Church leaders want to know how to make small groups work for their church communities, yet a quick look around shows that while small groups are all the rage, much of the time they create more problems than they solve. Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas, founding pastors of The Journey Church in the heart of New York City, suggest that this failure is due to widely held beliefs about small groups that just aren't true--and they aim to debunk the myths and set the record straight! Drawing from the startling success of small groups at The Journey Church (which has had over 100-percent participation in small groups for more than 4 years) Searcy and Thomas show how church leaders can implement a life-changing small-group ministry that gets the maximum number of people involved and solves many of the important (yet irritating) problems facing churches of all sizes.

Think about the people who influenced your life most.

Why did they do it? What did they do? How did they go about it? Answer these questions and you will be hooked on mentoring for the rest of your life.

In As Iron Sharpens Iron, respected authors Howard and Bill Hendricks show that the most dramatic spiritual and personal growth often happens through the influence of a mentor.

Rooted in biblical principles, this book is both a profound and practical guide to mentoring relationships for men. You'll learn how to:

Identify the kind of mentor you need

Maximize your mentoring relationship

Model your relationship after biblical examples

Grow through the shared wisdom of another believer

Influence others as you replicate the mentoring process.

Whether you are looking for a mentor or wish to mentor someone else, this book provides specific steps to begin the relationship and make the most of it.

As social media and Web 2.0 technologies continue to transform the learning trends and preferences of students, educators need to understand the applicability of these new tools in all types of learning environments. The second edition of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies provides new and experienced instructors with practical examples of how low-cost and free technologies can be used to support student learning as well as best practices for integrating web-based tools into a course management system and managing student privacy in a Web 2.0 environment. "Showcase" spotlights throughout exemplify how the tools described in the book are already being used effectively in educational settings.

This thoroughly revised second edition includes:

a new chapter that explores how and why faculty are using the public web and open educational resources in place of a learning management system (LMS) and an expensive textbook

additional tips and showcases in every chapter that illustrate faculty use of particular technologies

the inclusion of new tools to replace technologies that no longer exist

a revamped website featuring expanded online resources.

This practical, easy-to-use guide will serve the needs of educators seeking to refresh or transform their instruction. Readers will be rewarded with an ample yet manageable collection of proven emerging technologies that can be leveraged for generating content, enhancing communications with and between students, and cultivating participatory, student-centered learning activities.

Until Relatively Recently, the history of higher education in the West was the story of a Christian academic tradition that played a major role in both intellectual history and the history of the church. Over the last one hundred years, however, we have witnessed the progressive secularization of higher education. George Marsden goes so far as to suggest that the American university has lost its soul. But what was that putatively Christian soul? Precisely what in the Christian tradition has now been lost? And what should we know about that tradition as a condition of practical wisdom for the present? Seeking to answer these questions, Arthur Holmes here explores the Christian tradition of learning, focusing on seven formative episodes in history that pertain to building and maintaining a strong Christian academy today. Holmes's fascinating treatment is set within the history of ideas -- the early church in a pagan culture, Augustine's formative influence on monastery and cathedral schools, the rise and decline of scholasticism, Renaissance humanism's contribution to the Protestant Reformation, the utilitarian view of education that accompanied the scientific revolution, and struggles with Enlightenment secularization -- and incorporates the educational thought of Plato and Isocrates, Clement and Origen, Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, Aquinas and Bonaventure, Erasmus and the Reformers, Francis Bacon and John Milton, and John Henry Newman.

Why we need to stop wasting public funds on education

Despite being immensely popular--and immensely lucrative--education is grossly overrated. In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity--in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As and casually forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for the average worker but instead in runaway credential inflation, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely if ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy.

Caplan draws on the latest social science to show how the labor market values grades over knowledge, and why the more education your rivals have, the more you need to impress employers. He explains why graduation is our society's top conformity signal, and why even the most useless degrees can certify employability. He advocates two major policy responses. The first is educational austerity. Government needs to sharply cut education funding to curb this wasteful rat race. The second is more vocational education, because practical skills are more socially valuable than teaching students how to outshine their peers.

Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense--The Case against Education points the way.