Showing results by narrator "Lyle Blaker" in All Categories

There is something fundamentally missing in modern leadership. Humility has been replaced with popularity. Selflessness has been replaced with celebrity. Security has been replaced with envy. Leadership is too often seen as a means of achieving greatness. A position that, once attained, affords a person authority, status, and celebrity. This modern leadership paradigm can be seen in businesses, politics, nonprofits, and even churches.

Neil Baggio, fresh off ending the Cappelano case, is called in the middle of the night from his high school. The headmaster, formerly his teacher, asks Neil to come help investigate a student’s mysterious death. What looks to be a suicide will have Neil chasing down the Church, causing scene after scene and flying to Europe to chase one last lead that will live up to the Baggio name.

A young frog, Hendrix, meets his match when he attempts to rob a professor, Marshall, who talks the thug out of robbing him and into taking a quest to find three noble truths. Hendrix accepts the professor's challenge, intrigued by the old frog's courage and insight. But the challenge winds up taking both frogs on a wild, life-changing journey.

Neil Baggio thought he was done with Bureau, done with Cappelano, and finally accepted he may never close the case of his mentor turned famed killer. After a rash of killings too close to be considered copycats, too detailed to be someone else, the Bureau calls Neil back in. Cappelano, the Veritas Killer, looks to Neil as unfinished business, a student still in need of his teaching and will do everything in his power to finish his lesson. Neil must overcome the demons that come with watching a killer go free, taking lives, and doing it on your watch.

In this audiobook, World Relief immigration experts Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang move beyond the rhetoric to offer a Christian response to immigration. They put a human face on the issue and tell stories of immigrants' experiences in and out of the system. With careful historical understanding and thoughtful policy analysis, they debunk myths and misconceptions about immigration and show the limitations of the current immigration system. Ultimately, they point toward immigration reform that is compassionate, sensible, and just.

In Letters to an American Christian, Bruce Riley Ashford, author of One Nation Under God, addresses overarching issues of the relationship of Christianity and politics, speaks to the way historic Christian belief informs specific hot-button political issues, and challenges listeners to take seriously both our heavenly and earthly citizenships. Written as a series of letters to "Christian" - a young college student who is a new believer - Letters to an American Christian will help every listener think about how Christianity informs what it means to be an American.

In its early years, Duluth was a gold mine for lumber barons. Men were employed as lumberjacks and worked like beasts, only to be tossed aside like used equipment when no longer needed. The grand forests were raped for their prime timber, the balance burned wastefully. The men were coarse and hard, but they had to be to survive. More than any other people that ever lived in our land, these old-time lumberjacks could truthfully say, "No man cared for my soul." That is, until God sent three men to the great Northwoods of our country - Frank Higgins, John Sornberger, and Al Channer.

What can we learn about leadership and influence from Paul? Most Christians know something of the Apostle Paul's life and ministry, but what about the incredible team of influencers he assembled and mobilized? Who were they, and how did Paul lead this team to accomplish God's purposes? Even more, what can we learn from their successes and failures, and how can we imitate their qualities?

Nestled in a few verses in Luke's Gospel is a Jesus who would not have been tolerated today: He was not politically correct and He certainly did not try to save people's feelings. Steven Lawson unpacks these few verses, looking at the unashamed honesty, passion, and urgency with which Jesus explains the life-long cost involved in choosing to follow Him. True Christianity is the biggest sacrifice any person ever makes...but it is in pursuit of the most precious prize ever glimpsed.

In 52 Ways to Connect with Your Smartphone Obsessed Kid, author Jonathan McKee offers just the help you need to have meaningful interaction with your kids instead of always overreacting to their unhealthy consumption of technology and media. In a world where over 80 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds now own a smartphone, parents are searching for ways to pry their kids' eyes from their devices and engage them in real, face-to-face conversation.

High school players in a working-class neighborhood in the 1970s gain desperately needed structure and guidance from Jack "Clyde" Dempsey, a scrappy, charismatic coach who seems like nothing more than a football geek. But Coach also happens to be the toughest guy on the streets of Boston, with a temper to match, and it's his secret life as a mob enforcer/collector that forces him to flee the country, becoming one of America's most wanted.

"The Company Commanders" is a fun and exciting science fiction short story. It is the third short story in a series. If you are a fan of short stories or science fiction you will love reading this.

Money issues are a frequent source of conflict in any marriage. But blended families are a monetary minefield. Debts, bills, and child support payments from previous relationships often influence the finances of a blended family. And planning for college expenses, retirement, and inheritance gets even more complicated in stepfamilies.

It's wild. One day people finally start treating you like an adult. And it feels good. For a while. Then you run into adult problems, and everyone acts like you should know what to do in any given situation. But what if you don't? What if, when everyone expects you to stand on your own two feet, you're just trying to put one foot in front of the other without tripping? If adulting has got you stressed, anxious, or even despairing, what you need is sound, biblical advice from someone who's been there. JP Pokluda's got you covered.

One in eight Americans struggles with hunger, and more than 13 million children live in food-insecure homes. As Christians we are called to address the suffering of the hungry and poor: "For I was hungry, and you gave me food..." (Matthew 25:35). However, the problems of hunger and poverty are too large and too complex for any one of us to resolve individually. I Was Hungry offers not only an assessment of the current crisis but also a strategy for addressing it. Jeremy Everett, a noted advocate for the hungry and poor, calls Christians to work across ideological divides....

In today's highly charged social and political environment, we often don't know how to talk well with others - especially with people whose backgrounds differ from our own. C. Christopher Smith, coauthor of the critically acclaimed and influential Slow Church, addresses why conversation has become such a challenge in the 21st century and argues that it is perhaps the most-needed spiritual practice of our individualistic age.

We have a leadership problem, and we all know it. When we look at our churches, we see two glaring problems: a lack of qualified leaders, and a general mistrust of leadership as a response to sinful leadership. But churches need leaders. What do we do? The answer is in The Leadership Formula.

Why, since happiness is so universally sought after, are so many people so miserable? The answer can be found by unpacking the wisdom of two of history's intellectual giants who set out to answer the question that has confounded man from time immemorial: What makes us happy? Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas existed sixteen centuries apart, yet each reached similar understandings about what makes a person happy. In this enlightening book, Dr. Charles Nemeth synthesizes the judgments of history's two greatest thinkers to present for you a life plan that inevitably leads to a happy human existence.

Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring revolt. And few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. Everyone understood that knowledge was power: power to keep a person enslaved in mind and body, power to resist oppression. In the decades before the Civil War, Southern governments drove Black literacy underground, but it was too precious to be entirely stamped out.

Are you tired of religion that feels dry, rigid, or lifeless? In Dead Orthodoxy, Ryan Denton delivers a piercing yet hopeful call for Christians to rekindle their love for the Lord and revive their spiritual vitality. Drawing from Scripture, church history, and personal insight, Denton confronts the suffocating effects of a Christianity that is merely formal, complacent, and intellectual.