basan en estudios de caso realizados en 400 iglesias estadounidenses para demostrar que, muy a menudo, el proceso de hacer discípulos se ha vuelto demasiado complicado.

Las iglesias simples están prosperando, y lo logran porque se toman en serio estas cuatro ideas: Claridad. Movimiento. Alineación. Enfoque. En la obra se examina cada idea para demostrar sencillamente por qué ha llegado la hora de simplificar. Now available in Spanish!

The simple revolution has begun. From the design of the iPod to the uncluttered Google home page, simple ideas are changing the world. Simple Church clearly calls for Christians to return to the simple gospel-sharing methods of Jesus. No bells or whistles required, so to speak.

Based on case studies of four hundred American churches, authors Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger prove that the process for making disciples has quite often become too complex. Simple churches are thriving, and they are doing so by taking these four ideas to heart: Clarity. Movement. Alignment. Focus.

Each idea is examined here, simply showing why it is time to simplify.

Thom S. Rainer, Sam S. Rainer Why do so many young adults (18 to 22) leave the church, and what will it take to bring them back? This important question is examined and duly answered in Essential Church?, a follow-up to Thom S. Rainer’s best-selling Simple Church cowritten this time with his son, research expert Sam Rainer.

The book is based on a study of one-thousand so-called "church dropouts" who were interviewed about why they left. Their answers are quite surprising, having less to do with "losing their religion" and more about the desire for a community that isn’t made stale by simply maintaining the status quo.

In turn, the Rainers offer churches four concrete solutions toward making their worship community an essential part these young people’s lives again:

 Simplify - develop a clear structure and process for making disciples.

Deepen - provide strong biblical teaching and preaching.

Expect - let members know the need for commitment to the congregation.

Multiply - emphasize evangelism, outward focus, and starting new churches.

Ronald W. Richardson Ronald W. Richardson helps us to understand how congregations function emotionally. Without being simplistic, he gives clear directions on how to improve the quality of life together in the church for the purpose of achieving mission goals.

Darrell W. Robinson

Daniel R Sánchez, Ebbie C. Smith Este estudio añade el concepto de la salud a las dimensiones de las iglesias que manifiestan crecimiento en cantidad (más grande), cualidad (mejor), y amplitud (a través de sus ministerios). Los autores afirman los principios de crecimiento y exploran las implicaciones de la salud de la iglesia .

Christian A. Schwarz Critics of the church growth movement have often emphasized the need for quality congregations. We should not focus on numerical growth, but rather, we should concentrate on qualitative growth.

Christian Schwarz has done extensive research world-wide and found that healthy, growing churches seem to share eight quality characteristics. These characteristics are:

Empowering leadership
Gift-oriented ministry
Passionate spirituality
Functional structures
Inspiring worship service
Holistic small groups
Need-oriented evangelism
Loving relationships
Schwarz uses the illustration of a barrel with eight staves to symbolize the eight quality characteristics. The barrel can only hold water to the height of the lowest stave. So too, Schwarz argues, a church can only grow as far as their 'Minimum factor,' which is the lowest of the eight quality characteristics in their church. He challenges churches to resist the temptation to work on improving areas in which they already excel, for by doing this they do not increase their minimum factor or their church quality.

This revised version of Natural Church Development now includes Schwarz's "3 Colors" teaching.

Ed Stetzer, David Putman Across North America, many pastors are excited to see churches growing as they achieve their mission to connect the message of the gospel with the community at large. Still others are equally frustrated, following the exact same model for outreach but with lesser results. Indeed, just because a "missional breakthrough" occurs in one place doesn’t mean it will happen the same way elsewhere.

One size does not fit all, but there are cultural codes that must be broken for all churches to grow and remain effective in their specific mission context. Breaking the Missional Code provides expert insight on church culture and church vision casting, plus case studies of successful missional churches impacting their communities.

"We have to recognize there are cultural barriers (in addition to spiritual ones) that blind people from understanding the gospel," the authors write. "Our task is to find the right way to break through those cultural barriers without removing the spiritual and theological ones."

Ed Stetzer, Thom S. Rainer How are we doing? The church, that is. And how are we doing it? Congregations have long measured success by "bodies, budget, and buildings"—a certain record of attendance, the offering plate, and square footage. But the scorecard can't stop there. When it does, the deeper emphasis on accountability, discipleship, and spiritual maturity is lost. Ignoring those details, we see fewer lives transformed, Christian influence wane, and churches thin out—a situation that is all too familiar across North America today.

It is time to take heart and rework the scorecard.

According to Ed Stetzer and Thom S. Rainer, the authors of Transformational Church, "Too often we've highlighted the negative realities of the declining American church but missed the opportunity to magnify the God of hope and transformation."

Based on the most comprehensive study of its kind, including a survey of more than 7,000 churches and hundreds of on-site interviews with pastors, Transformational Church takes us to the thriving congregations where truly changing lives is the norm.

Stetzer and Rainer clearly confirm the importance of disciple making for all through active biblical engagement and prayerful dependence on God alongside of ever-increasing, intentional participation in mission and ministry activities. As the church engages these issues, the world will see the change:

* More people following Christ
* More believers growing in their faith
* More churches making an impact on their communities

The transformation starts now.

Elmer Towns, Edward Stetzer How far do we go to connect with our culture? Can we 'sell' the Gospel like the world sells soft drinks? Where are the boundaries? The church today is walking a tightrope.On the one hand, we need to proclaim, and - perhaps, more importantly - live the Gospel in such a way that it connects with both seekers and younger people looking for community and authenticity. Yet at what point does this fall into 'feel good' ministry at the expense of biblical truth? These are issues that God's people are now beginning to wrestle with. Towns and Stetzer provide an intergenerational perspective that sheds biblical light on some tough challenges facing the church.

Rick Warren This is a five-point strategy for attracting and spiritually maturing the unchurched, from the pastor of Saddleback Church.