Showing results by publisher "Christian Audio" in Social Issues

The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it ought to be. Lament challenges the status quo and cries out for justice against existing injustices. Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. It critiques our success-centered triumphalism and calls us to repent of our hubris. And it opens up new ways to encounter the other.

An unprecedented shaking is underway in the systems and nations of this earth. But even as the world churns with upheaval, you can stand firm. Through biblical teaching and sound prophetic insight, pastor and prophet Joshua Giles will help you discover God's plans and strategies to prepare for the unusual and uncertain times ahead. Here is everything you need to align with heaven's agenda, overcome fear of the future, find your purpose, and thrive amid the change.

A biblical perspective on technology goes far deeper than how tools are used, and involves much more than the electronics that pervade today's world. Technology is, in fact, a foundational part of what it means to be human—and it extends back to the very beginning of Creation. Technology was included in what God declared "good." But like all things impacted by the fall, it has immense power to rewire us for good or bad. From the Garden to the City is back, moving beyond moralism in order to examine the very nature of technology as essentially human and totally transformative.

The world is angry and afraid. Humankind is on a trajectory away from God, against His Church and into increasing darkness—with the darkest hours still ahead. Yet the Father has an unexpected and compassionate answer for the rise of ugliness and violence: a beautiful, unified Church of wholehearted followers of Jesus who will put Him on full display for all the world to see. Discover how to become part of a Church that counters anger with kindness and mercy, loves its enemies, overcomes bitterness and offense, and lays hold of the Lord's beauty via revelation and transformation. 

In a culture with an ever-narrowing definition of tolerance, Christians can no longer stay silent about the divide between the Bible's truth and the world's lies. From bestselling author Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer, No Reason to Hide examines the toxic roots behind the alarming symptoms of a nation in spiritual freefall—and why your faith must empower you to engage rather than hide. This is a rallying reminder that will ready Christians everywhere to have the courage to proclaim Scripture's truth to a culture in desperate need of what only God can offer. 

Too often, fatness has been viewed as a moral failing. Fat Christian women in particular are shamed and marginalized by the message that they are failing God because they can't change their bodies. More of You will challenge that status quo, teaching listeners to resist the shame and guilt that is pressed onto them by the world and instead to embrace their bodies, take up space, and learn to navigate the world in ways that allow them to flourish. With wit and candor, Amanda Martinez Beck compiles her hard-won wisdom to give the skinny on thriving in a fat body.

Polarizing politics, racial violence, economic inequity, sickness and suffering continue to leave us grappling with the loss of civility, respect, unity, and hope. Many of us question whether it's possible to cultivate a love big, revolutionary, and radical enough to overthrow hate and heal hurt. Award-winning author and public theologian Jacqueline A. Bussie not only believes it's possible—she knows it's the only path. Bussie imparts practical solutions for people of faith who yearn to love across division, difference, and even death in today's troubled times.

Celebrity—defined as social power without proximity—has led to abuses of power, the cultivation of persona, and a fixation on profits. In light of the fall of famous Christian leaders in recent years, the time has come for the church to reexamine its relationship to celebrity. Award-winning journalist Katelyn Beaty explores the ways fame has reshaped the American church, explains how and why celebrity is woven into the fabric of the evangelical movement, and identifies many ways fame has gone awry in recent years.

The American church is at a critical crossroads. Our witness has been compromised, our numbers are down, and our reputation has been sullied, due largely to our own faults and fears. The church's ethnocentrism, consumerism, and syncretism have blurred the lines between discipleship and partisanship. Pastor Eric Costanzo, missiologist Daniel Yang, and nonprofit leader Matthew Soerens find that for the church to return to health, we must decenter ourselves from our American idols and recenter on the undeniable, inalienable core reality of the global, transcultural kingdom of God.

Some Christians see loyalty to America as central to our faith and identity. Other Christians are skeptical that our nation warrants such devotion or attachment. But Richard Mouw encourages Christians to have a healthy sense of national peoplehood that promotes civic kinship and responsible citizenship. He navigates between Christian nationalism on one hand and cynicism about country on the other to avoid the perils of both idolatry and disengagement. 

Abby Johnson thought she knew what mercy was when she ushered desperate women toward abortion as the director of a Planned Parenthood facility. She was wrong. It wasn't until she understood the blood on her hands that she personally experienced the power of God's fierce yet tender mercy to transform her life. But she never imagined what could happen once she allowed that very mercy to infiltrate her life and spill out into a hurting world. In Fierce Mercy, Abby calls you to experience a transformation of your own.  

A great reckoning is underway in the church today: a naming and exposing of the exclusivity, abuse, racism, patriarchy, and unchecked power that have marked evangelical Christianity for far too long. What kind of church will emerge on the other side?

Racism is omnipresent in American life, both public and private. We are immersed in what prominent Black church leader Willie Dwayne Francois III calls white noise—the racist speech, ideas, and policies that lull us into inaction on racial justice. White noise masks racial realities and prevents constructive responses to microaggressions, structural inequality, and overt interpersonal racism. In this book, Francois calls people of all racial backgrounds to take up practices that overcome silence and inaction on race and that advance racial repair.

Human trafficking is one of the most pressing social justice issues of our time, and in recent years there has been renewed interest among Christians, as many have been stirred up to take their part in the ongoing battle. This is a wonderful thing—and yet misinformed and misguided efforts can do more harm than good. Ending Human Trafficking is a handbook designed to educate churches and parachurch organizations for truly effective work.

Learning from Black voices means listening to more than snippets. It means attending to Black stories. Reading Black Books helps Christians hear and learn from enduring Black voices and stories as captured in classic African American literature.

Much of the church has forgotten that we worship a disabled God whose wounds survived resurrection, says Amy Kenny. It is time for the church to start treating disabled people as full members of the body of Christ who have much more to offer than a miraculous cure narrative and to learn from their embodied experiences. Written by a disabled Christian, this book shows that the church is missing out on the prophetic witness and blessing of disability.

Colorblindness ignores the realities of race and the history of injustice. On the other hand, antiracism centers racial concerns and in so doing often alienates people who need to be involved in the process. Sociologist George Yancey offers an alternative approach to racial relations where all parties contribute and are mutually accountable to one another for societal well-being. He provides empirical rationale for how collaborative conversations in a mutual accountability model can reduce racial division.

For anyone struggling with pain or loss, for anyone concerned about the things that divide us, this book goes beyond wellness and beyond miraculous physical transformations to explore how we can—personally and collectively—be made well. 

Secular models of peacemaking are insufficient. And the church has not always fulfilled its call to be agents of reconciliation in the world. In Reconciling All Things, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice cast a comprehensive vision for reconciliation that is biblical, transformative, holistic, and global. They draw on the resources of the Christian story, including their own individual experiences in Uganda and Mississippi, to bring solid, theological reflection to bear on the work of reconciling individuals, groups, and societies. 

Nationally recognized speaker and church leader Jay Augustine demonstrates that the church is called and equipped to model reconciliation, justice, diversity, and inclusion. This book develops three uses of the term "reconciliation": salvific, social, and civil. Augustine examines the intersection of the salvific and social forms of reconciliation through an engagement with Paul's letters and uses the Black church as an exemplar to connect the concept of salvation to social and political movements.