Wise insight on building a church, growing a church, and keeping costs low. For pastors, leaders, and building committees.

England has a housing crisis. We need to build many more new homes to house our growing population, but house building is controversial, particularly when it involves the loss of countryside. Addressing both sides of this critical debate, Shaun Spiers argues that to drive house building on the scale needed, government must strike a contract with civil society: in return for public support and acceptance of the loss of some countryside, it must guarantee high quality, affordable developments, in the right locations. Simply imposing development, as recent governments of all political persuasions have attempted, will not work. Focusing on house building and conservation politics in England, Spiers uses his considerable experience and extensive research to demonstrate why the current model doesn’t work, and why there needs to be both planning reform and a more active role for the state, including local government.

What is the secret to happiness? King Solomon was one of the greatest superachievers of all time and fabulously wealthy. He also had a reputation as the wisest man in the world. But at the end of his life he was so unhappy that he felt moved to cry out “all is vanity” and wish he had never been born. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon brilliantly diagnoses the causes of our continuing unhappiness and boils down the secret of peace and contentment to a few essential ingredients. The Great Reduction explains why his prescription for peace is just as relevant today as the day it was written. It also uses his diagnosis to shed light on a happiness that goes far beyond anything Solomon could have imagined.