ORU PRESS

Father Cry (Early Release)

Healing Your Heart and the Hearts of Those You Love

Billy Wilson

Healing Broken Hearts Through God’s Redeeming Love

Parents, both natural and spiritual, play a vital role throughout our lives. When these relationships are broken, the impact—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—is profound. In this revised and updated edition of Father Cry, Dr. Billy Wilson, president of Oral Roberts University, addresses a cry that has permeated generations, a cry for spiritual fathers and mothers and the deepest longing to know the love and care of our heavenly Father.

Drawing from his own experience of abandonment and the healing he found in God’s love, Wilson reveals how the deep longing for a father intersects with the love of our heavenly Father, igniting transformation and revival across generations. Through powerful biblical examples and practical wisdom, he shows how older and younger generations can unite, reclaim what was lost, and transform wounds into places of supernatural healing and ministry.

Discover how God’s redeeming love can heal broken hearts and how the church can play a crucial role in answering the father cry.

Product Info
Page Count: 208
Trim Size: 6x9
ISBN: 979-8-9915080-6-3
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: May 20, 2025

Fasting Forward

Advancing Your Spiritual Life Through Fasting

Billy Wilson

Fasting is a spiritual discipline that draws us closer to Jesus. It is not easy, but it is worth it. In Fasting Forward, Dr. Billy Wilson shares the importance of fasting and how Christ-followers can advance their spiritual lives through practicing this ancient discipline. New generations are hungry for God and desire to connect with Him in profound ways. Revised and updated, Fasting Forward shares relevant stories and practical insight into one of the most powerful, life-changing endeavors we may attempt in our walk with God. Fasting is a discipline that must be reclaimed by today’s church, perhaps more than ever before. What would happen if we decided to stop simply marching on and waited on the Lord? Fasting positions our hearts to receive God’s directives and revelations. It produces in us a longing for Jesus, a readiness for His return, and a sensitivity to His presence among us now. The Holy Spirit is ready to work through today’s church in fresh, dramatic ways, bringing world harvest and advancing God’s kingdom. By slowing down and seeking God through prayer and fasting, we can accelerate forward into His calling for our lives and increase our impact on the world. Quantum leaps forward in the Spirit are born in quiet moments, but we must slow down usually to go forward. Fasting Forward will help position you to hear God’s voice and experience fresh insight into His word.

The Power of One

Reaching Every Person on Earth

Billy Wilson

How can eight billion people have an authentic encounter with Jesus Christ? Is it possible that every person on Earth will be reached with the good news of the gospel in our generation? Can we mobilize today's church for collaborative results achieved in unprecedented ways? What can one person do to make a difference?

In The Power of One, Dr. Wilson answers these questions by providing a clear path forward through the re-personalization of the Great Commission and a renewed focus on the potential of everyONE.

A new era of global evangelism is dawning in our post-pandemic, fast-moving, 21st-century world. Jesus's method of reaching one person and thus unlocking their capacity to touch the masses is being reclaimed. The most significant days of Great Commission effort in human history are before us.

Reaching every person on Earth will necessitate and demonstrate The Power of ONE!

Generation Z

Born for the Storm

Billy Wilson

GENERATION Z is called and equipped to rise above the global storm we are experiencing and initiate the greatest awakening our world has ever seen. They are ready. They are willing. They are born for the storm.

Generation Z is officially the largest generation in the world today. They are creative, driven, entrepreneurial, and technologically advanced. Generation Z comes of age in an unique time. This generation is surrounded by turbulence: a global pandemic, racial tensions, political upheaval, economic unrest, and social tensions not experienced by previous generations. They live in a tumultuous life-sea where the waves are high, the winds are strong, the intensity is unceasing, and the challenges feel insurmountable.

This new generation, born between 1997 and 2012, has never witnessed a calm sea. Social harmony, economic stability, physical tranquility, and domestic peace have all been very distant during this period. While those from earlier generations are often disturbed by it all, Generation Z considers these storms a part of their existence. They are survivors, and they are being equipped by God for maximum kingdom impact during a time when the world needs them the most.

Generation Z: Born for the Storm is written as a book of hope for this new generation. It examines the environment surrounding Gen Z and tries to understand who they are. It also looks at the unique qualities God is forming in Gen Z believers. The book inspirationally describes qualities already emerging and predicts qualities that will emerge as Gen Zers take their place of leadership in the world. Each chapter focuses on a person or persons from the Bible whose names begin with “Z” and who embody qualities God is forming in this new generation. This is not an exhaustive volume on Gen Z. It is simply a snapshot in time connected to the timeless truths of Scripture that will help us reflect upon, respond to, and empower the most important generation to ever live. Their potential is beyond description.

Gen Z will take the negative circumstances they have been given and, by God’s grace, turn them into positives. Generation Z is ready. God is equipping. The Holy Spirit is moving. The world is waiting. The winds are blowing, and the waves are roaring. Spiritual history is going to be made because Generation Z is born for the storm.

A Spirit-Empowered Legacy

Vinson Synan, Younghoon Lee, editor

A Spirit-Empowered Legacy

H. Vinson Synan, Younghoon Lee

ISBN:978-1950971435 (hardback)

SUMMARY: This posthumous book celebrates the life, contributions, and influence of Vinson Synan. With his wife, Carol, Vinson left a unique Spirit-empowered legacy that younger generations can learn from as they look for models in Pentecostal scholarship and leadership. This publication features writings from the last two decades of Vinson's academic career, articles from colleagues about his global and ecumenical work, and testimonials about his and Carol Lee's impact presented at their memorial services. The editor and contributors offer this work to express their thankfulness and belief that Vinson Synan's voice will continue to influence decades of Pentecostal academic leadership to come.

Everyone Reaching EveryONE

Portraits of Spirit-Empowered Evangelists

Wonsuk Ma, Opoku Onyinah, Jaime Riddle, Associate Editor

What does Spirit-empowered evangelism mean and why is it so important today?

In 2023, an international panel of Christian scholars and practitioners met in Amsterdam to discuss what it means to be a Spirit-empowered witness in our time. Their studies offer biblical, theological, and missiological frameworks for evangelism, as well as global portraits of ministers who engaged and transformed their cultures. Some names are likely more familiar--Reinhard Bonnke, Billy Graham, T.L. Osborn, David Yonggi Cho--while others are likely less so--Niilo Yli-Vainio, N.E. Singh, Kyoko Funatsu. However, the composite sketches here emphasize new faces, new names, as well as unknown ones: mothers, missionaries, refugees, and digitally sent ones. All are filled with the same Spirit to empower evangelism and engage every sector of human life. This volume commemorates: 1) the Amsterdam scholars consultation as a flagship event for the EveryONE initiative, and 2) the formation of GNSES (the Global Network of Spirit-Empowered Scholars) managed by the co-chairs and co-editors of this volume, Wonsuk Ma and Opoku Onyinah. It is our hope that readers will find the history, research, and global portraits inspiring for the church's third millennium of evangelism, witness, and holistic mission of God.

Spirit-Empowered Evangelists

Everyone Reaching EveryONE

Wonsuk Ma, Opoku Onyinah

The New Generation & The Holy Spirit

Building a Spirit-Empowered Future

Wonsuk Ma, Barry L. Saylor, Opoku Onyinah, Rebekah Bled

Why is a focus on the new generation so warranted in this time, and how is Spirit-empowerment shaping the conversation about it? 

In 2022, an international panel of scholars and practitioners convened in Seoul to discuss how to prepare the new generation with Spirit-empowered faith and leadership. The book begins with biblical, historical, and theological insights and reflections, and leads readers to a large number of contextual case studies from diverse geographical and socio-cultural contexts. Through the various studies, there emerges a unified commitment to the spiritual advancement of the newer generations. The book also urges a collective intergenerational effort towards a stronger future of Spirit-empowered Christianity and its passion for the evangelization of the world.

Introducing Spirit-Empowered Christianity

The Global Pentecostal & Charismatic Movements in the 21st Century

Todd M. Johnson, Gina A. Zurlo

This study on the global Pentecostal/Charismatic movement informs and equips Christians in both academia and the church, and provides a new demographic assessment of the movement and estimates for Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Independent Charismatics in every country of the world for 1970, 2000, 2015, and 2020. This work also provides a detailed country-by-country list of Pentecostal and Charismatic denominations and networks around the world.

The Pandemic & The Holy Spirit

From Lament to Hope and Healing

Wonsuk Ma, Opoku Onyinah, Rebekah Bled

How may the COVID-19 pandemic have influenced Spirit-empowered theology and practice? What are diverse initial responses? Which unique strengths can Spirit-empowered communities offer during times of global crisis?

Academics and reflective practitioners gathered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to discuss these issues at the 2021 Scholars Consultation of Empowered21. This book is the outcome of those conversations, combining the nine original studies with eleven subsequently commissioned chapters.

The book is organized thematically, beginning with two chapters examining a biblical perspective of pandemics and offering an applied Lukan Pneumatology to post-pandemic life. The book then gives three historical studies before moving to themes of pain, suffering, and depression, justice and oppression, theologizing during the pandemic, and institutional responses, respectively. Among other examples, these chapters share specific case studies of the racialized dimension of the pandemic, as well as how Spirit-empowered communities ministered hope.

Through current and historical case studies and theological examination, this book offers unique insight into Spirit-empowered responses to the pandemic.

The Remaining Task of the Great Commission

& the Spirit-empowered Movement

Wonsuk Ma, Opoku Onyinah, editors

This book presents a unique invitation to enter the conversation on the role and contribution of each individual and faith community in fulfilling the remaining tasks of the Great Commission.

Scholars and practitioners from around the globe gathered online at the 2021 Scholars Consultation of Empowered21 to reflect and strategize on these questions in light of the audacious goals set by Empowered21: "That every person on earth would have an authentic encounter with Jesus Christ through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit...by Pentecost 2033." This book is a curated collection of the resulting conversations, with both original and subsequently commissioned studies.

This book is organized into sections of "Foundational," "Geographic," and "Strategic." In this way, the reader may grapple with the biblical, theological, and historical impetus for Spirit-empowered witness in part one, read engaging summaries of the Spirit-empowered movement in specific regions of the world in part two, and join the authors in actively strategizing context-specific approaches in part three.

Human Sexuality and the Holy Spirit

Spirit-Empowered Perspectives

Wonsuk Ma, Kathaleen Reid-Martinez

The God Who Is Love created man male and female for love. Human sexuality is a gift of Creation. Through this gift, we may love and be loved deeply, may enjoy a profound oneness in marriage, and, from loveʼs natural self-giving, may give life to children, the greatest ongoing fruit of such love.

Human sexuality is a gift of Creation. The image of our God who is love is borne by "man" as "male and female," with no hint of either sexʼs imaging the divine more fully than--or apart from--the other. Through this gift, we may love and be loved deeply, may enjoy a profound oneness in marriage, and, from loveʼs natural self-giving, may give life to children, the greatest ongoing fruit of such love.

Despite all its goodness, many on this planet experience sexuality in brokenness and pain. We know sin and evil spoil and steal from Godʼs good creation, but we do not despair. The Good News of Jesus Christ reckons seriously with every enemy of human fl ourishing. His victory has won healing the Holy Spirit applies to the broken, through loving ministry.

These truths of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration unify the essays in this book. Most began at the Scholarsʼ Consultation of the Empowered21 Asia Global Congress in Singapore in 2017. Here they explore Godʼs intention for our sexuality, ways we misuse and abuse this gift, and ways Spirit-empowered communities help heal brokenness and restore the divine image. Expressing theological and socialscience scholarship and front-lines ministry experience from the First and Majority Worlds, these essays probe gender theory, inequality, and fl uidity and dysphoria; sexual exploitation of children and women and their resilience; homosexuality; fighting HIV/AIDS; promoting sexual wholeness; and more. Readers will deepen their biblical, theoretical, and practical understanding so they may minister healing and restoration with wisdom and compassion in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Proclaiming Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit

Opportunities & Challenges

Wonsuk Ma, Emmanuel Anim, editors

How may the church claim that Christ is the only Savior in a world in which tolerance and relativism are prized and societies are increasingly religiously plural? How does the Spirit empower believers and communities in their daily life and work as they face formidable cultural and ideological challenges?

Such questions these essays answer. Half originated at "Proclaiming Christ in the Face of Challenges," the 2018 Scholarsʼ Consultation of Empowered21, a global network of Spirit-empowered churches and communities. This Consultationʼs location in Johannesburg accounts for eight essaysʼ focusing on distinctively African concerns; another four center on Asia and the Global South and three on Europe. Others address Western concerns of modernism, postmodernism, secularism, and pluralism, while several probe biblical and historical-theological foundations of Christian faith and its Spirit-empowered proclamation.

Readers will benefit from exploring the universality of the Christian gospel from its first proclamation and its proven adaptability to the cultural pluralism that is todayʼs global reality, a flexibility that is faithful to Godʼs revelation and effective in imparting divine life where proclaimed and believed.

Good News to the Poor

Spirit-Empowered Responses To Poverty

Wonsuk Ma, Opoku Onyinah, editors

What is a Christian response to the immense and crushing demands of poverty? How may the poor be empowered within their own context? What answers can be found in Liberation Theology and the Prosperity Gospel? Scholars and practitioners gathered in Bogota, Colombia, at the 2019 Scholars Consultation of Empowered21 to discuss these questions from a Spirit-empowered perspective. This book is the combination of these deep and engaging conversations at the Consultation and the subsequently commissioned studies.

The book is divided into two sections. The first is “Foundational,” addressing biblical, theological, and historical considerations of wealth and poverty, as well as a definition and overview of the current state of global poverty. The second section is “Cases in Context,” which provides reflections on real-life experiences from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.

Through this marriage of foundational and contextual sections, the book presents robust engagement with some of the most pervasive issues faced in the majority world today. Civil unrest, policy issues, indigenous identity, urban slums, migration, globalization, education, and other concerns are considered in light of the Spiritʼs empowerment of individuals, churches, and communities.

Paradigms of Spirit-Empowered Leadership

Implications for Leadership Development

Eric N. Newberg

ISBN: 978-1950971374 (paperback)

SUMMARY: This textbook, written by scholar and university mentor, Dr. Eric Newberg of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, offers a survey of notable Spirit-empowered leaders, their defining characteristics, and models of Spirit-empowered ministry in the last century of global Christianity.  Newberg describes how the lives of Pentecostal-Charismatic leaders have had an incredibly positive impact on the Christian world, especially as apostles, prophets, healing evangelists, "pastorpreneurs," and teacher-scholars. But Newberg also addresses the tarnished record of many leaders' quest for power, lack of integrity, and moral failures which have disillusioned followers and onlookers. He provides formational critique, with a 12-week study and benchmarks for mature Pentecostal-Charismatic leadership development in healthy, twenty-first century contexts—reminding us throughout of the importance of character and praxis in renewal ministry.