Through a nationwide telephone survey of 2,000 people and an additional 200 face-to-face interviews, Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith probed the grassroots of white evangelical America. They found that despite recent efforts by the movement's leaders to address the problem of racial discrimination, evangelicals themselves seem to be preserving America's racial chasm. In fact, most white evangelicals see no systematic discrimination against blacks. But the authors contend that it is not active racism.

When you listen to this audio, you'll find that you aren't just listening. No, you are being remade, reoriented, restored from the frustration of what you may have known as stale religion. Captured not by a concept, but by your Creator, reborn in relationship. Here's the Experiencing God that has already impacted millions of people. Only it's bigger, and better, and ready to lead you again - or for the very first time - into an experience with God.

In The Emotionally Healthy Leader, bestselling author Peter Scazzero shows leaders how to develop a deep, inner life with Christ, examining its profound implications for surviving stress, planning and decision making, building teams, creating healthy culture, influencing others, and much more.

The Western church finds itself in the midst of a seismic cultural shift, as secular paradigms threaten to remove any spiritual explanation for life, and Christianity is often viewed with skepticism and cynicism. Rather than perceiving these ongoing challenges as irritants to expel, it’s time to see them as opportunities to embrace, so that we might effectively serve the world around us and form a more robust and Christlike church.

Dallas Willard spent his life making eternal living concrete for his friends. After his unexpected passing in 2013, the kaleidoscope of memories and the diversity of the lives he had touched could not be confined to one or even two memorial services but three. It is this wide breadth of impact that inspired friends, family, colleagues, students, and leaders of the church to gather their reflections on this celebrated yet humble theologian and philosopher.

Whether you are a pastor, a volunteer, or a church member, you want your church to grow well. After all, there’s no better place to experience God than in the loving, healthy community of a church. But what does an effective church look like? Is it possible to grow and be healthy at the same time? The Blessed Church, Pastor Morris brings you practical wisdom for cultivating real growth by nurturing true and Biblical health in your spiritual community.

Create a church unchurched people absolutely love to attend. Deep and Wide provides church leaders with an in-depth look into North Point Community Church and its strategy for creating churches unchurched people absolutely love to attend. Andy Stanley shares his strategy for preaching and programming to both mature believers and cynical unbelievers, essential ingredients for creating irresistible environments, and North Point's spiritual formation model (The Five Faith Catalysts).

While many churches talk about discerning calling and engaging in mission, very few are structured to make this their ministry focus. Underground Church is a new vision for the church rooted in its biblical mission to share the love of God and serve the poor. Sanders explores how to make structural changes, how to think about leadership, how to fund ministries, and how to truly engage people in God's mission. Filled with creative insights, he explains what it means to center the mission of the church around the callings of individuals to outward ministry.

All Christian disciples have one thing in common: As they carry the Gospel across the ocean and across the street, persecution will become the norm for those who choose to follow Jesus. How believers respond in the face of persecution reveals everything about their level of faith and obedience. The Insanity of Obedience is a bold challenge to global discipleship. Nik Ripken exposes the danger of safe Christianity and calls listeners to something greater.

There's got to be more to church than this. People around the world are seeking a community that focuses more on others than on themselves. Yet most don't know where to start. Drawing from his own journey, Brandon Hatmaker reminds us that serving the least is not a trendy act of benevolence but a lifestyle of authentic community and spiritual transformation. In Barefoot Church, Brandon offers practical ideas for creating service-based, missional communities and explains how the organizational structure of a church can be created or restructured for mission in any context.

Author and pastor Jared C. Wilson shows how to lead a culture shift in a church from a focus on numerical success to the metrics of grace. Leading a church culture to shift from numerical success to the metrics of grace can be costly, but leaders who have conviction, courage, and commitment can lead while avoiding some of the land mines that often destroy churches.

Authors Eric Geiger (author of the best-selling Simple Church and Creature of the Word) and Kevin Peck argue that churches that consistently produce leaders have strong convictions to develop leaders, healthy cultures for leadership development, and helpful constructs to systematically and intentionally build leaders. All three are essential for leaders to be formed through the ministry of a local church.

Over the last 30 years, many influential church leaders and church planters in America have adopted various models for reaching unchurched people. An “attractional” model will seek to attract people to a local church. Younger leaders may advocate a more “missional” approach, in which believers live and work among unchurched people and intentionally seek to serve like Christ. While each of these approaches have merit, something is still missing, something even more fundamental to the mission of the church: discipleship.

"In my first seminary class, we were asked to introduce ourselves and say why we enrolled. I'll never forget what one student said: 'My denomination wants me to have an M.Div., but once they see I can grow a big church, I don't think they'll make me finish the program.'" The priorities of this future pastor were startling, but he's not alone in them. In the years since that class, author and minister Skye Jethani has seen more and more pastors swallowed by the celebrity syndrome. Immeasurable will help ministers recognize the forces shaping their view of the calling.

If, like many other people, you have questioned whether there is something more to Jesus church than the religious institutions we've inherited after two thousand years, you'll want to read Finding Church. Here is straight talk from a man who has sought authentic New Testament community for more than fifty years and who has discovered it in the most unlikely places.