Ed Stetzer

Welcome to the world's first urban century. How will you respond?For the first time ever, more people now live in cities than outside them. Cities offer both big headaches and vast opportunities, and agencies that once focused on rural work are increasingly turning their attention to urban centers. Join veteran researcher and missiologist Patrick Johnstone as he explores the fastest growing cities and megacities in the world, showing how Christian workers are addressing people's spiritual, physical, and social needs.In 1962 Patrick Johnstone left England's countryside to serve the bustling townships of apartheid-era South Africa. His pioneering of urban ministries changed his life. Journey with Patrick and Dean Merrill as they share God's heart for the city and introduce pastors, missionaries, and community workers who are addressing urbanization's key challenges.God has a heart for today's cities. See how you can join this urgent mission.

MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD"The Purple Book has been instrumental in my growth as a believer…an effective tool in helping me build the life that God has intended for me." —Mark Brunell, NFL coach and former quarterbackThe Purple Book is a Bible study guide designed to help believers know and apply the essential beliefs of Christianity. This updated version gives new believers and longtime followers of Jesus the foundation they need to grow strong in the Christian life.As you work through these 54 short lessons of about 15 minutes each, you will:Understand foundational truths on topics such as sin, salvation, spiritual gifts, prayer, worship, generosity, and evangelism.Learn how the Bible is God-breathed and relevant to our everyday life.Discover that the faith you hold has true power to change lives.Gain a solid foundation the enemy cannot dismantle—and a heart shaped by knowledge of God's Word.The Purple Book is perfect for:Personal Bible StudySmall Group StudiesChurch "Foundations Classes"Year-long sermon seriesFrom students and scholars to parents, kids, rock stars, and professional athletes, people all over the world are doing The Purple Book. Join the movement and take someone else along the journey with you to help establish Biblical foundations in their life too!"I love The Purple Book. It continually helps reinforce the only foundation worth building upon—a biblical one." —Peter Furler, Newsboys

Discipleship is the buzzword today. Many believers are contemplating in a fresh way what it means to take the Great Commission seriously. Rediscovering Discipleship takes the guesswork out of Christian maturity.Based on insights gained from a decade of personally making disciples, author and pastor Robby Gallaty tackles the two hindrances that keep believers from getting involved in making disciples: ignorance and uncertainty. Since many believers have never been personally disciple, they have no model to guide them in discipling others. Their ignorance of the process fuels their uncertainty, which leaves them crippled from the start. With simple principles that are easy to apply, Rediscovering Discipleship provides readers with the tools to follow the Great Commission—to go and actually make disciples who multiply and make disciples.Gallaty begins with a brief historical overview of the discipleship ministries of influential theologians, preachers, and pastors from years past, and then identifies roadblocks that hinder believers from becoming disciples before offering a step-by-step process for readers to immediately get started on the path to effective disciple making.

Why would a leader ever want to be mean?It's all about the vision.Almost every organization has a vision, but few stick to it over time. Even after short-term success, visions tend to blur, drift, and fade. Why does this happen?Accomplishing the vision requires intentionality.It requires consistency.It requires commitment.It requires courage.In Be Mean About the Vision, author Shawn Lovejoy challenges leaders to stay true to the vision—regaining and sustaining its trajectory over time. Lovejoy offers a proven strategy for relentlessly protecting our organization’s guiding vision:Develop a vision people are willing to die forKeep the vision alive in usAlign everyone around the visionKeep the vision from being compromised or even hijackedOne thing is certain—if our church or organization is going to accomplish its mission, we’re going to need to be: Determined. Resolute. Intentional. We’re going to need to be willing to do whatever it takes to keep the vision from being detoured or derailed. Where there is no vision, people perish. They wander off in random directions. On the flip side, when everyone understands and embraces the vision, there is life, passion, growth, and success! And God will be glorified.As a leader the kindest, godliest, thing we can do is Be Mean About the Vision.

12th Annual Outreach Resource of the Year Recommendation (Leadership) Pastors and church leaders often fall into the trap of people-pleasing. Charles Stone?s research on thousands of pastors and ministry leaders demonstrates the dangers of approval-motivated leadership. Bringing together biblical insights and neuroscience findings, Stone shows why we fall into people-pleasing patterns and what we can do to overcome these tendencies. With practical tools for individuals and teams, Stone offers concrete resources to help you and your leadership minimize people-pleasing and have more effective ministry.

Never before have we seen the church degenerate at such a rapid pace. This is largely due to the church pursuing congregational growth instead of kingdom growth. The church is dying because our growth isn t based on strategies to reach the lost with the gospel. The time to change is now, we can t wait any longer. People s eternities are at stake. What is your church s priority? Are you more concerned with filling your building or furthering the Kingdom? This book will challenge you to evaluate just how important gospel-based evangelism is to you and your church, and call on you to restore an intentional evangelism strategy within the body. Hell will tremble when churches once again make evangelism the central theme of their strategy."

When Christ calls people, he invites them on a journey—a journey taken together in community. We have reached a point in history, however, when we think of the church as a fixed place where isolated individuals show up, consume a Christian message, drink some coffee, and get on with their lives. The times demand, and the gospel proclaims, that we recover our identity as a church that is a people on a quest for the kingdom of heaven, formed intimately by a loving God and called onto a long journey for the sake of our neighbors and our world. In The Missional Quest you?ll learn how to take your church on a long run, and how to sustain yourselves and one another along the way, through the power of God for the sake of the world.

The Great Commission is to make disciples. Renowned church planter and pastor Ralph Moore shows leaders why a focus on making disciples is the essential next step once a church is planted. This biblical, practical handbook will guide churches of any size to focus their ministries around Jesus's command to his followers to make disciples of all nations. Making Disciples offers a model of church ministry that sees every member as a minister, and it will become an indispensable resource for equipping a new generation of disciple-makers.

Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year Sometimes we get so caught up in the power of Jesus shouting from the cross, "It is finished!" that we forget that Jesus started something. What Jesus started was a movement that began small, with intimate conversations designed to build disciples into apostles who would go out in the world and seed it with God's kingdom vision. That movement grew rapidly and spread wide as people recognized the truth in it and gave their lives to the power of it. That movement is still happening today, and we are called to play our part in it.

A groundbreaking guide for multiplying the impact of church plants Based on a study that was commissioned by the Leadership Network, this book reveals the best practices in church planting and uncovers the common threads among them. A much-needed resource, this book will inform, guide, and even catalyze today's many church planting leaders. The authors clearly show leaders how to plant churches that create a multiplication movement and offer inspiration for them to do so. The book addresses their questions about what to do next in their church planting strategies, in light of research on what's actually working best. Author Ed Stetzer heads up LifeWay ResearchProvides reliable, credible information about what church planting strategies work bestA volume in the Leadership Network Series Offers a definitive guide for church planting and the burgeoning movement it is part of.

Christians are too often guilty of pledging their allegiance to the influential principalities and powers of this age rather than to Christ alone. In Holy Subversion, Trevin Wax challenges such behavior by urging a return to the subversive lifestyle of the earliest Christians. Their proclamation and demonstration that "Jesus is Lord" directly opposed the Caesar worship of their day. Today, Christians in the West must choose between Jesus and our "Caesars": self, success, money, leisure, sex, power. What would it look like, asks Wax, if today's church reclaimed the communal, subversive nature of the gospel, intentionally undermining all contenders for our devotion? How would the message that "Jesus is Lord" change our thinking about our jobs, our families, and our church participation? Here this gifted pastor-theologian offers help in taking our faith public, dethroning modern-day Caesars, honoring the Lordship of Christ, and understanding the church as the ultimate counterculture-an embodiment of Christ's supremacy over all.

Churches in North America are bigger than ever, but their slow rate of growth cannot keep up with population increases. Existing churches simply cannot add enough new believers! The good news is that by multiplying--steadily and strategically planting new churches that, in turn, plant new churches--the global Church creates more of what Ralph Moore calls harvest points. In How to Multiply Your Church, Pastor Moore shows church leaders and pastors why multiplication is the key to growing God's global kingdom in their communities, and he offers them proven methods for implementing multiplication in their existing churches. Countless leaders have found an indispensable resource in starting a new church because of Pastor Moore's vast firsthand experience and practical wisdom. How to Multiply Your Church is the next leap forward for those who long to see God's kingdom increase.

Join three seasoned church-ministry experts on an insider's tour of the most innovative churches today! Discover a dozen types of innovation, each with profiles of congregations that have implemented that innovation. This is more than a show-and-tell tour, however. Each chapter offers a solid take-away for church leaders on how to learn and apply the appropriate innovation profiled. The authors also offer scripturally based assessments of both the positive and negatives implications of implementing each innovation, providing guidance and wisdom. There are many ways to present the gospel, and this timely book will serve as a springboard for church leaders scratching their heads and asking themselves, "What should we do next?" By learning from a dozen different church types, church leaders can become more intentional about exploring new directions and reaching more of the world for Christ.