We often think of "spiritual growth" as a matter of behavior. In reality spiritual growth is a matter of the heart. In Making Spiritual Progress Allen Ratta introduces a revolutionary system for monitoring your motivations--faith, hope and love, the virtues out of which spiritual growth grows. Fully integrated into the self-assessment and growth tools found at spiritualprogress.com, this book will help you identify your core motivations for how you practice your faith empower you to grow in faith, hope and love increase your redemptive impact in the world If you want to transform your life, start with your heart. Everything else will follow.

Learn the secrets to building and maintaining a healthy, productive, and unified ministry team that sticks together for the long haul. Serving as a church leader can be a tough calling. Whatever your role, odds are you've known your share of the frustration and disillusionment that comes with turf battles, conflicting vision, and marathon meetings. You may have asked yourself, "How did it get this way?" With twenty years of front-line ministry experience, Larry Osborne understands congregations (as baffling as they can sometimes be) and he know how the best-intentioned teams can become disrupted and disunified. With this book, he aims to shore up the foundation of a healthy team--what does a unified and thriving church leadership look like and how can it be achieved? Sticky Teams is divided into three main sections, dealing with key aspects of what it takes to develop long-term, efficient harmony: Landmines and Roadblocks exposes the organizational structures, policies, and traditions that can unintentionally sabotage even the best of teams. You'll discover strategies for managing conflicts and getting around obstacles. Equipped for Ministry explores what it takes to get everyone on the same page and headed in the same direction. Chapters deal with practical tips for board, staff, and congregational alignment. Communication examines what it takes to keep everyone on the same page, with a special emphasis on some especially dicey areas and issues of ministry, such as conversations about money. Whatever your situation; from start-up phase, to mid-sized, to megachurch, Osborne has been there. As the pastor of North Coast Church, he's walked his board, staff, and congregation through the process of becoming more genuinely unified, and, because of that, better able to carry out God's design for his church. With warm encouragement and insight, he shares expertise that most pastors and leadership teams learn only from long experience: how to invest the time to create church harmony and how to lead so that unity is maintained long-term.

In Sticky Church, author and pastor Larry Osborne makes the case that closing the back door of your church is even more important than opening the front door wider. He offers a time-tested strategy for doing so: sermon-based small groups that dig deeper into the weekend message and tightly velcro members to the ministry. It s a strategy that enabled Osborne s congregation to grow from a handful of people to one of the larger churches in the nation---without any marketing or special programming. Sticky Church tells the inspiring story of North Coast Church s phenomenal growth and offers practical tips for launching your own sermon-based small group ministry. Topics include: Why stickiness is so important Why most of our discipleship models don t work very well Why small groups always make a church more honest and transparent What makes groups grow deeper and sticker over time Sticky Church is an ideal book for church leaders who want to start or retool their small group ministry---and velcro their congregation to the Bible and each other"

Pastor, author, and leadership consultant unpacks instruction for church leaders found in 1 Peter 5:1-4 where they are exhorted to shepherd the flock among them.Some instruction is timeless. Regardless of the age in which we live, certain instruction carries no expiration on its relevance. Pastor, author, and leadership consultant, Larry Osborne has discovered this to be the case with instruction on how to be a good leader. The best, most practical advice comes from the Bible, and in particular, 1 Peter 5:1-4. It's in this short passage where leaders are exhorted to shepherd the flock among them.Unfortunately, most modern leaders have precious little experience tending sheep, and many of the implications that were well understood when Peter penned these words are lost on today's reader. Osborne finds the parallels to be numerous, well-worth reviewing and understanding anew.A shepherd leads them to water even when they fear it. A shepherd never allows one sick lamb to destroy the flock. A shepherd lays down his life for his sheep . . .When leaders truly understand Peter's words of exhortation to lead like a shepherd, then they will begin to see the path that leads them to Leading Well.

The Problem of God explores answers to the most difficult questions raised against Christianity. A skeptic who became a Christian and then a pastor, author Mark Clark grew up in an atheistic home. After his father's death, he began a skeptical search for truth through the fields of science, philosophy, and history, eventually finding answers in the last place he expected: Christianity. In a winsome, persuasive, and humble voice, The Problem of God responds to the top ten interrogations people bring against God, and Christianity, including: Does God even exist in the first place? What do we do with Christianity's violent history? Is Jesus just another myth? Can the Bible be trusted? Why should we believe in Hell anymore today? Each chapter answers the specific challenge using a mix of theology, philosophy, and science. Filled with compelling stories and anecdotes, The Problem of God presents an organized and easy-to-understand range of apologetics, focused on both convincing the skeptic and informing the Christian. The book concluding with Christianity's most audacious assertion: how should we respond to Jesus' claim that he is God and the only way to salvation.

Planting and leading churches is a difficult calling. It can put strain on your mental and physical health, on your relationships with others, and even your relationship with God. Sifted offers practical guidance and hope for anyone going through a tough time in ministry or pastoral work. Founding pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu, Hawaii Wayne Cordeiro speaks the truth in love, offering wisdom and insight to walk alongside leaders as they face the challenges and hardships of planting and leading churches, while providing encouragement and inspiration for the journey. A seasoned church leader, Wayne shares the things he wishes he'd known when he was starting a new church. With additional stories from Francis Chan and Larry Osborne, each chapter includes a thought-provoking challenge question to develop a heart that is surrendered to God, focused on "being and becoming" versus "doing and accomplishing." Wayne will walk you through how to develop a healthy balance of personal care and spiritual leadership. But instead of a "how to" book on models and methods from men who have it all figured out, Sifted will help you process your journey in a way that: Challenges leaders' common scorecards of success. Encourages leaders to realize that they are not alone in what they are experiencing. Provides wisdom for the long haul to position younger leaders for a life of ministry. You many find yourself in a season of sifting. If you respond correctly, this season can be every bit as important as the time of harvest. Sifting builds the muscle of faith, giving us what we need for what lies just around the corner.

Zealous faith can have a dangerous, dark side. While recent calls for radical Christians have challenged many to be more passionate about their faith, the down side can be a budding arrogance and self-righteousness that "accidentally" sneaks into our outlook. In Accidental Pharisees, bestselling author Larry Osborne diagnoses nine of the most common traps that can ensnare Christians on the road to a deeper life of faith. Rejecting attempts to turn the call to follow Christ into a new form of legalism, he shows readers how to avoid the temptations of pride, exclusivity, legalism, and hypocrisy, Larry reminds us that attempts to fan the flames of full-on discipleship and call people to Christlikeness should be rooted in love and humility. Christians stirred by calls to radical discipleship, but unsure how to respond, will be challenged and encouraged to develop a truly Christlike zeal for God.

Sticky Leaders begins with the topic that most books about innovation avoid altogether: failure. Most books on leadership make it sound as if successful innovation is the end result of a carefully followed formula. But you can't have innovation without change. The simple fact is that when it comes to any new venture, failure is the surest result of the inevitable change process. Respected pastor and author, Larry Osborne, explains how understanding this dirty little secret behind innovation can bring both stability and creativity to organizations, especially those with teams of people that focus on innovation, creativity, new ideas, and problem-solving. In Sticky Leaders, you'll learn: How to encourage innovation's most powerful igniters and accelerators How to avoid the most common killers of innovation How to recognize and break through ceilings of complexity and competency The six pitfalls of growth and what you can do to avoid them The three questions every leader needs to ask before launching any new endeavor The counterintuitive practices that successful change agents and serial innovators use to greatly increase their odds of success. Using the wisdom and principles found in this book, you will be prepared to lead dynamically without causing uncertainty or insecurity in your organization or ministry.

Church planting has become a cottage industry. National conferences, hip planting organizations, and all-in-one resource kits celebrate the thrill of pioneering a church and inspire visions of glorious victories. Yet few who respond to the call are warned what they'll actually encounter: the relentless opposition they'll endure; the eventual scattering of their entire core group; the failure of their tried-and-true, field-tested system. Here's the dirty little secret of church planting: the roadside is strewn with casualties. Many have closed their churches. Some left ministry permanently. Others abandoned the faith altogether. Church planting is at once the greatest and most grueling ministry work on earth. This book is for those toiling in the trenches, those about to bail out, and those considering jumping in. It's for the church planters laboring and struggling, seeing little movement, and wondering what they're doing wrong or why God is failing them. It's also for mother churches, planting organizations, and denominations, as a challenge to rethink and re-calibrate the way they approach and measure planting endeavors. The Honest Guide to Church Planting is a fresh and candid conversation about the challenges and joys of planting new churches. Tom Bennardo speaks the truth so that those involved in church planting can embrace a more accurate and realistic picture of what planting a church is really like; one that not only enables them to survive, but to thrive in this wondrous work.

People are leaving the church J.D. Greear pastors. Big givers. Key volunteers. Some of his best leaders and friends. And that's exactly how he wants it to be. When Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission, he revealed that the key for reaching the world with the gospel is found in sending, not gathering. Though many churches focus time and energy on attracting people and counting numbers, the real mission of the church isn't how many people you can gather. It's about training up disciples and then sending them out. The true measure of success for a church should be its sending capacity, not its seating capacity. But there is a cost to this. To see ministry multiply, we must release the seeds God has placed in our hands. And to do that, we must ask ourselves whether we are concerned more with building our kingdom or God's. In Gaining By Losing, J.D. Greear unpacks ten plumb lines that you can use to reorient your church's priorities around God's mission to reach a lost world. The good news is that you don't need to choose between gathering or sending. Effective churches can, and must, do both.

Meet a man forced to live in a fast changing and godless society. He faced fears about the future, concern for his safety, and the discouragement of world that seemed to be falling apart at warp speed. Sound familiar? His name was Daniel, and with the power of hope, humility, and wisdom, he not only thrived, he changed an empire while he was at it. Though he lived thousands of years ago, he has a much to teach us today. Even in Babylon, God Is in Control In "Thriving in Babylon, " Larry Osborne explores the "adult" story of Daniel to help us not only survive - but actually thrive in an increasingly godless culture. Here Pastor Osborne looks at: - Why panic and despair are never from God- What true optimism looks like- How humility disarms even our greatest of enemies- Why respect causes even those who will have nothing to do with God to listen- How wisdom can snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat For those who know Jesus and understand the full implications of the cross, the resurrection, and the promises of Jesus, everything changes - not only in us, but also in our world.

Rational and methodical, systems analysis has been used successfully by business, industry, and research organizations. This new edition employs basic elements from the business world to show users how to apply systems analysis effectively to any library setting. Updating Osborne and Nakamura's previous work, the book fills a tremendous need in the field. It introduces readers to the steps in the process-from identifying and defining problems and collecting and analyzing data to selecting strategies for implementation and proof of the systems. The limitations of systems analysis, an overview of the rationale for applying it to problem situations, and many real-life examples illustrate the principles. A new chapter on object-oriented techniques, additional idea-generating techniques, and the inclusion of case studies invites readers to put these principles into practice. Practical and easy-to-read, this work will benefit students of information studies as well as professionals in the field, particul

Ninguna persona busca edificar su fe sobre mitos y leyendas urbanas espirituales. Pero, de alguna manera estas mentiras surgen en la forma que lo cristianos piensan acerca de su vida y de Dios. Millones de personas asumen estas ideas y creencias tontas como verdades infalibles, hasta que la vida les prueba lo contrario. El triste resultado es a menudo un desastre espiritual, la confusion, sentirse traicionado, desconfianza en las Escrituras, perdida de la fe y rabia contra Dios y la iglesia. Pero no tiene que ser asi. En este libro practico y encantadoramente personal, el respetado maestro de la Biblia, Larry Osborne, enfrenta diez tontas y peligrosas creencias ampliamente generalizadas como: *La fe puede solucionar cualquier problema *Dios trae la buena suerte *Perdonar significa olvidar *Todo pasa por una razon *La santidad en el hogar garantiza hijos buenos y mas. Preparese para ser asombrado, encontrar alivio y ser inspirado en las paginas de 10 Cosas tontas que creen los cristianos inteligentes. Porque la verdad nos debe hacer libres no hacernos dano."