This book for youth leaders, pastors, and parents looks deep into the mirror of pop and church culture and asks the difficult, and often maddening, question, “Are those things we produce and consume defining us?” Author Stephen Ingram explores these themes of moralism, deism, meism, consumerism, pluralism, and therapeutic religion of pop culture, as well as current sociological and psychological data. Hollow Faith separates the values of the gospel from the cultural norms that have domesticated them including: How we believe we should act (The Andy Griffith Show) How we want to be known (Facebook) What we aspire to become (the American Dream) Ingram says that once we recognize these serious shifts in our faith, we can begin to have discussions, develop plans, and form actions to reclaim the vibrant, life-giving faith of the Bible. Includes a Parents Guide in the back.

Twenty-nine years, 7 months, 14 days, and the battle still rages. Jena Morrow has an eating disorder. It can kill her. Jena Morrow has a Savior. He came to give her abundant life. This is not a polished tale of victory but an honest, true story of fragility. Hollow recounts Jena’s daily struggle with anorexia and the God who is able and willing to reach down into the dirt. A central theme of Hollow is the surrender of control to Jesus Christ. His Word is interwoven throughout the story as rebuttals to the lies that besiege those engaged in any addiction. In addition to her point of view, Jena includes those of her friends, family, and former therapists providing an undercurrent of hope. Written in an easy conversational voice, Hollow will resonate with those in the midst of a struggle and those who stand beside them.

An NPR Best Book of the Year, Hollow is the story of a professor whose life is unended after an unspeakable tragedy. When Oliver Bonds, a revered religious studies professor at the University of Texas, loses his toddler son and undergoes intense legal scrutiny over his involvement, grief engulfs him completely. His life as he knows it is over; Oliver loses his wife, home, and faith. Three years after his son's death, Oliver lives in a shack without electricity and frequents the soup kitchen where he used to volunteer. It's only when befriended by Lyle, a con artist with a passion for theories of Hollow Earth, that Oliver begins to reengage with the world. Oliver too becomes convinced that the inside of the planet might contain a different realm. Desperate to find a place where he can escape his past, Oliver chases after the most unlikely of miracles. With unforgettable characters, wild imagery, and dark humor, Hollow explores the depths of doubt and hope, stretching past grief and into the space where we truly begin to heal. "With the kind of grace not usually seen in accessible modern fiction, Egerton also invokes many other things with this central metaphor . . . Ollie's voice is one of the most believable I've encountered this year, sustained by honesty, realism, and compassion. In his exile, Ollie has taken stock. His reckoning with the past creates the story's exquisite tension and makes the final scene bloom with tenderness . . . The core of Hollow is anything but." --NPR

At Home in Persimmon Hollow is the first book in a series chronicling the world of Agnes Foster and the people of frontier-era Florida. In 1886, Agnes Foster is forced to leave the Catholic orphanage in New York where she grew up to start a new life as a teacher in Persimmon Hollow, Florida, a town she has only ever seen in a newspaper ad. With nothing but her strong Catholic faith to sustain her, she leaves behind the only home she's ever known and the little girl she hopes to adopt, and encounters a wild and beautiful new landscape, and a town full of hardworking, faith-filled people. She also meets the difficult, yet handsome and hard-to-ignore Seth Taylor, a man whose heart has been hardened to God after a terrible loss. Just as Agnes starts to feel Persimmon Hollow could be a good home for her and her daughter, and that Seth could be her love, tragedy strikes in the form of a trio of evil men from both their pasts, intent on doing them more harm. Will their fragile new love survive? Will Seth return to his faith? Can Agnes finally escape her dark past and find a bright new future? The audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

Keeping watch over the young Arthur Pendragon, the prince and prophet Merlin Ambrosius is haunted by dreams of the magical sword Caliburn, which has been hidden for centuries. When Uther Pendragon is killed in battle, the time of destiny is at hand, and Arthur must claim the fabled sword to become the true High King of Britain.

"Additional photographs by Flip Putthoff and Russell Cothren."

Where is Western culture going? What should Christians think about it? Those who already ask these questions often come up with confused answers. Those who do not are, arguably, living in a fool's paradise (or a fool's hell.) In this second edition of Subversive Christianity, Brian Walsh returns to the themes of cultural discernment that he unpacked more than twenty years ago. In a new Postscript, Walsh revisits Francis Fukuyama, Bruce Cockburn, and the prophet Jeremiah and asks, Where are we now? In light of 9/11 and the world economic crisis of 2008, how do we discern the times, and what does that discernment tell us about the calling of the church?

The dramatic insider account of why we invaded Iraq, the motivations that drove it, and the frustrations of those who tried and failed to stop it, leading to the most costly misadventure in US history. A single disastrous choice in the wake of 9/11-the decision to use force to remove Saddam Hussein from power-did enormous damage to the wealth, well-being, and reputation of the United States. Few errors in U.S. foreign policy have had longer-lasting or more harmful consequences. Yet how the decision came to be made remains shrouded in mystery and mythology. To this day, even the principal architects of the war cannot agree on it. Michael Mazarr has interviewed dozens of players involved in the deliberations about the invasion of Iraq and has reviewed all the documents so far declassified. He paints a devastating of portrait of an administration fueled by righteous conviction yet undercut by chaotic processes, rivalrous agencies, and competing egos. But more than the product of one bungling administration, the invasion of Iraq emerges here as a tragically typical example of modern U.S. foreign policy fiascos. Leap of Faith asks profound questions about the limits of US power and the accountability for its use. It offers lessons urgently relevant to stave off similar disasters-today and in the future.