What Is a Healthy Church?

What Is a Healthy Church?
Author: Mark Dever
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2007
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1581349378

Guides both pastors and members to recognize key characteristics of a healthy church and then challenge each person to do his or her part in developing those characteristics in the local church body.

A Church Called Tov

A Church Called Tov
Author: Scot McKnight
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 149644602X

“Scot and Laura do an amazing job of teaching us what a good church looks like.” —Beth Moore What is the way forward for the church? Tragically, in recent years, Christians have gotten used to revelations of abuses of many kinds in our most respected churches—from Willow Creek to Harvest, from Southern Baptist pastors to Sovereign Grace churches. Respected author and theologian Scot McKnight and former Willow Creek member Laura Barringer wrote this book to paint a pathway forward for the church. We need a better way. The sad truth is that churches of all shapes and sizes are susceptible to abuses of power, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse. Abuses occur most frequently when Christians neglect to create a culture that resists abuse and promotes healing, safety, and spiritual growth. How do we keep these devastating events from repeating themselves? We need a map to get us from where we are today to where we ought to be as the body of Christ. That map is in a mysterious and beautiful little Hebrew word in Scripture that we translate “good,” the word tov. In this book, McKnight and Barringer explore the concept of tov—unpacking its richness and how it can help Christians and churches rise up to fulfill their true calling as imitators of Jesus.

How to Find a Good Church

How to Find a Good Church
Author: Todd M. Smith
Publisher: WestBow Press
Total Pages: 46
Release: 2022-01-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1664254056

Everyone has found themselves in the search for a church home. The search can be frustrating and long. This book can change that for you. This book offers up clear Biblical characteristics of a healthy church and insights of how to find those as you search for a church family.

The Master's Plan for the Church

The Master's Plan for the Church
Author: John MacArthur
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2008-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0802480179

It is absolutely essential that a church perceive itself as an institution for the glory of God, and to do that, claims John MacArthur, the local church must adhere unfalteringly to biblical leadership principles. Christ never intended church leadership to be earned by seniority, purchased with money, or inherited through family ties. He never compared church leaders to governing monarchs, but rather to humble shepherds; not to slick celebrities, but to laboring servants. Drawing from some of the best-received material on church leadership, this updated edition guides the church with crucial, effective lessons in leadership. This book is valuable not only for pastors and elders, but for anyone else who wants the church to be what God intended it to be.

Uncomfortable

Uncomfortable
Author: Brett McCracken
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2017-09-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433554283

Does your church make you uncomfortable? It’s easy to dream about the “perfect” church—a church that sings just the right songs set to just the right music before the pastor preaches just the right sermon to a room filled with just the right mix of people who happen to agree with you on just about everything. Chances are your church doesn’t quite look like that. But what if instead of searching for a church that makes us comfortable, we learned to love our church, even when it’s challenging? What if some of the discomfort that we often experience is actually good for us? This book is a call to embrace the uncomfortable aspects of Christian community, whether that means believing difficult truths, pursuing difficult holiness, or loving difficult people—all for the sake of the gospel, God’s glory, and our joy.

Counseling One Another

Counseling One Another
Author: Paul Tautges
Publisher: Shepherd Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2016-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781633420946

This paradigm-shifting book helps believers understand the process of being transformed by God's grace and truth, and challenges them to be a part of the process of discipleship in the lives of their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Counseling One Another biblically presents and defends every believer's responsibility to work toward God's goal of conforming us to the image of His Son-a goal reached through the targeted form of intensive discipleship most often referred to as counseling. All Christians will find Counseling One Another useful as they make progress in the life of sanctification and as they discuss issues with their friends, children, spouses, and fellow believers, providing them with a biblical framework for life and one-another ministry in the body of Christ.

Making A Good Church Great

Making A Good Church Great
Author: Steve Sjogren
Publisher: Gospel Light Publications
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2010-02-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780830746620

Bestselling author Steve Sjogren untangles the complex jumble commonly known as greatness in today’s mega church, mega everything world. As a successful pastor, he launched the servant evangelism movement, but along the way he discovered that significance was not where or what he thought it would be. Now, in a very practical book, he focuses on genuine greatness. Is it the size of the sanctuary? The number of new believers baptized each year? The youth attendance? The quantity of best selling books the pastor has written? The list of television shows, radio shows or podcasts the pastors appears on? Or is it something more? What is the buzz on good churches that become great in God’s eyes? Sjogren argues that greatness is not a point at which you arrive; rather, it is an ongoing process of worshipping, serving and living in God’s presence. It not a slick program; rather, it is a family, a hospital, an army and a school. When God is a present, His people are empowered. When God empowers His people, a good church becomes great.

Why I Left Church to Find Jesus

Why I Left Church to Find Jesus
Author: Julie McVey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2019-11-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781711386157

Have you ever felt like you were outgrowing your childhood religion or the religion in which you have spent many years investing your time, resources, and most importantly, your faith? Have you ever experienced being shunned for religious reasons? It's hard enough to spiritually evolve and accept that many doctrines of your once beloved religion no longer resonate with you, but to be shunned by family or close friends because of it is one of the most painful realities one can endure as it forces one to go through the loss of a person still alive. The grief is real. In Why I Left Church to Find Jesus: A Personal Odyssey, you will take a journey of carefree freedom in innocent faith to bondage in an authoritarian religion to freedom once again but not without the high cost that comes with spiritual transformation. Christians, ex-Christians, and religious outcasts will relate to the heartache, confusion, and betrayal of not only a religion lost in such a spiritual evolution but, more painfully, of friendships lost.