Many have heard of the emerging church, but few people feel like they have a handle on what the emerging church believes and represents. Is it a passing fad led by disenfranchised neo-evangelicals? Or is it the future of the church at large? Now available in trade paper, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope represents a coming together of divergent voices into a conversation that pastors, students, and thoughtful Christians can now learn from and engage in. This unprecedented collection of writings includes articles by some of the most important voices in the emergent conversation, including Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, and Sally Morgenthaler. It also introduces some lesser known but integral players representing "who's next" within the emerging church. The articles cover a broad range of topics, such as spirituality, theology, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, sex, evangelism, and many others. Anyone who wants to know what the emerging church is all about needs to start here.

While plenty of books related to the conversations as well as controversies surrounding the emergent church have surfaced in recent years, no comprehensive evangelical assessment of the movement has been published until now. Evangelicals Engaging Emergent draws from a broad spectrum of conservative evangelicalism to serve as a clear, informative, fair, and respectful guide for those desiring to know what "emergent" means, why it originated, where the movement is going, what issues concern emergent believers, and where they sometimes go wrong theologically.

Among the dozen contributors are Norman Geisler ("A Postmodern View of Scripture"), Darrell Bock ("Emergent/Emerging Christologies"), Ed Stetzer ("The Emergent/Emerging Church: A Missiological Perspective"), and Daniel Akin ("The Emerging Church and Ethical Choices: The Corinthian Matrix").

Offers a paradigm for leadership that is right-brained, prophetic, and contextually sensitive.

Description: Metrospiritual: The Geography of Church Planting is about church planting in the city. There is an outpouring of new expressions of church being started throughout metro areas across North America. Where are these new churches being started? Maybe a more subterranean question is, ""Why""? Why are churches being started where they are and why is there is a bias towards one part of the city and an overall neglect of other parts? Metrospiritual explores these questions and more as it builds off of recent research and surveys of hundreds of church planters in seven large cities in the United States and Canada. There is a deeper look at pivotal issues such as gentrification, the Creative Class, community transformation, urban renewal, and the role new churches play in all of these. Endorsements: ""It is important for church planters who hope to affect their cities to put on new glasses. Sean Benesh has successfully provided such a tool. By looking at not only the raw data of a city but its life--its laments as well as what brings joy--along with a deep theological impetus, we are brought into the grand and possible challenge of planting in an urban context. Both needed and timely!"" --Rob Fairbanks President Christian Associates International ""I really enjoyed Sean Benesh's Metrospirtual: The Georgraphy of Church Planting. I found it fresh, challenging, and comprehensive of things that are critical in selecting and identifying the community in which to work and the issues at play in the community. I highly recommend every church planter to devour it slowly."" --Bob Roberts Jr. Senior Pastor NorthWood Church ""In recent decades there have been a number of helpful books on church planting. They generally fall into two categories: a successful church planter who presents a formula or a technical approach that is highly theoretical. Sean Benesh avoids both extremes. His approach is both accessible and based on good research. Throughout the book there are many personal anecdotes drawn from his own church-planting experiences in a number of cities. His concern is for the urban context. He knows how to exegete the city. And he identifies the Creative class as a primary group to engaged because they shape the culture and set a course for the future of the location. It is rare to find an author who is both a skilled practitioner and an academically trained theoretician."" --Eddie Gibbs Senior Professor of Church Growth Fuller Theological Seminary About the Contributor(s): Sean Benesh is planting the Ion Community, a church in metro Vancouver, BC, Canada. He teaches as an adjunct professor in the areas of a theology of the city, community transformation, and other urban issues. Sean has been involved in church planting both as a planter and a strategist, in addition to being a hiking and mountain biking guide.

"I recommend The Next Christians, which will give you great insight into the hopes and aspirations of the next generation...."
--Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship

"Provocative, yet massively optimistic!"
--Louie Giglio, pastor and founder of the Passion Movement

Gabe Lyons is optimistic that Christianity's best days are yet to come. His best-selling book, UnChristian, revealed the pervasiveness of culture's growing disregard for Christians. Now, in The Next Christians, Lyons shows how a new wave of believers are turning the tide by bringing the truth of the Gospel to bear on our changing, secular society.

"Restorers," as Lyons calls them, approach culture with a different mentality than generations past. Informed by truth, yet seasoned with grace and love, these believers engage the world by drawing it to the sensibility and authenticity of the Christian life.

You can be one of these "next" Christians and change the negative perception of Christianity by living a life that is faithful to the Gospel, yet credible and coherent to your friends and neighbors.