Do you face well-intentioned dragons?
Every church has them--sincere, well-meaning Christians who leave ulcers, strained relationships, and hard feelings in their wake. They don't intend to be hostile; they don't consciously plot destruction or breed discontent. But they often do undermine the ministry of the church and make pastors question their calling.
"Ministering to Problem People in Your Church" will guide you in dealing with these challenging people. Based on real-life accounts of battle-scarred veterans, this book helps you go beyond just tolerating problem people to limiting their damage and showing them God's love. You'll discover effective strategies to turn dissidents into disciples.
This time-tested book by the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today's "Leadership Journal" has new chapters on using social media and caring for those with mental illness. It will help you not only preserve your sanity (and maybe your job), but minister more effectively, even to those who make life difficult.

An updated and revised version of a book that has impacted thousands of churches: Are you tired of how consumerism has stolen the soul of Christmas? This year, take a stand! Join the groundswell of Christ-followers who are choosing to make Christmas what it should be-a joyous celebration of Jesus' birth that enriches our hearts and the world around us, not a retail circus that depletes our pocketbooks and defeats our spirits. Advent Conspiracy shows you how to substitute consumption with compassion by practicing four simple but powerful, countercultural concepts: Worship Fully-because Christmas begins and ends with Jesus. Spend Less-and free your resources for things that truly matter. Give More-of your presence: your hands, your words, your time, your heart. Love All-the poor, the forgotten, the marginalized, and the sick in ways that make a difference. Find out how to have a Christmas worth remembering, not dreading. Christmas can still change the world when you, like Jesus, give what matters most-your presence. This updated and revised version, with some all-new content, will share stories of the impact this movement has made around the globe as well as giving individuals and churches even better, more practical help in planning the kind of Christmas that truly can change the world. New introduction, new chapter and changes throughout.

For three generations, God's chosen people were exiles in the land of Babylon. Today, many Christians in America feel like exiles within their own country, and there is growing disagreement regarding how to live faithfully in this complex cultural moment. Some desire to conquer our Babylon and return to a type of Christendom they believe existed in an idealized past. Others seek to assimilate the values of our culture into the church. And in between are those who are uncomfortable with either extreme, who feel spiritually homeless. These exiles are looking for a new way of understanding what faith looks like in a polarized, pluralistic, post-Christian culture. They want to know: What does it mean to be the people of God now? That's the question Rick McKinley seeks to answer. He shows exiled Christians how people of faith from other times and places discovered how to live faithfully, prophetically, and imaginatively, neither compromising their principles nor their compassion, and never giving in to despair.

We all long for freedom from anxiety, worry, and fear. We long to be free from sin and free to love others completely as God loves us. And yet we are shackled by insecurity, prone to selfishness, and wary of letting down our guard. That's not the life God designed for his followers. When his enslaved people cry out to him for freedom, he hears--and responds.
Now pastor Rick McKinley shows how the true freedom we all long for--the freedom we see as God delivers his people in the Scriptures--is always in the form of relationship with God rather than our popular notion of complete independence. He calls readers to look to the Father, Son, and Spirit for the model of perfect, self-giving freedom, and shows how that kind of freedom can transform us into people who live fully, love boldly, and fear nothing.

"As I read this book, I find great hope in the presence of the kingdom of God and a deeper desire to participate in it."
--from the foreword by Donald Miller, author of "Blue Like Jazz"
When Jesus was on earth, He painted a radical vision for His followers of an unseen reality. He called it "the kingdom of God." Even here, Jesus said--in the harshness and mess of earth--His kingdom "is the way things really are."
His announcement was nothing less than revolutionary, yet His followers were not quick to pick up on it. They longed for another world--a world without injustice or oppression or poverty. But Jesus said that His kingdom was already happening all around them, through them, and in them.
"This Beautiful Mess "explores what happens when we view our lives through the lens of God's kingdom. We see the beauty of Jesus' reign breaking into the mess of our broken world. We see treasure hidden all around us. We begin to grasp our exciting part in bringing about personal and social transformation for His glory.
"New for this edition: an updated preface, three bonus chapters, and a small group conversation guide."
Come experience a paradigm-shifting journey into the beauty of our King, and the beautiful mess that is His kingdom.

Good News Unpacked
Jesus is our ultimate model for finding identity, acceptance, and legitimacy from the Father. As we pull back the curtain on His life, we discover that Jesus knows what it's like to be marginalized. He understands how it feels to have society shove you to the side, to not really be accepted, and in the end to be totally rejected. He can identify with life in the margins because when God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, He landed in the margins. On purpose. And He chose to land there because it's in the margins that broken lives get mended, prisoners are set free, and the poor hear the Good News.
Reimagine Your Life
Welcome to the crowded margins of life. It's a place where normal people don't feel normal. Where the daily grind drowns out the soft cry within that says, "I do not have it together." Where just beneath the surface we long for meaning and--dare we hope?--wholeness.
Rick McKinley writes from experience: Only God can rescue a person from the margins. "Why?" Because when He came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, in the margins is where he landed. On purpose. To find you.
Don't wait till you get yourself together. Meet Jesus in the margins just as you are, and reimagine your life through the lens of His transforming love.
Story Behind the Book
This book was birthed out of Rick's ministry at Imago Dei Community Church. Rick's heart is to communicate God's Word in an understandable way to those who are outside the reach of traditional churches. He often calls this "unpacking the gospel"--a gospel he sees as the predominant theme in all of Scripture. Rick says the kind of people he ministers to "are not afraid of the language of theology, but the theological ideas need to be brought down from the mountain."