When building a children’s ministry at a church, there is so much to consider: Which curriculum should we use? How many volunteers do we need? How do we keep parents in the loop? And that’s before we run into stalled check-in computers, missing activity sheets, and floors that need to be vacuumed. Writing from personal ministry experience, Jared Kennedy shares a four-fold approach for gospel-centered, missional children’s ministry: hospitality, teaching, discipleship, and mission.

The warning signs are everywhere: cyberbullying, sex trafficking, and school shootings are on the rise. Our children have matriculated in the digital age. With unprecedented access to information and rapidly developing technology, their views of the church, authority, and God are all shifting. If we ever hope to be successful in reaching the children of tomorrow, we must move beyond the status quo and completely revolutionize our approach, evaluate our methods, and make the investments required to become the church that this generation so desperately needs.

This book provides the foundation for any church to develop a thriving childrens ministry by giving step-by-step guidance and creative application exercises based on Willow Creeks successful Promiseland ministry and other successful children's ministries from around the world.

Mama Bear Apologetics is the audiobook you've been looking for. This mom-to-mom guide will equip you to teach your kids how to form their own biblical beliefs about what is true and what is false. Through transparent life stories and clear, practical applications - including prayer strategies - this band of Mama Bears offers you tools to train yourself, so you can turn around and train your kids.

Discover simple habits and easy-to-implement daily rhythms that will help you find meaning beyond the chaos of family life as you create a home where kids and parents alike practice how to love God and each other. You long for tender moments with your children - but do you ever find yourself too busy to stop, make eye contact, and say something you really mean?

"Who am I becoming?" That was the question nagging pastor and author John Mark Comer. Outwardly, he appeared successful. But inwardly, things weren’t pretty. So, he turned to a trusted mentor for guidance and heard these words: "Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life." It wasn’t the response he expected, but it was - and continues to be - the answer he needs. Within this audiobook, you’ll find a fascinating road map to staying emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world.

Your children will either live forever with Jesus or apart from him. Too many growing up in Christian homes will not follow Christ as adults. Do you have a strategy for parenting in today's hostile culture?

In Dangerous Prayers, New York Times best-selling author Craig Groeschel will show you how to pray the prayers that search your soul, break your habits, and send you to pursue the calling God has for you. But be warned: If you're fine with settling for what's easy, or you're okay with staying on the sidelines, this book isn't for you. You'll be challenged. You'll be tested. You'll be moved to take a long, hard look at your heart.

Maybe it was baseball season, with its many Sunday practices, which caused a normally committed family to miss church...only they didn't return when the season ended. For another family, it was the dance recital with its accelerated rehearsal schedule, which was "only temporary" but their return attendance was sporadic before it became non-existent.

Do you feel too overwhelmed to enjoy life, unable to sort out the demands on your time? Are you doing your best work as a leader yet not making an impact? Have you ever felt stuck, powerless to change your environment? In The Emotionally Healthy Leader, best-selling 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.

Discover the secret to igniting a life-giving, soul-transforming, people-inspiring movement in your organization, church, or ministry--and the trick to keeping the momentum going. In Lead Like It Matters, New York Times bestselling author and pastor Craig Groeschel shares the transformative insights he's learned about how to effectively build a thriving, enduring ministry and organization.

Discipling your family can feel like an intimidating task, but it doesn’t need to be overwhelming or complicated. With a simple plan in place, discipleship is something every parent can do. Pastors Matt Chandler and Adam Griffin have made it their mission to help you develop a sustainable rhythm of gospel-centered discipleship focused in three key areas: time, moments, and milestones, as you raise your children in the love and fear of the Lord.

Elisabeth Elliot was a young missionary in Ecuador when members of a violent Amazonian tribe savagely speared her husband, Jim, and his four colleagues. Incredibly, prayerfully, Elisabeth took her toddler daughter, snakebite kit, Bible, and journal...and lived in the jungle with the stone-age people who killed her husband. In this authorized biography, Ellen Vaughn uses Elisabeth’s private, unpublished journals, and candid interviews with her family and friends, to paint the adventures and misadventures God used to shape one of the most influential women in modern church history.

In this revised best-selling book, Peter Scazzero outlines a road map for discipleship with Jesus that is powerfully transformative. He unveils what's wrong with our current definition of "spiritual growth" and offers not only a model of spirituality that actually works, but seven steps to change that will help you experience authentic faith and hunger for God.

The God of the universe - the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor - loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn’t working harder at a list of do's and don'ts - it's falling in love with God.

This book is about discovering together how to understand and live the Greatest Commandment. We're not after the "art of thinking about God a little differently". We're here to uncover the needs God created within us - needs for meaning, intimacy, honesty, humility, justice, compassion, and more - and how he designed us to find those needs fulfilled in him.

The God of the universe - the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor - loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn’t working harder at a list of do's and don'ts - it's falling in love with God.

Pastor Todd Wagner invites listeners to experience the adventure, beauty, and fullness of life through the church as God intended. Obligated weekly services of mostly bored adults are not God's vision for His people. Todd illuminates a path for listeners to personally pursue a deeper relationship with God and then purposefully invest in God's design for His church. This book paints the picture of the Father's intention to bring His people into an adventurous life full of authentic relationships, powerful transformation, significance, and meaning.

You wouldn’t climb a mountain or sail the Pacific without first checking out your equipment. Why? Because your very life will depend on how prepared you are to face the obstacles and challenges before you. It’s the same with launching into the great adventure called the Christian life.

Prayer is as necessary to the Christian as breathing is to the human body - but it often doesn't come quite as naturally. In fact, prayer in the church often gets subtly pushed to the side in favor of pragmatic practices that promise tangible results. This book focuses on the necessity of regular prayer as a central practice in the local church - awakening us to the need and blessing of corporate prayer by examining what Jesus taught about prayer, how the first Christians approached prayer, and how to prioritize prayer in our congregations.

A follow up to the profound message of Crazy Love, Pastor Francis Chan offers a compelling invitation to understand, embrace, and follow the Holy Spirit's direction in our lives. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and ... the Holy Spirit." We pray in the name of all three, but how often do we live with an awareness of only the first two?

In Strong Through the Storm, pastor and best-selling author Jim Cymbala speaks to every Christian who is concerned about the challenges the church is facing in America today. Using powerful stories of people who have been transformed by Christ, Cymbala offers hope, helping Christians to understand that a life surrendered to Christ will not be easily defeated, even in the midst of growing hostility toward Christians. No matter how much spiritual darkness encompasses the world, the light of the gospel cannot be suppressed.

Every day is full of struggles. We struggle with time; with truth; with authority; with finding peace, purity, and contentment; with our words, thoughts, and actions - and that's just the beginning! Does God speak to us about these daily tests? Is there hope in the struggle? The answer, of course, is yes - but where God speaks about them may surprise you.

In this new audiobook, David Platt, author of the New York Times best-selling book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, contends that multitudes of people around the world culturally think they are Christians yet biblically are not followers of Christ.

Combining modern research, personal stories, professional experience, and real-life examples, Jeannie Cunnion shows parents how to embrace God's grace and let go of the pressures - external and internal - that come with raising children. We moms are told that we have to get it all right so our kids turn out right. These impossible standards leave us stuck in worry, anger, guilt, comparison, and shame. And in Mom Set Free she reveals how the Good News of the Gospel empowers us to live - and parent - in the freedom for which Christ has set us free.

Discipling your family can feel like an intimidating task, but it doesn’t need to be overwhelming or complicated. With a simple plan in place, discipleship is something every parent can do. Pastors Matt Chandler and Adam Griffin have made it their mission to help you develop a sustainable rhythm of gospel-centered discipleship focused in three key areas: time, moments, and milestones, as you raise your children in the love and fear of the Lord.

Jodie Berndt shows you how to make the Bible a book of prayers that can powerfully influence your children's lives. You'll discover how to pray specifically and expectantly for their faith, character, safety, relationships, and future. You'll gain new, biblical perspectives on God's purposes for your children. And through the encouragement of the Scriptures and true-life stories, you'll find out what a huge difference your prayers really make in the lives of those you love most.

Every follower of Jesus Christ should be able to answer two simple questions: Who is investing in me?Whom am I investing in? God desires to pour an abundance of spiritual and emotional capital into your life - directly and through older and wiser believers. And he wants to use you to pour spiritual and emotional capital into the lives of others. Along the way, you’ll be changed. Others will change. God calls this process of spiritual investing "making disciples". It’s the heart of the Great Commission.

God without religion? Andrew Farley’s experience as a Christian was first characterized by self-effort as he tried to please God at any cost. His ruthless religion resulted in spiritual fatigue and disillusionment with church. Only then did he discover what relaxing in Jesus means and how enjoying God’s intimate presence can transform everyday life. Using a story-driven format, God without Religion dismantles common religious misconceptions. Pulling no punches, Andrew shows how the truth about these controversial issues can liberate and unify believers....

Pastor and speaker Shane Pruitt guides listeners in identifying the Christian cliches we've all heard that are actually unbiblical lies. He then counters with the truths about God as presented in the Bible - truths that bring encouragement and freedom for our lives. God won't give you more than you can handle. Really? Pastor and speaker Shane Pruitt shines a light on this and other Christian cliches that upon further inspection are actually unbiblical lies that keep far too many believers stuck in spiritual immaturity.

When building a children’s ministry at a church, there is so much to consider: Which curriculum should we use? How many volunteers do we need? How do we keep parents in the loop? And that’s before we run into stalled check-in computers, missing activity sheets, and floors that need to be vacuumed. Writing from personal ministry experience, Jared Kennedy shares a four-fold approach for gospel-centered, missional children’s ministry: hospitality, teaching, discipleship, and mission.

Do you feel too overwhelmed to enjoy life, unable to sort out the demands on your time? Are you doing your best work as a leader yet not making an impact? Have you ever felt stuck, powerless to change your environment? In The Emotionally Healthy Leader, best-selling 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.

You might think that Scripture doesn't have much to say about the food you make for breakfast, how you view your postpartum body, or what school choice you make for your children, but a deeper look reveals that the Bible provides the framework for finding answers to your specific questions about modern motherhood. Emily Jensen and Laura Wifler help you understand and apply the gospel to common issues moms face so you can connect your Sunday morning faith to the Monday morning tantrum. Discover how closely the gospel connects with today's motherhood.

A twenty-five year veteran of children’s ministry in the local church, pastor Steve Adams has ministered to families in multiple churches, from tiny church plants to his present position at Saddleback Church. In this book, Steve applies the revolutionary insights of the Purpose Driven Church to children’s ministry and leads listeners on a journey of discovery, showing them how to develop an intentional ministry process that moves children toward spiritual health while building a healthy ministry environment for those who work with kids.

If your answer is "No", you're not alone. Many Christian parents feel the same. But here's the good news: Talking with Your Kids About Jesus will give you the confidence you need to have the conversations that matter most in today's skeptical world. In a friendly, parent-to-parent voice, Natasha Crain will walk you through essential topics on Jesus' identity, teachings, death, and resurrection. Each chapter clearly explains what skeptics are saying and provides a concise, easy-to-understand response you can discuss with your child (one that can be tailored for any age).