Mandy Smith
Biography
Mandy Smith wrote The Vulnerable Pastor and Unfettered, and provided the foreword to Finding Your Voice.
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Christian Living
“If this faith is supposed to be about love, why does it so often feel like dry obligation? Perhaps it's our capacity to even receive his love that God wants to heal. To do so he uses people like the Holsclaws. Through Scripture, story, imagery, and even music, they invite us to immerse into the possibility that this faith can be emotionally satisfying, that we can truly belong and be known by God.”
Church Leadership & Ministry
“As I read, I felt my heart racing with two possibilities: 'I'm not alone!' and 'What seems like church meltdown could be the stirring of new movement!'"Many conversations about the church talk about it in third person, as if it's an institution to fix. Tim Soerens invites us to name the often unspoken emotional and cultural realities at work in our own human hearts that prompt us to be part of the problem. With pastoral patience he speaks to the discouraged, grieving, anxious, frustrated church, calling us to become Christ's humble, peaceful, prayerful, attentive, curious, hopeful church, one reader at a time.”
Church Leadership & Ministry
“When I get up on the average day, I don't know how to transform the world. But I know how to pray, show hospitality, and proclaim truth. With scholarly care and pastoral zeal, David Fitch reminds us that it's in long-term, communal devotion to small but transformative practices that we both discover and reflect the faithful presence of God. Faithful Presence gives us permission to step aside from our own efforts at greatness, encouraging us to give our time and attention to disciplines that reveal and proclaim God's presence in our churches, homes, and neighborhoods.”
Christian Living
“Too often contemporary Western Christianity undermines its own claims of love and good news. Having the Mind of Christ acknowledges the inconsistencies and presses in with a deep longing for integrity, bringing healing as it goes. This book provides language and companionship for those doing the hard work of reimagining a way forward for the church of the twenty-first century, helping us recover from (and repent of) abusive faith practices, restoring us to the life-giving way of Jesus.”
Bible Studies & Devotionals
“Tara Beth writes from a deep belief that the ancient words still speak with as much power today as when John first penned them. With passion and warmth she invites her readers to experience the light of Jesus through this six-week immersive Bible study series, integrating video, personal reflection, group discussion, and prayer. The engaged reader will find new freedom.”
Fiction
“This is ultimately a love letter to the church not just for what she can be but for what she already is.”
Church Leadership & Ministry
“Anxiety draws us into a downward spiral. We need outside help to break in and redirect our vision. Steve Cuss offers us that kind of fresh, honest voice to snap us out of the downward spiral. Not only will we become less anxious, we’ll become more whole, hopeful, and fruitful. A much-needed resource for the church in these anxious times.”
Church Leadership & Ministry
“Preaching to People in Pain could also be called Preaching to Humans. In a culture which makes us believe something is wrong with us when we experience suffering, preachers have a choice: to provide shallow promises or to trust in the truth of our story—that resurrection only comes after death. With wisdom and courage Matthew Kim invites preachers to name their own pain for the sake of their own health and the health of their congregations. We’re presented with the hopeful possibility that together we have the capacity for the challenges of life and that as we face them, we find the truth of our story in solidarity with our suffering (and resurrected) Lord.”
Seven Practices for the Church on Mission
Church Leadership & Ministry
“Seven Practices for the Church on Mission reminds us that it’s in the long-term communal devotion to small but transformative practices that our churches will discover and reflect the faithful presence of God.”
Christian Living
“Lina writes that 'the best measure of a godly friend is one who is willing to speak God's truth in my life instead of telling me what I want to hear.' If you need the kind of friend with a dogged faith to remind you God is always up to something good in and through you, no matter how hard it is, this is the book for you.”
The Everyday Mysticism of C. S. Lewis
Prayer & Spiritual Formation
“Praise God! Faith does not have to be dry and formulaic! Gary Selby reminds us that C. S. Lewis, this most reliable and sensible of Christian scholars, took permission (and gives us permission) to be alive and attentive to God at work in every wonderful, ordinary moment. Let this good book open your eyes to daily 'glimpses of glory . . . wooing us toward heaven.'”
Christian Living
“IKE AND SHARON MILLER, PhDs, authors and pastors of Bright City Church in Durham, North Carolina Too often our daily experience doesn’t live up to the miraculous, life-changing, world-shaking faith we see in Scripture, and so we feel far from God. Steve Cuss reveals how our experience of God can be derailed by our own baggage, narratives, and expectations and offers honest, practical tools to imagine the possibility that God has gone nowhere. Thank you, Steve, for helping us get out of our own way . . . and God’s.”
Prayer & Spiritual Formation
“In a culture that values adulthood it will stretch us to explore Jesus' crucial observation that we can only enter the kingdom through childlikeness. To explore that strange reality we'll need some friends on the journey. Christine Aroney-Sine is such a friend, inviting us into the kind of rich, whole-person communal engagement with God we knew as children. If you join her on this playful, messy, wonder-full adventure, you might never be the same again!”
Church Leadership & Ministry
“Jesus used rich plant-life imagery to describe the oxymoron of an abundant, unstoppable kingdom that also requires patience and imagination. A vital task for pastors, then, is to learn how to tend with the care and patience of gardeners. Matthew Erickson’s book helps us grow our capacity for embracing those kingdom ways and remembering how to partner with miraculous things.”
Christian Living
“Through personal story, neurological insights, and spiritual practices, Casey Tygrett pastors his readers, inviting us to bring our whole selves—our past, present, and future selves, our physical, emotional, spiritual selves—into a life formed by the God who was, who is, and who is to come.”
Christian Living
“With agility, J.R. Briggs teaches those first-century Eastern Christian skills to twenty-first-century Western Christians. As we are stretched to hold these seemingly incompatible truths in our small minds and bodies, we, as individuals and a movement, may be transformed!”
Church Leadership & Ministry
“We’re all feeling the crisis of church decline and frantically trying to fix the problem. This groundbreaking book proposes that we’ve misdiagnosed the problem and that our supposed treatment is actually making things worse. Thankfully, Root and Bertrand offer both a better diagnosis and a helpful, human way forward. Finally, a book that guides the church in practical ways through our actual problem (i.e., trusting in our own action to save the church) to teach us once more to wait upon the God we claim to believe is powerful.”
Preaching & Worship
“Michael Jordan describes a troubling reality: 'Many evangelical churches operate with an implicit theology of anxiety which works against the strategies for flourishing that people with anxiety learn in their mental health journeys.' We've become accustomed to these dynamics, so Jordan's book is a gift to the church, both unpacking the history of how we got here and offering healing ways forward through an appreciation of time and space, music, preaching, and sacraments. This work evokes a prayer: May our worship, in all life's uncertainty, once more remind us, 'You are a beloved child of God.'”
NOTE: Only includes books currently in our catalog; not necessarily a complete list.
Church Leadership & Ministry
Christian Living
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