Discipleship

…but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near. — Hebrews 10:25 (NIV)

O LORD, You have heard the desire of the humble;
You will strengthen [encourage] their heart, You will incline Your ear
To vindicate the orphan and the oppressed,
So that man who is of the earth will no longer cause terror. — Psalm 10:17 (NIV)

It has been said that we need at least ten times as many encouragers as any other gifting in the Body of Jesus Christ. In a world that sets usually unatainable and even inappropriate standards and tells us we can “have it all,” we need encouragers who remind us of the true standards of God. We need to remember His promises for our lives. We need to remember His extravagant love.

Diane Milnes is such an encourager. She speaks from her heart and her experience as she has traveled the globe encouraging God’s people with her infectious laugh, hugs, and tears. A few minutes in her “circle of love” will have you walking away with a skip in your step and a leap in your spirit.

Milnes, Diane

Diane Milnes is a caregiver. Literally. She is a hands-on giver of care to those who are ill and infirmed. She has volunteered for many mission trips in the Haiti, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, the United States, Hungary, and the Ukraine. She is a long time volunteer with Teen Missions International. Diane currently lives in Florida. She has two children and two beautiful grand-children.

Author Page

Late in 2012 Energion Publications released Dr. Bruce Epperly’s book Healing Marks, which brings the healing stories of Jesus into focus for present day ministry. In April we plan to release Unfettered Spirit: Spiritual Gifts for the New Great Awakening by Dr. Robert D. Cornwall. Finally, in June, we will release Transforming Acts: Acts of the Apostles as a 21^st Century Gospel, also by Dr. Bruce Epperly. This book is not yet even in our retail catalog, but you can see the description on our list of forthcoming books.

In his challenging foreword to Unfettered Spirit, Dr. Bruce Epperly says:

… Do we need to hold a “rummage sale,” as Phyllis Tickle asserts, to get rid of another unnecessary and outmoded doctrines and practices?

At the heart of this potential great awakening is the recovery of the experience and embody of the gifts of the Spirit within the church. Bob Cornwall sees the future of the church as involving awakening to God’s Spirit. Cornwall images a spirit-empowered church that is sensitive to God’s gifts in personal and community life. A spirit-empowered church expects great things from and this expectation leads to expecting great things from ourselves and our communities. The church has too often “played small” and expected to little from itself and God when Jesus challenges us to do greater things. If we ask and knock, we will experience life-changing and mission-inspiring surprises. Cornwall’s project involves an adventure of the Spirit which gives life to the description of the body of Christ as an interdependent and gifted community of faith. (emphasis mine)

So what is this package all about?

One of the questions I hear over and over again when I visit or teach in various mainline churches is this: How do we bring some life to this church? It’s a good question. In many cases churches are just existing, slowly dying as they become more and more irrelevant to their communities.

Both Bruce Epperly and Bob Cornwall have found some real guidance in the pages of Scripture. They see a challenge to bring the gospel message to life even in a pluralistic, postmodern  society. They both have practiced what they’re preaching in these books, and they bring you strong new ideas. This is biblically rooted theology brought to practical application.

Each of these books will be of great benefit. Together, they can give you the tools to discern what God is trying to do in your church and community and to find the guidance you need to take action.

So until Transforming Acts ships in June, I’m making a special offer. Order the package of all three books, and I’ll ship you Healing Marks right away. Then I’ll ship you the other two as they appear. I’ll do all of this for just $29.99 including shipping. That’s better than 30% off. Once Unfettered Spirit ships in April, we’ll continue the discount at 20% off, then when Transforming Acts is released in June, this package will sell for $39.99 or 10% off the cover price of the three books.

So order your package today. To get this offer, order it from this page, not from the individual book pages. We’ll ship you all three books as they’re released.

(This package includes books on pre-order. Please read our pre-order policies. If you prefer not to make a pre-paid pre-order, you can e-mail us and ask to be notified when each book is released. Our books generally are available for pre-order on Amazon.com as well.)

Fifty Shades of Grace provides a scriptural look at what the Bible says about relationships. Too often in the education of relationships, abusive and unhealthy relationships if discussed are not done so with enough depth.

This book will compare what society tells us, in the form of entertainment and media, with what God tells us in the Bible about what healthy and loving relationships are. It will explore what abuse is and why many of us are in abusive relationships and what we can do about it. “I hope this book helps people not to fall into the trap of harmful relationships.” — Rev. Shauna Hyde, author.

Disciples: Jesus with Us – Rev. Riley Richardson & Henry E. Neufeld ($7.99) A basic book on discipleship, with the emphasis on “basic.” It is for every pastor (or anyone who has witnessed to someone for Jesus) who has wondered just what he/she can give a new Christian, a new member, or someone who is struggling with the Christian walk that will help guide them through those first steps of discipleship.

I Want to Pray – Rev. Perry Dalton & Henry E. Neufeld ($7.99) Each chapter includes questions for thought and discussion and exercises to help you get personally involved in prayer. Ideal for group study and church based classes, clear and practical.

52 Weeks of Ordinary People – Extraordinary God – Jody Neufeld ($7.99) This weekly devotion book is made up of 52 devotions with questions or suggestions for discussion that will work well with small groups.

John Piper is known for his support of missions. Many of his books devote sections to the advancement of missions, and almost all of his works have missions implications. Piper’s understanding of missions is based on his understanding of God’s glory, which flows from God’s righteousness. He sees Calvinistic theology as amplifying the themes of God’s glory and righteousness. Piper believes God glorifies himself in missions through individual, unconditional election. Piper states the “essential nature” of God is “to dispense mercy . . . on whomever he pleases, apart from any constraint originating outside his own will.” Piper also believes that God glorifies himself in missions through universal love. He states that God’s “righteousness demands that He be a God of love … love is at the very heart of God’s being.”

In Piper’s understanding of the glory of God in missions, involving a combination of individual, unconditional election with universal love, he reconciles the two seemingly opposing emphases of particularity and universality with the promotion of the “Two Wills of God Thesis.” He distinguishes between what God “would like to see happen” and what God “wills to happen.” God has a revealed will and a secret will; he desires to save all (revealed will), while he elects individuals unconditionally (secret will). Piper’s understanding of God’s glory, seen through the Two Wills of God Thesis, is the motivator and dictator of his missiology.

Philip O. Hopkins looks at John Piper’s background and thoroughly examines his written works to provide a clear and thorough discussion of Piper’s missiology and its foundation.

This book provides the basics of Christian prayer for the non-specialist. Perry Dalton, retired pastor, and Henry Neufeld, Bible teacher and Biblical languages student combine their knowledge and practical experience to create this guide. Each chapter includes questions for thought and discussion and exercises to help you get personally involved in prayer. Ideal for group study and church based classes, clear and practical.

Suggestions for use:

• Read individually as an introduction to prayer
• Use with a small group or Sunday School class as a study. There are 11 sets of exercises with the first 11 chapters (chapter 12 is the conclusion).
• Use as a church-wide series to ignite prayer. Follow-up with establishing small prayer groups.

Note: You can now preview this book as a free eBook.
Small Group Resource

Energion Publications recommends this book as a small group resource.

What does it take to make a church congregation a community that fully carries out its mission? What can be done to correct the problems of a dysfunctional community and encourage healthy discipleship? In Out of This World, Darren McClellan studies these questions, not with a purely theoretical approach but rather by studying a specific congregation in a specific situation, and letting the members and former pastors speak in their own words. He then looks at these views through the lenses of John Wesley and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

This is a thoroughly researched, hard hitting, and honest examination of ministry, looking particularly at the structures of the United Methodist Church. There are specific recommendations for Bishops, District Superintendents, newly appointed pastors, and congregational leadership.

An EnerPower Press title.

Most of us today would agree that the children of this new millennium are growing up in a world that is filled with pitfalls and treacherous paths that previous generations have not had to negotiate. How do we prepare these children to not only survive these paths but be victorious?

Father, former youth pastor, and now church pastor, Kevin Brown shares the vision he has been given for teaching about and expecting from our children an involved, discipled way of life. He believes “The Christian faith depends upon the transfer of the gospel from one generation to the next.” Rite of Passage in the Home and Church describes, not a “program,” but instead a family’s commitment to making a change in priorities that will impact them for generations to come.

Pastor Kevin says, “The family has been fractured and splintered by the culture and this segregation of family by age has been brought to the church.” At his home church, the family worships together. There is no children’s church, no youth services…just the family of God worshiping together as indicated in Scripture. Kevin believes the only hope for our culture is the church and the only hope for the church is the restoration of the family.

Soup Kitchen for the Soul combines testimony with a challenging scriptural foundation and follows it with specific guidance on how you can get out of your church and make a difference in your community. Each chapter builds on a Bible story and the author’s personal experience, and ends with thought questions, and then action questions. References include specific ways in which you can take action on what you have been studying in the book.

This book is suitable for personal or small group study, or could be used effectively by an entire church to transform their ministry.

In the introduction Crosby says: “Upon entering Seminary, I was required to serve in the community and begrudgingly accepted my assignment, choosing to serve in a soup kitchen. While serving in the soup kitchen, God revealed himself to me in a profound and miraculous way. It was in restudying the scriptures with this new heart knowledge of God that allowed me to see a message of a mission for His people that we lack a connection with today. I began asking, ‘What if … What if I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand the whole mission God has planned for us? What exactly are we supposed to be doing? Where in the Bible can we find directives on our missions for God? What if I wrote a book about radically new old ways of doing the gospel?’”

Soup Kitchen for the Soul is that book.

The Sacred Journey is a collection of insights, thoughts, and personal experiences centered on and emanating from the Beatitudes of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount.

Within its pages we are invited to consider the radical love with which God pursues His creation. God in Jesus Christ was determined to make a way for sinners to be forgiven at the Cross. While man had sinned and caused a divide between himself and His creator, God has insisted that those who receive the grace and mercy offered in His Son shall be forgiven of sin and reconciled unto God in eternally secure love.

God in salvation is singly focused on reconciling all who will place their trust, their faith, and their hope in that sacrifice. It is not we who make our way to God through good works, right belief, perfectly ordered creedal statements, or any other edifice of human composition. It is God who pursues us heatedly to receive the radical beauty of the violence of the Cross.

God has pursued, forgiven, and reconciled us unto Himself. Through the wrath which was poured out upon Jesus, mercy was poured out on us. Salvation is purely the work of God’s mercy and grace. We who have received Him have done so by faith when we have responded to the pull of God on our hearts. Grace rests upon us because God has loved us. What, in response to such a violent grace, should our reply to God be?

Surber, Christopher D

Chris Surber is pastor of the First Congregational Church in Peru, IL. With a B. S. degree in Religion from Liberty University and Master of Divinity from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary (Cum Laude), Rev. Surber has a passion for preaching and teaching the Bible with a focus on discipleship, evangelism, and outreach. The Sacred Journey is Rev. Surber’s second publication, following Sweet Potatoes in my Coffee (2008). Rev. Surber and his wife, Christina, have three sons and a daughter.

Author Page

A Colorado native, Shauna Hyde grew up with three brothers, no sisters, and a father who was a pastor of a local community church. She was taught that women married for life and no woman she knew was a pastor. This ‘normal’ crashed around her when her first husband left her with a newborn baby to raise alone. Her second husband confessed his unfaithfulness; again her world hit a bruising reality wall despite her efforts to be the ‘best little wife’. Shauna started studying karate and began to see a correlation between the two disciplines that opened her soul to be empowered by the grace of God. God, in turn, taught her and used her to empower others.

“As a United Methodist minister who is also a black belt in Shota Kahn karate I am often asked how I can be both a martial artist and a pastor. There have been a lot of jokes about how I will force people to the altar or smack people who get out of line. Then there is always the joke about no one wanting to disobey me in the church because I know how to hurt them! In reality, anyone who is a true martial artist and/or has a deep understanding of the martial arts knows that it is not about violence — it is about mercy, self-discipline, a lot of routine practice, and a whole other host of characteristics that I would like to address [in this book].”

Shauna shares what she has learned with a solid Biblical foundation through thought-provoking questions that work well individually and with small groups. “Karate is a tool that can help people grow, understand, and become disciplined. Church is a tool that also helps people grow, understand, and become disciplined. The greatest tool of all to be used to empower others is the constant and abundant application of grace.”

The church in America has come to depend on professionals to “do ministry.” In many churches, the pastor, paid to do the job, is the one who is expected to carry out all functions of the church.

But it was not always this way. Jesus came as God-in-the-flesh. The pattern portrayed in the New Testament is that every Christian is part of the body of Christ, and the function of Christ’s body is to be incarnational, to be Jesus Christ for the world (John 20:21).

Author David Alan Black takes on this attitude of outsourcing our mission in his shortest book, yet one he has said might be the most important that he has written: Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions? If you expect here a call to go to seminary and become a professional missionary, you will be sorely disappointed. Instead, Dave calls for us to replace outsourcing with insourcing. Instead of looking for professionals to do the ministry while the rest of us fill the pews, he is pointing us back to the Gospel Commission and the call on every Christian life to fulfill that Commission.

It is not enough in the 21st century to put a little bit of money into the church and expect the pastor and paid staff to do the work. Each one of us is called to also give of our time and talents.

This little book might be dangerous. You may not be able to put it down without seeing your life radically changed. In fact, the book ends with a call to make precisely that promise.

So will you join the cause of global missions?

(Put me on a waiting list for this book! You will be notified when the book begins shipping.)

This little book is a compilation of Bible verses and other quotations that will encourage and edify you. Scriptures are divided into headings on topics such as “God is Seeking for Us,” “The Power of His Love,” “The Creative Word,” “Self on the Cross” and many more.

The compiler suggests you follow up on the scriptures found here by using a Bible and concordance to search out these topics more deeply.

Color pictures highlight the topics through the book.