Church At The Wall

"Seth David Clark tells the powerful story of how the Border Church, founded and pastored by John Fanestil, worships on the San Diego-Tijuana border without a building. Every Sunday afternoon the author, who serves as the U.S.-side pastoral coordinator of the church, gathers with people of good will from both sides of the border at Friendship Park to build the kingdom of God. Their love of Christ is exhibited through celebrating communion, singing, and using their pinkies to pass the peace through the mesh metal walls between the U.S. and Mexico. Readers will get to know this remarkable international church community-and its distinctive expressions of theology, justice, righteousness, and love-through the eyes of active participants"--

In Church Without Walls, prominent author Jim Petersen offers an exciting definition of the church that pushes beyond the too-small boundaries we've inherited from the past. This book explores why some church forms impede the gospel in today's postmodern world.

Biblical scholar Robert Wall and pastoral leader Anthony Robinson here join forces to bring the Acts of the Apostles forward to our time as a resource for congregational renewal and transformation.Featuring both careful exegetical study and exciting contemporary exposition, the fifteen chapters of Called to Be Church each first interpret the text of Acts as Scripture and then engage Acts for today's church. The book dives into many of the most vexing issues faced by the church then and now -- such issues as conflict resolution, pluralism and multiculturalism, sexuality, money, church and state, the role of the Holy Spirit, and more.Enhanced by study questions at the end of each chapter, Called to Be Church will lend itself especially well to small-group study within congregations. Pastors, lay readers, students, and ordinary believers alike will find the book helpful and inspiring.

Rob Portlock has collected over one hundred of his best cartoons in this book guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of anyone who has ever occupied a church pew.

Are you ready for: Your family to be stronger? Your church to have greater influence in your community? The body of Christ to be connected and working together in your city? A more intimate prayer life? To grow as a disciple? More answers to prayer? Following Nehemiah's pattern Build the Wall provides a 52 day plan that starts with a disciple, then integrates their family who is then connected to their local church, which is positioned to connect with other congregations in their city.

“This gentle, gorgeously written book may be one of my favorites ever.” —Jenna Bush Hager (A Today show “Read with Jenna” Book Club Selection!) This “moving portrait of love and friendship set against a backdrop of social change” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice) traces two married couples whose lives become entangled when the husbands become copastors at a famed New York city congregation in the 1960s. Charles and Lily, James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences however, threaten to tear them apart. Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry. How then, can he fall in love with Lily—fiercely intellectual, elegantly stern—after she tells him with certainty that she will never believe in God? And yet, how can he not? James, the youngest son in a hardscrabble Chicago family, spent much of his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother. Nan grew up in Mississippi, the devout and beloved daughter of a minister and a debutante. James’s escape from his desperate circumstances leads him to Nan and, despite his skepticism of hope in all its forms, her gentle, constant faith changes the course of his life. In The Dearly Beloved, Cara wall reminds us of “the power of the novel in its simplest, richest form: bearing intimate witness to human beings grappling with their faith and falling in love,” (Entertainment Weekly, A-) as we follow these two couples through decades of love and friendship, jealousy and understanding, forgiveness and commitment. Against the backdrop of turbulent changes facing the city and the church’s congregation, Wall offers a poignant meditation on faith and reason, marriage and children, and the ways we find meaning in our lives. The Dearly Beloved is a gorgeous, wise, and provocative novel that is destined to become a classic.

Seth David Clark tells the powerful story of how the Border Church, founded and pastored by John Fanestil, worships on the San Diego-Tijuana border without a building. Every Sunday afternoon the author, who serves as the U.S.-side pastoral coordinator of the church, gathers with people of good will from both sides of the border at Friendship Park to build the kingdom of God. Their love of Christ is exhibited through celebrating communion, singing, and using their pinkies to pass the peace through the mesh metal walls between the U.S. and Mexico. Readers will get to know this remarkable international church community--and its distinctive expressions of theology, justice, righteousness, and love--through the eyes of active participants.

Book Review

Pastors want to reach the lost with the good news of Jesus. However, we've too often assumed this requires loud music, flashy lights, and skinny jeans. In this gentle manifesto, Jared Wilson—a pastor who knows what it's like to serve in a large attractional church—challenges pastors to reconsider their priorities when it comes to how they "do church" and reach people in their communities. Writing with the grace and kindness of a trusted friend, Wilson encourages pastors to reexamine the Bible's teaching, not simply return to a traditional model for tradition's sake. He then sets forth an alternative to both the attractional and the traditional models: an explicitly biblical approach that is gospel focused, grace based, and fruit oriented.

No phrase in American letters has had a more profound influence on church-state law, policy, and discourse than Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state," and few metaphors have provoked more passionate debate.