Gracepoint Ministries' Readings

Control Tweaks

By Darrin Patrick

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“Finding the right combination of structure and empowerment moved one young church toward maturity.”

Church Discipline for Repetitive Sin

By Kevin Miller

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“How do you respond to people who are sinning, who know they’re sinning, and who (given the addictive nature of their sin) most likely will sin again? Is there appropriate church discipline for repetitive sin?”

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A Leadership interview with Francis Chan.

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“Our job is not to keep as many people as possible.  Our job is to make sure that we’re setting a biblical pattern.”

-Francis Chan

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A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting

By Hara Estroff Marano

Click here to download chapter 1 of this book

Click here to download chapter 8 of this book

Unprotected by Anonymous M.D.

Click here to download an excerpt from the book.

Click here to download an excerpt from the book

Many churches nowadays can be more accurately described as a collection of individuals rather the united body of Christ.  Individualism has become the paradigm of today’s culture, and unfortunately, this mindset has also permeated the church.  However, as Christians, we are “members of one body” (Eph 4:25), who are called to “reach unity in the faith” (Eph 5:13).  How can we be united as one church despite the culture of individualism?  In order to answer this question, Randy Frazee turns to the early church.  Frazee noted that one characteristic of the early church was that Christians were not only involved in local groups, but were also part of a larger, worldwide Christian movement.  Acts 2: 42-44 reads, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common.”  In other words, they had a common purpose.  Similarly, in order for the church today to be “one body”, the members of the Christian community “must act like members of something that is larger than themselves.”

Being the Body

By Charles Colson and Ellen Vaughn

Click here to download the excerpt of this chapter.

In this excerpt from Colson’s Being the Body, Colson recognizes that a very important aspect of the early church has been lost in today’s Christians: character as a whole. “The church’s role in the world is not a series of independent items on an action checklist. Instead, the church’s role (what it does) is dependent on its character (what it is) as a community of believers.”

“If the church is the Body, the holy presence of Christ in the world, its most fundamental task is to build communities of holy people who are just like Jesus. And the priority of those communities is to disciple men and women to maturity in Him and then to equip them to live their faith in every aspect of life and in every part of the world.”

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

By Bill Hybels

The Volunteer Revolution

By Bill Hybels

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

—Ephesians 2:10
Click here to download the excerpt of this chapter

Willow Creek Community Church senior pastor Bill Hybels calls us to a life of excitement and thrills from serving at church.  The 13-page excerpt is filled with examples and testimonies that would challenge our fundamental identity as a servant of Jesus Christ.

“What would it feel like to lay your head on your pillow at night and say, ‘You know what I did today? I teamed up with God to change the world’?”

Joshua Harris’ book Stop Dating the Church addresses the Christian phenomenon of “rolling-stone” Christians who do not plant themselves deeply within a single church. In chapter 3, he goes through why the church is more than just a gathering of people, and and an optional extra curricular for Christians. In chapter 4, Joshua Harris engages in an amazing discussion on the every day church go-er’s level of passion for the church. He notes that we are often signed up to different clubs that we devote ourselves to, and walks the reader through a “Profile of Commitment,” describing how a life of passion and commitment to the church can change peoples’ lives. It becomes evident that a passionate Christian who is involved in the church begins to undergo more than mere surface-deep transformations and thrive in their relationships with God as well as with other Christians…

“The church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief…”  How can today’s church impact a world that is increasingly hostile to faith?  Does the church focus on building a better society through the humanization of social structures?  Should it instead reject any kind of secular humanism and focus instead on inward change?  In this excerpt, Hauerwas and Willmon discuss what the church must be to reach and transform a dying world.

This book by missionary and evangelist Roy Hession has been a long-standing “must read” for decades at our church.  Thankfully, the entire book is now available as a PDF document and is posted here:  The_Calvary_Road_(RoyHession).pdf

It’s only 29 pages but it’s loaded with challenges that will spark personal revival!  Some highlights include Chapter 4 “The Highway of Holiness” and Chapter 10 “Protesting Our Innocence?” (which was included in our Passion Readers).  It’s well-worth reading again and again…

[Note: This pdf was made available from http://www.christianissues.biz/pdf-bin/sanctification/thecalvaryroad.pdf ]