Three Zondervan Titles Chosen as Outreach’s Resources of the Year
Grand Rapids, Mich., Mar. 2, 2017 — Today Zondervan announced it represented a total of three titles that were chosen as top resources of the year by Outreach magazine.
Almost 200 total submissions were divided into twelve categories, with expert panelists for each category. Each panelist chose one resource of the year, with some providing “also recommended” selections. Out of the “also recommended” titles, Zondervan had two.
The three Zondervan titles chosen for Resources of the Year are:
• No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity by Nabeel Qureshi – Apologetics • People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue by Preston Sprinkle – Culture • Conversion & Discipleship: You Can’t Have One Without the Other by Bill Hull – Discipleship
The two…
What Is Jesus’ Definition of Manhood? — An Excerpt from “Malestrom” by Carolyn Custis James
In her new book Malestrom, Carolyn Custis James has spotlighted a painful reality: “Men have lost sight of who God created them to be as human beings and as men.” (21)
How do men regain their God-created identity? By embracing Jesus’s definition of what it means to be a man:
Jesus’ definition of manhood is every man’s true identity and calling—his birthright. It encompasses everything about who he is and every second of his life. (182)
What does image bearing look like in the life of Jesus? It includes several important markers:
Attention to relationship with God; Acting in step with his Father; Opposing pride and self-importance; Inversion of the malestrom social structures
James calls Jesus’ definition of manhood a “staggering proposition.”…
Good Christians Make Good Humans: A Q&A with Michael Wittmer on “Becoming Worldly Saints”
Can you serve Jesus and still enjoy your life? That’s the question author and professor Michael Wittmer asks in his new book Becoming Worldly Saints. It’s also a question that gets at the heart of what it means to be a Christian, as much as what it means to be human. Because, as Wittmer argues, “Good Christians make good humans.”
Or at least they should. And yet many wonder if you can do both — be a Christian, with all that it entails, and still live a normal human life. I know I have.
Wittmer maintains you can, because the Christian life and the human life are actually one in the same flourishing life.
An intriguing proposition, to be sure. One I explored in an interview for OnFaith. Our discussion included:
His thoughts on why there’s such a disconnect between our earthly…
What’s The Church’s Biggest Challenge? A Fellowship of “Differents”
“Be ye separate.” (2 Cor 6:17, KJV)
That text served as the foundation to the first sermon Scot McKnight preached as a teenager. It also serves as a sort of parable for the way 90% of American churches gather:
We are a church of separates.
Yet that’s not how God designed the church, says McKnight in his new book A Fellowship of Differents. In his fresh perspective on ecclesiology, he invites ministry practitioners to rediscover how God has designed the church and remember how important its local expression is for shaping the Christian life.
McKnight argues that God has designed the church it to be a fellowship of differents:
The church is God’s world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the table to share life with one another as a new kind of family.…