Why are some leaders more effective than others? Effective leaders follow The Leadership Strategy of Jesus personally and in the organizations they lead. In the gospels, Jesus demonstrates the key elements necessary to advance His kingdom-in life, church, and work. The Leadership Strategy of Jesus shows leaders how to live out these principles and positively impact the world. As a seasoned ministry leader, Dr. Rich Halcombe's, The Leadership Strategy of Jesus, is designed to help leaders discover their personal purpose in order to better serve their communities. Halcombe encourages leaders to establish a clean plan for future growth and invest time and energy into those plans, while remaining open to continuous improvement and adjustment. The Leadership Strategy of Jesus will increase any leader's effectiveness by identifying the strategies of Jesus and applying them to everyday experiences.

For a generation, the Catholic Church in Brazil has enjoyed international renown as one of the most progressive social forces in Latin America. The Church's creation of Christian Base Communities (CEBs), groups of Catholics who learn to read the Bible as a call for social justice, has been widely hailed. Still, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that the CEBs are lagging far behind the explosive growth of Brazil's two other major national religious movements--Pentacostalism and Afro-Brazilian "Umbanda."
On the basis of his extensive fieldwork in Rio di Janeiro, including detailed life histories of women, blacks, youths, and the marginal poor, John Burdick offers the first in-depth explanation of why the radical Catholic Church is losing, and Pentecostalism and "Umbanda" winning, the battle for souls in urban Brazil.

What is a knowledgeable, faithfully biblical response to transgenderism? In Affirming God's Image, J. Alan Branch takes a fair, respectful, and factual tone in addressing this complex issue through a biblical lens. You'll learn: Scientific research around the transgender experience An Overview of the history of transgenderism Important terminology surrounding gender issues Why people pursue gender reassignment surgery, and what happens after How to navigate conversations around this topic The book ends with two practical chapters for families and churches, giving you guiding principles for how to address this issue in a loving, Christ--honoring way. The first step to responding well to any situation is understanding it. Affirming God's Image equips you with the biblical, scientific, and practical knowledge you need for a wise response.

"Preeeeep." The sound of the peepers, tiny frogs an inch or two long, penetrated the dusk. Beneath the jack pines at the edge of a small pond in the northern Michigan woods, the males were calling their mates. A professor and a group of ecology students sat speechless as closer and closer, louder and louder, more and more peepers joined in chorus. There was just light enough to see them, crawling up a bracken fern to find a singing perch, filling their throats with air like tiny balloons about to burst and then giving forth at close range an ear-splitting 'preeeeep.; . . . Now we were immersed in the peepers' lives, not ours. And when the concert ended and the peepers had gone away, we laughed together for the sheer joy and power of life displayed for a moment in the grand efforts of one tiny creature to be fruitful and multiply." Combining compelling stories with both biblical and scientific investigation, Redeeming Creation addresses the ecological crisis we face today. population explosion rain forests stripped bare destruction of animal habitat the death of entire species depletion of the ozone layer global warming The authors, four biologists and teachers, believe that we can face these dilemmas with hope. Moving beyond a mere survey of the planet's ills, they bring Scripture into fruitful dialogue with current scientific findings and commitments. They both inspire and inform our individual and corporate response to God's creation.