Character Still Counts

“I don’t know of a more important topic now than this, and I don’t know anyone more qualified to speak on it than James Merritt.” —Rick Warren, New York Times bestselling author, The Purpose Driven Life Stop Protecting Your Reputation. Start Building Your Character. In a world of social media snapshots and cable news sound bites, we’re often more concerned with our outer image than we are with our inner make up. But in the end, integrity trumps image. You can look good on the outside without being good on the inside. If you long to commit yourself to what matters most—the content of your character—join bestselling author James Merritt as he explores 13 overlooked traits that form the bedrock of a godly life and a good society. Along the way, you’ll encounter surprising role models—flawed people who failed spectacularly, overcame adversity, and went on to live lives worth imitating. In a world that has abandoned the virtues and values that matter, this book offers a clarion call to return to a simple message: Character still counts. It always has, and it always will.

“I don’t know of a more important topic now than this, and I don’t know anyone more qualified to speak on it than James Merritt.” —Rick Warren, New York Times bestselling author, The Purpose Driven Life Stop Protecting Your Reputation. Start Building Your Character. In a world of social media snapshots and cable news sound bites, we’re often more concerned with our outer image than we are with our inner make up. But in the end, integrity trumps image. You can look good on the outside without being good on the inside. If you long to commit yourself to what matters most—the content of your character—join bestselling author James Merritt as he explores 13 overlooked traits that form the bedrock of a godly life and a good society. Along the way, you’ll encounter surprising role models—flawed people who failed spectacularly, overcame adversity, and went on to live lives worth imitating. In a world that has abandoned the virtues and values that matter, this book offers a clarion call to return to a simple message: Character still counts. It always has, and it always will.

When Texas Prison Scams Religion exposes corruption in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, especially in the abuse of religion. In many ways, this book is a literature review of 1,800-plus works that defends freedom of conscience in prison while exposing the unconstitutionality of the seminary program that “buys faith with favor” from prisoners. The state veritably ordains the prisoner a “Field Minister” that represents the offices of the Governor, TDCJ Director, and wardens throughout the prison. Therein, TDCJ lies about neutrality in a program all about Christian missions and lies again in falsely certifying elementary Bible students as counselors. Why is the director sponsoring psychopaths counseling psychopaths? In fact, TDCJ pays $314 million a year to UTMB for psychiatric care and receives not a single report of the care given, and worse, for UTMB generates no reports itself. The underbelly TDCJ’s executive culture of cover up is exposed. TDCJ has hired the lowest qualified of the applicant pool many times in the last 25 years and regularly destroys statistics on violence. TDCJ Dir. Collier led the prison to model Louisiana Warden Burl Cain, the most scandal-ridden in penal history according to a host of published news stories for 20 years. Therein, Collier led TDCJ to favor the smallest segment of religious society within Evangelical Dominionism. Texas has no business endorsing the truth of any religion over another. We close with a proposal that utilizes the 400,000,000 hours of officer contact over ten years as a definitive influence in contrast to a commissioner that spends less than 10 minutes on each decision. Maness has been lobbying Austin for 15 years to definitively access staff for his “100,000 Mothers’ 1% Certainty Parole Texas Constitutional Amendment,” which would revolutionize prison culture and save Texans millions of the dollars.

Elders Lead a Healthy Family explores the biblical paradigm for shared leadership: elders as the spiritual "big brothers" and shepherds to the family of God. This book is a fresh biblical alternative to the standard fare of pragmatic church leadership. Delivered in a winsome and irenic style, the book addresses the key concerns of our day, including pastoral burnout, women as elders, women and the pastoral gift, power in leadership, abuse of power in ministry, ministerial pay, and fostering missional-leadership structures. The answer to so many of the problems facing the church is not more coaching or better education. The answer requires our churches to change the very structures that foster abuse, isolation, and burnout. If we hope to save our pastors, then we need our pastors to abandon the "pastor-as-CEO" model of leadership. If we want to reach the lost, we need a systemic change in the way we plant, grow, and maintain our churches. Instead of putting a solo leader at the top of "Church Incorporated," we need to build teams of elders, doing ministry together, as they lead the family of God.