Many of us long to experience the fullness of God and his purpose for our lives. Not a whole lot of us ever do. The reason is that we have departed in some significant ways from the biblical view of Christian life and growth. The New Testament highlights the communal, missional, and eschatological aspects of our walk with God. We grow in our faith as individual Christians to the degree that we are (a) deeply rooted relationally in a local church community that is (b) passionately playing its part in God's grand story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration, and (c) intently anticipating the summing of all things in Christ when Jesus returns. In recent decades, American evangelicals have traded away community, outreach, and the Bible's teaching about eternity future for the pursuit of individual religious experience in the here-and-now. Why We Need the Church to Become More Like Jesus traces this departure from biblical Christianity through recent decades of popular evangelical trends and reminds us that faith centered on community, mission, and the story line of Scripture remains the key to the spiritual formation of the individual Christian.

For anyone who experiences a lapse of faith—here are the answers you seek. Faith is the most fundamentally important aspect of following Christ. Yet there are times in every believer's life when the inevitable question arises in the heart and works its way to the soul: If I really believe, why do I have these doubts? The question may have been planted by tragedy or trial. It may have been ignited by rejection or heartbreak. It may even be as simple as an intellectual burr that can't be shaken. If you or someone you know is asking this question, this book will bring help and hope to every heart in search of a deeper faith.

This collection demonstrates the range of approaches that some of the leading scholars of our day take to basic questions at the intersection of the natural and human worlds. The essays focus on three interlocking categories: Reason stakes a bigger territory than the enclosed yard of universal rules. Nature expands over a far larger region than an eternal category of the natural. And history refuses to be confined to claims of an unencumbered truth of how things happened.

Many of us are grappling with questions: How much can we know about God? Who decides what is right and what is wrong? Do I need God to live a life that matters? We ask these questions not because we reject faith in God, but because we live in a rapidly changing world of new realities, new technology and new insights. And that changes how we believe.

Denominations are one of the primary ways in which Christians attempt to live in a community based around God. Yet there is very little careful theological analysis of denomination available today. Between Congregation and Church offers a constructive theological understanding of denomination, showing its role as an intermediary structure between congregation and church. It places denomination and other intermediary structures within the doctrine of the church. Barry Ensign-George reviews work by theologians and church historians that can contribute to a constructive theological understanding of denomination. The book highlights particular developments in the history of the church that established preconditions for the emergence of denomination. Exploration of unity and diversity is central to this analysis, and individual chapters offer theological analyses of the unity and the diversity to which the Christians are called. Finally, denomination has often been a vehicle for sin, and the relationship between denomination and sin is considered. Between Congregation and Church addresses a major gap in contemporary theology: the failure to offer substantive theological analysis of denomination, a major way Christians together live their faith today.

Why bother with apologetics? Our skeptical age often finds the Christian faith unbelievable. For those seeking to defend the faith or strengthen their belief, Why Believe offers a timely resource: an apologetic that is both compelling and winsome. Anderson’s charitable and conversational tone conveys that Christianity is not only reasonable but also fulfilling. Appealing to both believers and unbelievers alike, the book provides accessible explanations of contemporary issues, from arguments for the existence of God and the validity of Christ’s resurrection to common questions about the practice of faith.