Building deep community as a fellowship of believers.
Author Barnabas Piper states in the first chapter of his book:
"We are looking for something personal, something deeply meaningful, something with which we can identify. And this book is an invitation to find that in the church, because God wants us to …Part of God's perfect strategy is offering hurting, tired, worn out, needy sinners like you and me a place to belong in … A place in which to encounter the profound, transformative, healing, restoring grace of Jesus Christ."
This book explores how you can help to create a church where everybody feels at home: a place where fellow believers build genuine, honest, meaningful Christian relationships and enjoy deep fellowship as a community of believers.
You may be a new believer and wonder what it means to belong to a church; you may be reluctant to commit to your church because of past experiences; you may have recently relocated and want to find a church where you feel at home; or you may love your church and desire to commit to it more deeply and serve it more fully. Whatever the case, this book will help you to see that belonging to a church is a good gift from God, the outworking of our identity as brothers and sisters in Christ, and worth your time, love, and commitment.
From the hive mind behind the popular Happy Rant podcast comes this cornucopia of humorous and thought-provoking critiques of Christian culture. Come for the good-natured cynicism. Stay for the enlightenment.
Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin, and Barnabas Piper, hosts of the Happy Rant podcast, take their faith-based back-and-forth from the recording booth to the book page with this collection of insightful and often hilarious takedowns of pastor trends, personality tests, political engagement, and more.
The Happy Rant crew have a lot of strong opinions, and occasionally they even agree with each other! Always candid and frequently compelling, Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas tackle everything from the divisive, hot-button issues within the church to more lighthearted fare that reminds us never to take ourselves too seriously.
As entertaining as it is engaging, The Happy Rant will help you to think more critically about the world around you and enjoy a laugh or two (or maybe three) along the way.
A biblical framework for living a grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy life.
Everyone wants to be happy, and we all pursue happiness in different ways. Some people are thrill-seekers; others are homebodies. Some people are loners; others love big families or communities. Some people express things creatively; others consume what is created. Some sing; others listen to music. Whatever we find happiness in, we are united by our desire for work that matters and relationships that fulfil.
As Christians, we often fall into the trap of basing our hopes on earthly things, even when we know they only make us happy for a short time. But how are we to experience happiness in this life? How do we avoid expecting too much of earthly things and being disappointed, or expecting too little and becoming cynics?
In this book, recovering cynic Barnabas Piper helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun. He shows how having a clear view of the reality of the fall and the promise of redemption frees us to live a life that’s grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy.
How doubt can lead to greater faith.
Barnabas Piper unpacks what faith really means. He shows how embracing doubts and questions can help us to get to know God, and encourages us to risk trusting God in our everyday lives, even when we don't understand everything about him.
This book will encourage Christians seeking to ask questions in a godly way and will give them confidence to trust God, even when some questions remain.
Includes testimonies from John Piper and Afshin Ziafat.
Advice on how to care for pastors' kids and allow them to find their own faith and identity.
Pastors' kids are often burdened by others' expectations, but there is a wonderful solution, both at home and in the church: grace.
In this revised, refreshed version of Barnabas Piper's best-known book, the author candidly shares his own experiences as son of pastor and bestselling author John Piper, offering a challenge to our churches and to the families at their very heart: how to care for pastors' kids and allow them to find their own faith and identity.
Foreword by John Piper.
Curiosity is such a childish word, right? Not so fast. Just because we grow up doesn't mean we should lose our wonder at the world, or the people around us. When we do, we lose so much because curious is how God made us to be. Without curiosity a Christian's life is incomplete. His relationship with God is incomplete. His connections to others are incomplete. He doesn't know how to interact with the world around him, politics, media, art, entertainment, science, and so much more simply fly past or overwhelm him. Without curiosity he can never discover deep things, deep connections God tucked below the banal surface of life. Author Barnabas Piper explores what curiosity is, and how it affects relationships. What if people so sought to learn about each other that the most unlikely people became advocates and friends? It would be transformative, and it would stem from curiosity.
God is infinite, beyond our understanding-yet He chooses to reveal Himself in ways that spark questions rather than settling them all.Instead of making Himself smaller, God invites us into a larger faith. One that has room for questions, victories, failures, and mystery. Because belief in an infinite God by finite humans is an act of exploration ... a process of learning-and then embracing-what we can't learn but can trust.Discover the God who not only desires our belief but actually welcomes our curiosity.
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Dad may be following God’s call, but the Pastor’s kids (PKs) are just following mom and dad. Often to devastating results.
Barnabas Piper – son of Pastor and bestselling author John Piper – has experienced the challenges of being a PK first-hand. With empathy, humor, and personal stories, he addresses the pervasive assumptions, identity issues and accelerated scrutiny PKs face.
But more than just stating the problems – he shares the one thing a PK needs above all else (as do their pastor/father and church) is to live in true freedom and wholeness.
