Dave Ferguson

Take the Next Step Perfect for individual or group study The Finding Your Way Back to God DVD explores the idea that we all want to find our way home - and back to God. In each ten-minute video on the five-part DVD, Dave Ferguson and Jon Ferguson guide you through a life awakening inspiring you to follow the path God has laid out for returning to him.

This participant's guide is an accompaniment to the DVD Finding Your Way Back To God in which a high-profile evangelical pastor shows the disaffected and doubting how to reconnect spiritually with God.

Readers' Choice Award Winner Outreach Magazine's Resources of the Year It's increasingly clear that leadership should be shared—for the good of any organization and for the good of the leader. Many churches have begun to share key leadership duties, but don't know how to take their leadership team to the point where it thrives. Others seriously need a new approach to leadership: pastors are tired, congregations are stuck, and meanwhile the work never lets up. But what does it actually mean to do leadership well as a team? How can it be done in a way that avoids frustration and burnout? How does team leadership best equip the staff and bless a congregation? What do the top church teams do to actually thrive together? Researchers and practitioners Ryan Hartwig and Warren Bird have discovered churches of various sizes and traditions throughout the United States who have learned to thrive under healthy team leadership. Using actual church examples, they present their discoveries here, culminating in five disciplines that, if implemented, can enable your team to thrive. The result? A coaching tool for senior leadership teams that enables struggling teams to thrive, and resources teams doing well to do their work even better.

Do you believe God exists but struggle to connect with him? Do you feel like you've forgotten a God you used to know? Or do you feel that God has forgotten you? Most people say they believe in God, but many don't feel connected to God. That's just as real for long-time church attenders as it is for long-time spiritual wanderers. Many times in the course of our lives, we sense a distance between where we are and where we want to be. Dave and Jon Ferguson help you start right where you are and take the first step in finding your way back to God.

Spoiler alert: Talking about Jesus is awkward. We love to share good news with the world. We tweet about a great new restaurant, we share pictures of our newborn child and we celebrate about receiving that sought-after promotion. We are evangelists for many great things. So why don't we do the same with Jesus? It's not hard to see that we bring our own anxieties and awkwardness into every evangelistic conversation. Not to mention the often vast differences between our experiences of God and religion and those of the people around us. And then there's the inner awkwardness of our conversation partners, who are actively contending, even unconsciously, with the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Evangelism is awkward, yes. But on the other side of that awkwardness is something amazing: transformed lives, healed relationships, new vision, eternal life. After spending years working with college students and churchgoers, Beau Crosetto hasn't solved the problem of awkwardness in evangelism. But he's learned how to push through it and how we can set ourselves and those we love at ease as we enter into conversations of eternal consequence. Read this book and move beyond awkward into the most awesome privilege of God's people: proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.

A tried-and-true classic in dynamic ministry growth, church building, and discipleship momentum. From professional church-planters Dave and Jon Ferguson comes the anchor book in the Exponential Series—envisioning new and practical methods of building churches, communities, and organizations on the cornerstone of Christ.Many of today's Christians consider the missional challenge of Jesus—feed the hungry, comfort the lonely, bring people to God's Word—as inspirational but not something achievable. Or they've heard the challenge of Jesus and are frustrated with how little they've done. Jesus gave his followers this mission because he wants them to hear it, be inspired, and then actually do it. And it is possible.Exponential lays out a concise and effective reproducing strategy, giving practical steps and case studies as you follow the growth of a church movement through four mains stages:The initial navigation of ministry image, set-up, and gradual growth.The gathering of a community around a cause and the conversations that take place at this point.The reproduction of communities into multisite growth and wider impact.The infrastructure and networking of large missional movements and how to stay focused on the bedrock of the Gospel.Weaved throughout this book is the amazing story of Community Christian Church, which was started by five friends who used these reproducing strategies to grow one of the most influential churches in the U.S. and develop a network of reproducing churches.Exponential is designed to help Christian leaders, groups, teams, churches, and networks experience rapid and spiritually healthy growth.

Community Christian Church embraced the Big Idea and everything changed. They decided to avoid the common mistake of bombarding people with so many “little ideas” that they suffered overload. They also recognized that leaders often don’t insist that the truth be lived out to accomplish Jesus’ mission. Why? Because people’s heads are swimming with too many little ideas, far more than they can ever apply.The Big Idea can help you creatively present one laser-focused theme each week to be discussed in families and small groups. The Big Idea shows how to engage in a process of creative collaboration that brings people together and maximizes missional impact. The Big Idea can energize a church staff and bring alignment and focus to many diverse church ministries. This book shows how the Big Idea has helped Community Christian Church better accomplish the Jesus mission and reach thousands of people in nine locations and launch a church planting network with partner churches across the country.This book is part of the Leadership Network Innovation Series.