Christian Work Throughout The World

Believing Is Only the Beginning Do you long for a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in your life? Do you believe all the right things, go to church, and faithfully read your Bible, still feeling that something is missing? You may be right. Two thousand years ago Jesus gave an urgent assignment to his followers right before he left. At its essence it was not just an invitation to believe; it was a bold call to action. It was a challenge to go into the world to reclaim, reform, and restore it for Christ. Simply stated, the message of this book is that God has invited you to join him in this world-changing mission. And if you are not personally participating in God’s great endeavor, you could be missing the very thing he created you to do. Best-selling author Rich Stearns invites you not just to stand on the sidelines but to get into the game. That is when the adventure begins. “Unfinished, just might challenge everything you thought you understood about your Christian faith. Unfinished is a call to finish the job Christ gave his church to do. If every Christian read this book and took it seriously, the world would never be the same again.”—Bill Hybels, senior pastor, Willow Creek Community Church; and chairman, Willow Creek Association “Just when I’ve gotten comfortable with my faith, here comes Rich Stearns, reminding me what matters and who God loves and why. Just when my world is the way I want it, Rich reminds me the world is not the way God wants it. Hungry families. Malnourished kids. Just when I dare think my work is done, Rich reminds me that we are just getting started. First in The Hole in Our Gospel, now in Unfinished, Rich gives me a kind, gracious kick. Thanks, Rich. (I think.)”—Max Lucado, pastor and best-selling author “Okay, admit it: sometimes you wonder . . . don’t you? Is this it? The life you’re living. Is there more? From his journey in corporate and nonprofit leadership—in very good causes—Rich Stearns concludes there is, indeed, more. More purpose. More meaning. More life. In Unfinished you will discover how your life can be about more.”—Elisa Morgan, author; speaker; publisher, FullFill; and president emerita, MOPS International “Rich Stearns has done it again! In this winsome, engaging, and challenging book, he calls us back to some of the key issues of what it means to be followers of Christ in a world full of distractions and false gods. This is a book for everyone, about finding the place of our calling in God’s global mission. It is a book about fulfillment, adventure, and a lifetime of transformation. It made me hungry for more of the life God has in store for us.”—Dr. Stephen Hayner, president, Columbia Theological Seminary “Your story can be a part of the Great Story. Rich Stearns knows the story and lives the story. Unfinished may call you to the greatest chapter of your life.”—John Ortberg, senior pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church; and author, Who Is This Man? “The kingdom is both already and not yet, the work of Christ both finished and to be completed. Stearns reminds readers of every Christian’s responsibility to live on mission, in light of Jesus’ example and call. Richard shows us by his life, the ministry he leads, and the passion of this book that there is much to be done and we are to be a part of God’s grand plan.”—Ed Stetzer, president, LifeWay Research; and author, Subversive Kingdom “Every generation of Christians needs a wake-up call to remind us of how serious and strenuous are the demands of discipleship. May Rich Stearns’s Unfinished be that alarm for our time.”—David Neff, editorial vice president, Christianity Today

When you understand it properly, the doctrine of vocation—"doing everything for God's glory"—is not a platitude or an outdated notion. This principle that we vaguely apply to our lives and our work is actually the key to Christian ethics, to influencing our culture for Christ, and to infusing our ordinary, everyday lives with the presence of God. For when we realize that the "mundane" activities that consume most of our time are "God's hiding places," our perspective changes. Culture expert Gene Veith unpacks the biblical, Reformation teaching about the doctrine of vocation, emphasizing not what we should specifically do with our time or what careers we are called to, but what God does in and through our callings—even within the home. In each task He has given us—in our workplaces and families, our churches and society—God Himself is at work. Veith guides you to discover God's purpose and calling in those seemingly ordinary areas by providing you with a spiritual framework for thinking about such issues and for acting upon them with a changed perspective.

Written by an L. A. County homicide detective and former atheist, Cold-Case Christianity examines the claims of the New Testament using the skills and strategies of a hard-to-convince criminal investigator. Christianity could be defined as a “cold case”: it makes a claim about an event from the distant past for which there is little forensic evidence. In Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace uses his nationally recognized skills as a homicide detective to look at the evidence and eyewitnesses behind Christian beliefs. Including gripping stories from his career and the visual techniques he developed in the courtroom, Wallace uses illustration to examine the powerful evidence that validates the claims of Christianity. A unique apologetic that speaks to readers’ intense interest in detective stories, Cold-Case Christianity inspires readers to have confidence in Christ as it prepares them to articulate the case for Christianity.

In response to challenges from the emerging world, this book brings together essays that discuss and exemplify various related approaches to academic faith integration and explore how Christian faith should underpin, scaffold, and frame our understanding of academic disciplines, leading to practical implications for work or action in modern society and culture. Written by Christian scholars and practitioners from diverse backgrounds including the USA, the UK, Australia, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and the Philippines, the contributions here all contribute a global perspective while addressing some specific issue or case in the context of Asia. They represent ingenious endeavors that illustrate the workings of a faith-integrated approach in domains as wide as higher education, business, science, psychology and counseling, politics, environment, media, social services, leadership, research, and technology. This volume will inform and inspire the reader into cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary studies particularly of religion, education, culture, society, and worldview.

Early Christian World presents an exhaustive, erudite and lavishly illustrated treatment of how the small movement which formed around Jesus in Galilee became the pre-eminent religion of the ancient world. The work begins by firmly situating early Christianity within its Mediterranean social, political and religious contexts, before charting the history of the first Christian centuries. The creation and perpetuation of Christian communities through various means, including mission and monasticism, is explored, as is the everyday experience of early Christians, through discussion of gender and sexuality, religious practice, communication and social structures. The intellectual (particularly theological) and artistic heritage of the period is fully considered, and a vivid picture painted of the internal and external challenges faced by early Christianity. The book concludes with profiles of the most notable figures of the age. Comprehensive and accessible, Early Christian World provides up-to-date coverage of the most important topics in the study of early Christianity, together with an invaluable collection of visual material. It will be an indispensable resource for anyone studying this period

Most of these thirty-one essays by Richard Bauckham, a well-known New Testament scholar, were first published between 1979 and 2015 in journals and multi-authored volumes. Two are previously unpublished and one has not been published in English before. They range widely over early Christianity and early Christian literature in both the New Testament period and the early patristic period, reflecting the author's conviction that the historical study of early Christianity should not isolate the New Testament literature from other early Christian sources, such as the apostolic fathers and the Christian apocryphal literature. Some of the essays develop further the themes of the author's books on aspects of the Gospels, such as the intended audiences of the Gospels, the way in which Gospel traditions were transmitted, the role of the eyewitnesses in the origins of the Gospels, the importance of Papias's evidence about Gospel traditions, and the relationship between canonical and Gnostic Gospels. Some of the essays relate to important persons, such as Peter, Barnabas, Paul and James. These include a full investigation of the evidence for the martyrdom of Peter and an attempt to locate the estate of Publius where Paul stayed on Malta. There are studies of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day in both the New Testament and patristic periods. There are studies that survey most of the main categories of apocryphal Christian literature, including apocryphal Gospels and Acts, and with a special focus on the non-canonical apocalypses, such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the Latin Vision of Ezra.