New book now available

My newest book, The Healthy Community: Moving Your Church Beyond Tunnel Vision was due to be released March 1 but ran into a little delay.  I'm glad to announce it is now available and can be ordered from amazon.com or purchased in your local Christian bookstore.  This book examines what I call heart diseases in the body of Christ.  Some of the issues addressed in the book include a lack of biblical authority, a lack of grace, a lack of mission, a lack of discipled believers, a lack of denominational excellence, and several other problems that prevent the church from being what God created it to be.  It also provides specific steps you can take to implement change in each of these areas.

This book was not easy to write and it may not be easy to read.  I love the church despite its problems, but I am convinced that until we are willing to give voice to those problems the church will continue to fail to live up to its potential.  People need the church to address its heart conditions and become a place where they can encounter the living Christ.  We can no longer afford to pretend that all is well in the church and refuse to speak truth about what we see.  Likewise, we cannot pretend that better days are ahead for the church if we are not willing to make the changes that need to be made.

Most of my books have addressed smaller churches and bivocational ministers and the special challenges they face.  This book speaks to all size churches because the heart conditions I describe are found in every size church.  This is a book for pastors, lay leaders, denominational leaders, and anyone who cares about the church.

We are now in the third month of 2012.  How will your church be different when we come to the end of 2012?  Will it be a healthier church with a much more effective ministry to the people God has given you?  Will it be a church that has an outward focus to those who do not yet know Jesus Christ in a life-changing way, or will it primarily be focused on its own needs and its own people?  As a leader in your church, what intentional steps are you going to take to help your church make the necessary changes to become more of the church God wants you to be?  I believe this book can help you identify some of those steps and give you some tools to help make those changes possible.