The loss or disaffiliation of young adults is a much-discussed topic in churches today. Many faith-formation programs focus on keeping the young, believing the youthful spirit will save the church. But do these programs have more to do with an obsession with youthfulness than with helping young people encounter the living God?

God has provided salvation, but when does it begin? What is required of us? Can we lose it? These and other disputed questions have divided Christians for centuries. Matthew W. Bates has already shown that the gospel is about King Jesus and that faith includes allegiance. In Beyond the Salvation Wars, he unpacks additional truths from the Bible and the early church to describe how salvation happens.

We could all use a little—or a lot—of relief from the pressures of life. And there is no bigger relief than the grace of God. Think of grace as one-way love. A gift with no strings attached. Favor when you least expect or deserve it. Knowing that you don't have to do anything to earn God's approval.

For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as an exception: someone who, through hard work, faith, and determination, overcame childhood poverty, anti-Black racism, and an absent father to earn a job as a university professor and a life in the middle class.

In his first major work since The Universal Christ, one of our most prominent spiritual voices offers a wholehearted and hope-filled model for the world today, grounded in the timeless wisdom of the Hebrew prophets. How do we live compassionately in a time of violence and despair? What can we do with our private disappointments and the anger we feel in such an unjust world? In his most personal book yet, Richard Rohr turns to the writings of the Jewish prophets, revealing how some of the lesser-read books of the Bible offer us a crucial path forward today.

What if the solution for the decline of today's church isn't more money, people, programs, innovation, or busyness? What if the answer is to stop and wait on God? In When Church Stops Working, ministry leaders Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand show how actively watching and listening for God can bring life out of death for churches in crisis today. Using clear steps and practices, they invite church leaders to stop the endless cycle of doing more and rather to simply "be" in God's presence.

Is faith in Jesus enough for salvation? Perhaps, says Matthew Bates, but we're missing pieces of the gospel. The biblical gospel can never change. Yet our understanding of the gospel must change. The church needs an allegiance shift. Popular pastoral resources on the gospel are causing widespread confusion. Bates shows that the biblical gospel is different, fuller, and more beautiful than we have been led to believe. He explains that saving faith doesn't come through trust in Jesus' death on the cross alone but through allegiance to Christ the king.

In this exposition of 1 Corinthians 13, Jonathan Edwards delves into the crucial Christian discussions of grace, love, and salvation. In doing so, he reveals their natural relations to one another and how living in grace should inevitably lead to living with love. This work does not simply explain the passage, but it also serves as a practical guide of how to live out a life of love.

The "Lutheran" in the title doesn't mean The Lutheran Toolkit is just for Lutherans. It's about a Lutheran witness for the whole church and for all sinners with ears to hear. It's a book about the big theological ideas the evangelical reformers of the 16th century used as a lens for understanding God's work in Christ. Starting with Philiip Melanchthon's 1530 Augsburg Confession, which was drafted to defend the preaching and teaching of Luther and his colleagues, Ken Sundet Jones sees its primary themes as a set of tools that God uses to build faith in us.

Malls, stadiums, and universities are actually liturgical structures that influence and shape our thoughts and affections. Humans - as Augustine noted - are "desiring agents", full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love. James K. A. Smith focuses on the themes of liturgy and desire in Desiring the Kingdom, the first book in a three-volume set on the theology of culture. He redirects our yearnings to focus on the greatest good: God.

What if the solution for the decline of today's church isn't more money, people, programs, innovation, or busyness? What if the answer is to stop and wait on God? In When Church Stops Working, ministry leaders Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand show how actively watching and listening for God can bring life out of death for churches in crisis today. Using clear steps and practices, they invite church leaders to stop the endless cycle of doing more and rather to simply "be" in God's presence.

The loss or disaffiliation of young adults is a much-discussed topic in churches today. Many faith-formation programs focus on keeping the young, believing the youthful spirit will save the church. But do these programs have more to do with an obsession with youthfulness than with helping young people encounter the living God?

For many Christians, the book of Revelation inspires confusion and fear. It's seen as a coded screenplay for the end times, or it's just too strange to understand. The problem, Dean Flemming contends, is that when we read Revelation as focused on the future, we miss what it says about what God is doing in the world now. Revelation is one of the richest texts in Scripture for understanding both God's mission to make everything new and how the church is caught up in that mission.

God has provided salvation, but when does it begin? What is required of us? Can we lose it? These and other disputed questions have divided Christians for centuries. Matthew W. Bates has already shown that the gospel is about King Jesus and that faith includes allegiance. In Beyond the Salvation Wars, he unpacks additional truths from the Bible and the early church to describe how salvation happens.

As a columnist for the New York Times who writes often about spiritual topics for a skeptical audience, Ross Douthat understands that many of us—whether we are agnostic, somewhat religious, or longtime believers—want to have more faith than we do. But we think we can't believe the way our ancestors did, knowing what we know now—can we? With clear and straightforward arguments, Believe shows how religious belief makes sense of the order of the cosmos and our place within it, illuminates the mystery of consciousness, and explains the persistent reality of encounters with the supernatural.