Rachel Held Evans is widely recognized for her theologically astute, profoundly honest, and beautifully personal books, which have guided, instructed, edified, and shaped Christians as they seek to live out a just and loving faith. At the time of her tragic death in 2019, Rachel was working on a new book about wholeheartedness. With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other unpublished writings into a rich collection of essays.

If the Bible isn’t a science book or an instruction manual, then what is it? What do people mean when they say the Bible is inspired? When Rachel Held Evans found herself asking these questions, she began a quest to better understand what the Bible is and how it is meant to be read. What she discovered changed her—and it will change you too.

Drawing on the best in recent scholarship and using her well-honed literary expertise, Evans examines some of our favorite Bible stories and possible interpretations, retelling them through memoir, original poetry, short stories, soliloquies, and even a short screenplay. Undaunted by the Bible’s most difficult passages, Evans wrestles through the process of doubting, imagining, and debating Scripture’s mysteries. The Bible, she discovers, is not a static work but is a living, breathing, captivating, and confounding book that is able to equip us to join God’s loving and redemptive work in the world.

From New York Times best-selling author Rachel Held Evans: a must-listen for anyone on the journey of doubt, deconstruction, and ultimately faith reborn. Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial made a spectacle of Christian fundamentalism and brought national attention to her hometown, Rachel Held Evans faced a trial of her own when she began to have doubts about her faith. Rachel recounts growing up in a culture obsessed with apologetics, struggling as her own faith unraveled one unexpected question at a time.

In Jesus Feminist, Bessey shares her spiritual journey, which ranges from growing up in a post–gender-debate home to learning about the worldwide struggles of women and the obstacles even a well-meaning church can pose. Through disarmingly intimate storytelling, she tells how she grew to understand the story of God and the vastness of his work through women.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood is an exercise in scriptural exploration and spiritual contemplation. What does God truly expect of women, and is there really a prescription for biblical womanhood? Come along with Evans as she looks for answers in the rich heritage of biblical heroines, models of grace, and all-around women of valor.

Heavily tattooed and foul-mouthed, Nadia Bolz-Weber, a former stand-up comic, sure as hell didn't consider herself to be religious-leader material - until the day she ended up leading a friend's funeral in a smoky downtown comedy club. Surrounded by fellow alcoholics, depressives, and cynics, she realized: These were her people. Maybe she was meant to be their pastor. Using life stories, Nadia uses humorous narrative and poignant honesty to portray a woman who is both deeply faithful and deeply flawed, giving hope to the rest of us along the way.

Trained as an evangelical Bible scholar, Peter Enns loved the Scriptures and shared his devotion by teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary. But the further he studied the Bible, the more he found himself confronted by questions that could neither be answered within the rigid framework of his religious instruction nor be accepted among the conservative evangelical community.

All My Knotted-Up Life is a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories . . . we’d all walk around slack-jawed.

Millions of Christians have struggled with how to reconcile God's love and God's judgment: Has God created billions of people over thousands of years only to select a few to go to heaven and everyone else to suffer forever in hell? Is this acceptable to God? How is this "good news"? Author, pastor, and innovative teacher Rob Bell presents a deeply biblical vision for rediscovering a richer, grander, truer, and more spiritually satisfying way of understanding heaven, hell, God, Jesus, salvation, and repentance.

Sixty-five million adults in the US have dropped out of active church attendance, and about 2.7 million more are leaving every year. Faith After Doubt is for the millions of people around the world who feel that their faith is falling apart. Using his own story and the stories of a diverse group of struggling believers, Brian D. McLaren, a former pastor and now an author, speaker, and activist, shows how old assumptions are being challenged in nearly every area of human life, not just theology and spirituality.

In Love Wins, Rob Bell confronted the troubling questions that many people of faith are afraid to ask about heaven, hell, fate, and faith. Using the same inspired, inquisitive approach, he now turns to our most sacred book: the Bible. What Is the Bible? provides insights and answers that make clear why the Bible is so revered and what makes it truly inspiring and essential to our lives. Rob takes us deep into actual passages to reveal the humanity behind the Scriptures.

In an audiobook eagerly awaited by her growing retinue of fans, she brings listeners inside the world's oldest Christian faith, illuminating Eastern Orthodoxy in a manner similar to Kathleen Norris's exploration of Benedictine spirituality. An ex-hippie and former social radical, the author often writes humorously about her unusual road from Woodstock to the altar of an Orthodox church, where she is the pastor's wife.

With compelling and often humorous stories from his own life, Bible scholar Peter Enns offers a fresh look at how Christian life truly works, answering questions that cannot be addressed by the idealized traditional doctrine of "once for all delivered to the saints".

In the first half of life, we are naturally preoccupied with establishing ourselves; climbing, achieving, and performing. But as we grow older and encounter challenges and mistakes, we need to see ourselves in a different and more life-giving way. This message of falling down - that is in fact moving upward - is the most resisted and counterintuitive of messages in the world's religions. Falling Upward offers a new paradigm for understanding one of the most profound of life's mysteries: how those who have fallen down are the only ones who understand "up".

Jinger, along with three of her sisters, wrote a New York Times bestseller about their religious convictions. She believed this level of commitment would guarantee God's blessing, even though in private she felt constant fear that she wasn't measuring up to the high standards demanded of her.

In our age when the church can too often seem like a poor copy of the world, Chad Bird challenges us to reclaim the astounding originality of our ancient, backward faith. With compelling examples from the Bible and today, Bird paints an enticing picture of the counterintuitive, countercultural life that God wants for us. He helps listeners delight in all of the ways that Jesus turned the world upside down, allowing us to experience true freedom, not from our weaknesses but in the midst of them.

You were created to walk and talk with the living God. Prayer is the most natural, powerful, and universal expression of Christian faith. Why then is it sometimes so difficult? Continuing the adventures described in his best-selling memoir, Red Moon Rising, Pete Greig reveals the struggles, miracles, and hard-won insights gleaned from 15 years of 24-7 prayer, mission, and justice.

Did Jesus have bad habits? In our culture we have a tendency to describe Jesus in ways that soften his revolutionary edge. Len Sweet uncovers and presents to us the offensive and scandalous Jesus described in the Bible. Did he disappear when people needed him most? Yes. Did he refuse to answer questions directly? Yes. Did Jesus offend the people of his day? Absolutely yes. Popular author and speaker Len Sweet examines the words and actions of Jesus and places them in context.

For 30 years, Lynn Wilder, once a tenured faculty member at Brigham Young University, and her family lived in, loved, and promoted the Mormon Church. Then, their son Micah, serving his Mormon mission in Florida, had a revelation: God knew him personally. God loved him. And the Mormon Church did not offer the true gospel. As Lynn tells her story of abandoning the deception of Mormonism to receive God's grace, she gives a rare look into Mormon culture, what it means to grow up Mormon, and why the contrasts between Mormonism and Christianity make all the difference in the world.

In Jesus Feminist, Bessey shares her spiritual journey, which ranges from growing up in a post–gender-debate home to learning about the worldwide struggles of women and the obstacles even a well-meaning church can pose. Through disarmingly intimate storytelling, she tells how she grew to understand the story of God and the vastness of his work through women.

In Prototype, Jonathan Martin creates a vivid understanding of what it means to be God's beloved. To completely trust, as Jesus did, that God loves us. To live without fear, confident in our identity and purpose. To handle life's wounds as Jesus did, and to wake every day with a deep awareness of God's presence. Martin reveals a startling truth at the heart of the gospel: Jesus is our prototype. And as we discover how the knowledge of being God's beloved changed everything for Jesus - how it set Him free to live out His purpose and love God, others, and the world - it will begin to do the same for us.

The renowned and beloved New York Times best-selling author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark recounts her moving discoveries of finding the sacred in unexpected places while teaching the world’s religions to undergraduates in rural Georgia, revealing how God delights in confounding our expectations.

Chase Falson has lost his faith – and he did it right in front of the congregation at this mega church. Now the elders want him to take some time away: far away. So Chase crosses the Atlantic to visit his uncle, a Franciscan priest, where he encounters the life and teachings of Francis of Assisi and rediscovers his ancient faith. Follow Chase’s spiritual journey in the footsteps of Francis, and then begin one of your own through the pilgrim’s guide included in this audio book.

Insights from Philip Yancey's personal pilgrimage away from and back to the church. Why are there so many more professing Christians than churchgoing Christians? Is it because something is wrong with the church? In his candid, thought-provoking manner, award-winning author Philip Yancey reveals the reasons behind his own journey back from skepticism to wholehearted participation in the church, and weighs the church's human failings against its compelling worth as the body of Christ.

From simple practices such as walking, working, and getting lost to deep meditations on topics like prayer and pronouncing blessings, Taylor reveals concrete ways to discover the sacred in the small things we do and see. Something as ordinary as hanging clothes on a clothesline becomes an act of devotion if we pay attention to what we are doing and take time to attend to the sights, smells, and sounds around us. Making eye contact with the cashier at the grocery store becomes a moment of true human connection.

God doesn't want to be merely a weekend getaway. He has no interest in being a Sunday bungalow or even a summer cottage. He wants to be your mailing address, your point of reference, your home always. He wants you to live in the Great House of God.

Are you ready to move from insecure to God secure? From regret riddled to better-because-of-it? From afraid to die to ready to fly? Today, find freedom in God's grace. We often talk about grace, but do we really understand it? Grace politely occupies a phrase in a hymn and fits nicely on a church sign. It never causes trouble or demands a response. When asked, "Do you believe in grace?" who could say no? Best-selling author and pastor Max Lucado helps us dive deeper into what it means to be changed by grace.

Craig Groeschel (lifechurch.tv) and his church have hosted an international multichurch campaign called One Prayer, a month-long concerted focus on unifying the many different, diverse churches participating by praying together and serving their local communities. This compilation book features chapters by seventeen passionate church leaders, including Andy Stanley, Francis Chan, Jentezen Franklin, Perry Noble, Steven Furtick, and others.

In a world of uncertainty, pain, and struggle, where do you find solid assurance and unshakeable truth? Gifted Bible teacher and inspiring Women of Faith speaker Sheila Walsh offers powerful, heart-filled teaching on ten bedrock promises of God, providing the foundation for daily confidence, joy, and hope. In The Shelter of God's Promises, Sheila searches Scripture for what God has promised us, what God's promises mean, and how encounters with Christ are the eternal fulfillment of His unrelenting commitment to us.

Many believers feel stunted in their Christian growth. We beat ourselves up over our failures and, in the process, pull away from God because we subconsciously believe He tallies our defects and hangs His head in disappointment. In this new edition - now with a foreword by Michael W. Smith, testimony by Rich Mullins and the author's own epilogue, "Ragamuffin Ten Years Later," Brennan Manning reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth.

From New York Times best-selling author Rachel Held Evans: a must-listen for anyone on the journey of doubt, deconstruction, and ultimately faith reborn. Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial made a spectacle of Christian fundamentalism and brought national attention to her hometown, Rachel Held Evans faced a trial of her own when she began to have doubts about her faith. Rachel recounts growing up in a culture obsessed with apologetics, struggling as her own faith unraveled one unexpected question at a time.

If the Bible isn’t a science book or an instruction manual, then what is it? What do people mean when they say the Bible is inspired? When Rachel Held Evans found herself asking these questions, she began a quest to better understand what the Bible is and how it is meant to be read. What she discovered changed her—and it will change you too.

Drawing on the best in recent scholarship and using her well-honed literary expertise, Evans examines some of our favorite Bible stories and possible interpretations, retelling them through memoir, original poetry, short stories, soliloquies, and even a short screenplay. Undaunted by the Bible’s most difficult passages, Evans wrestles through the process of doubting, imagining, and debating Scripture’s mysteries. The Bible, she discovers, is not a static work but is a living, breathing, captivating, and confounding book that is able to equip us to join God’s loving and redemptive work in the world.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood is an exercise in scriptural exploration and spiritual contemplation. What does God truly expect of women, and is there really a prescription for biblical womanhood? Come along with Evans as she looks for answers in the rich heritage of biblical heroines, models of grace, and all-around women of valor.

Rachel Held Evans is widely recognized for her theologically astute, profoundly honest, and beautifully personal books, which have guided, instructed, edified, and shaped Christians as they seek to live out a just and loving faith. At the time of her tragic death in 2019, Rachel was working on a new book about wholeheartedness. With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other unpublished writings into a rich collection of essays.

In Accidental Saints, New York Times best-selling au­thor Nadia Bolz-Weber invites readers into a surprising encounter with what she calls "a religious but not-so-spiritual life." Tattooed, angry and profane, this former standup comic turned pastor stubbornly, sometimes hilariously, resists the God she feels called to serve. But God keeps showing up in the least likely of people - a church-loving agnostic, a drag queen, a felonious Bishop and a gun-toting member of the NRA.

Heavily tattooed and foul-mouthed, Nadia Bolz-Weber, a former stand-up comic, sure as hell didn't consider herself to be religious-leader material - until the day she ended up leading a friend's funeral in a smoky downtown comedy club. Surrounded by fellow alcoholics, depressives, and cynics, she realized: These were her people. Maybe she was meant to be their pastor. Using life stories, Nadia uses humorous narrative and poignant honesty to portray a woman who is both deeply faithful and deeply flawed, giving hope to the rest of us along the way.

Sarah Bessey is an expert at faithfully stumbling forward. As a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Evolving Faith, the foremost community for progressive Christians, she has been trusted by thousands of people to pursue a reconstruction of faith centered on compassion, truth, and inclusion. Bessey has found a deeply underserved and underestimated remnant in the wilderness of Christianity who are still devoted to Jesus, deeply rooted in the Gospel, fascinated with Scripture, and committed to reimagining their faith.

Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower. But through it all, she was plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world.

In Jesus Feminist, Bessey shares her spiritual journey, which ranges from growing up in a post–gender-debate home to learning about the worldwide struggles of women and the obstacles even a well-meaning church can pose. Through disarmingly intimate storytelling, she tells how she grew to understand the story of God and the vastness of his work through women.

Millions of Christians have struggled with how to reconcile God's love and God's judgment: Has God created billions of people over thousands of years only to select a few to go to heaven and everyone else to suffer forever in hell? Is this acceptable to God? How is this "good news"? Author, pastor, and innovative teacher Rob Bell presents a deeply biblical vision for rediscovering a richer, grander, truer, and more spiritually satisfying way of understanding heaven, hell, God, Jesus, salvation, and repentance.