Renewing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination so that we can become compelling witnesses of the Gospel in today's culture.

Christianity has an image problem. While the culture we inhabit presents us with an increasingly anti-Christian and disenchanted position, the church in the West has not helped its case by becoming anti-intellectual, fragmented, and out of touch with the relevancy of Jesus to all aspects of contemporary life.

The muting of the Christian voice, its imagination, and its collective conscience have diminished the prospect of having a genuine missionary encounter with others today.

Cultural apologetics attempts to demonstrate not only the truth of the Gospel but also its desirability by reestablishing Christianity as the answer that satisfies our three universal human longings--truth, goodness, and beauty.

In Cultural Apologetics, philosopher and professor Paul Gould sets forth a fresh and uplifting model for cultural engagement--rooted in the biblical account of Paul's speech in Athens--which details practical steps for establishing Christianity as both true and beautiful, reasonable and satisfying.

You'll be introduced to:

Equip yourself to see, and help others see, the world as it is through the lens of the Spirit--deeply beautiful, mysterious, and sacred. With creative insights, Cultural Apologetics prepares readers to share a vision of the Christian faith that is both plausible and desirable, offering clarity for those who have become disoriented in the haze of modern Western culture.

Question: What is the God-given purpose of the local church?

Answer: Relational discipleship.

DiscipleShift walks you through five key "shifts" that churches must make to refocus on the fundamental biblical mission of discipleship. These intentional changes will attract the world and empower your church members to be salt and light in their communities.

Over the last thirty years, many influential church leaders and church planters in America have adopted various models for reaching unchurched people. While many of these approaches have merit, something is still missing, something even more fundamental to the mission of the church: discipleship.

Making disciples--helping people to trust and follow Jesus--is the church's God-given mandate. Devoted disciples attract people outside the church because of the change others see in their Christ-like lives. And discipleship empowers Christians to be more like Christ as they intentionally develop relationships with non-believers.

Through biblical and professional insights, Jim Putman and Bobby Harrington discuss the transformational effectiveness of making disciples and just how to do so, in practical terms. You'll learn:

Disciple-making leaders will not produce perfect churches, but they will create effective churches.

While many individuals might seek out an assortment of spiritual practices and approaches, the local congregation still remains the place where most Christians turn for religious education, nurture, ritual, and a sense of community. Yet many congregations struggle to respond to the spiritual needs of new faces in their pews. In Excellent Protestant Congregations, respected religion journalist Paul Wilkes profiles nine dynamic, geographically and denominationally diverse congregations that have the ability to create a vibrant community of worship. The result is a book that provides real-world insights that are both inspiring and applicable in a local congregation.

With this new lectionary commentary series, Westminster John Knox offers the most extensive resource for preaching on the market today. When complete, the twelve volumes of the series will cover all the Sundays in the three-year lectionary cycle, along with movable occasions, such as Christmas Day, Epiphany, Holy Week, and All Saints' Day.

For each lectionary text, preachers will find four brief essays--one each on the theological, pastoral, exegetical, and homiletical challenges of the text. This gives preachers sixteen different approaches to the proclaimation of the Word on any given occasion.

The editors and contributors to this series are world-class scholars, pastors, and writers representing a variety of denominations and traditions. And while the twelve volumes of the series will follow the pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary, each volume will contain an index of biblical passages so that nonlectionary preachers, as well as teachers and students, may make use of its content.