2019 World Magazine Book of the Year Short List 2019 The Gospel Coalition Book Award 2019 Send Institute's Top Ten Church Planting Related Books of 2019 Kevin DeYoung's Top 10 Books of 2019 Jesus loves small, insignificant places. In recent years, Christian ministries have increasingly prioritized urban areas. Big cities and suburbs are considered more strategic, more influential, and more desirable places to live and work. After all, they're the centers for culture, arts, and education. More and more people are leaving small places and moving to big ones. As a ministry strategy, focusing on big places makes sense. But the gospel of Jesus is often unstrategic. In this book, pastor Stephen Witmer lays out an integrated theological vision for small-place ministry. Filled with helpful information about small places and with stories and practical advice from his own ministry, Witmer's book offers a compelling, comprehensive vision for small-place ministry today. Jesus loves small places, and when we care deeply about them and invest in them over time, our ministry becomes a unique picture of the gospel-one that the world badly needs to see.

The biblical theme of spiritual adultery stands in all its bluntness for a deeply offensive sin--the unfaithfulness of God's covenant people in departing from Yahweh, their husband, and going after false gods. Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. begins by showing how the Genesis vision of human marriage provides the logic and coherent network of meanings for the story of Israel's relationship with Yahweh. He traces the specific theme of marital unfaithfulness, first through the historical books of the Old Testament and then through the prophets, particularly Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Turning to the New Testament he also shows how the sad story of Israel's adultery is transcended by the vision of ultimate reality in Christ and his church--the Bridegroom and the Bride. This beautifully written book, a New Studies in Biblical Theology volume, is marked by careful exegesis and deep sensitivity. It is that rare thing--a work of scholarship that calls readers to love God with an ardor that suffuses all of life. Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead. This book was previously published under the title Whoredom.