Richard Peace teaches you how to engage in easy and comfortable conversation about the good news of Jesus. Explaining the gospel in plain language and offering practical suggestions for sharing your faith with friends, neighbors and colleagues, he provides twelve study and discussion sessions perfect for small groups to work through--and try out--together.

Planning can be challenging in the contemporary congregation, where people share a common faith and values but may have very different preferences and needs. Much of the literature on congregational planning presents it as a technical process: the leader serves as the chief problem solver, and the goal is finding "the solution to the problem." Rendle and Mann equip congregational leaders with a broad and creative range of ideas, pathways, processes, and tools for planning. By choosing the resources that best suit their needs and context, congregations will shape their own strengthening, transforming, holy conversation. They will find a path that is faithful to their identity and their relationship with God. Resource materials are available to purchasers of the book. E-mail [email protected] for more information.

This Christian formation text combines insights from social science, biblical studies, and ethics to present a dynamic vision of human holiness and wholeness.

Linking the themes of spirituality and worship and giving each needed focus in ways that are biblically and theologically rich and consistent with ecumenical traditions, this book specifically explores the relationship of sacred reading (lectio divina) to worship. Linman sees this practice as one element in the larger liturgical action of Gathering, Word, Meal, and Sending. Our "spiritual worship" (cf. Rom 12:1), he argues, is the holy conversation between worshipers and the triune God who leads us to greater participation in Christ and to transformation through Christ's presence.

Written by a group of friends, ?Seven Holy Women? is a one-of-a-kind journey into the lives of seven women saints. Each section of the book includes a story from one saint's life, told vividly and imaginatively in the second person; additional information about the saint to give her context; a reflection on ways the writer, reader, and saint intersect on their journeys; personal surveys for the reader and a friend to complete; and a journal prompt that encourages the reader to explore and document her encounter with themes from the saint's life. Created as both a deeply personal and enriching communal experience, ?Seven Holy Women? speaks directly to the reader, drawing her into the lives of seven saints as it invites her to look more closely and lovingly at her own spiritual journey and her friendship with the cloud of witnesses.

From the author of the bestselling novel The Shack and the New York Times bestsellers Cross Roads and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of twenty-eight assumptions about God—assumptions that just might be keeping us from experiencing His unconditional, all-encompassing love. In his wildly popular novels, Wm. Paul Young portrayed the Triune God in ways that challenged our thinking—sometimes upending long-held beliefs, but always centered in the eternal, all-encompassing nature of God’s love. Now, in Wm. Paul Young’s first nonfiction book, he invites us to revisit our assumptions about God—this time using the Bible, theological discussion, and personal anecdotes. Paul encourages us to think through beliefs we’ve presumed to be true and consider whether some might actually be false. Expounding on the compassion fans felt from the “Papa” portrayed in The Shack—now a major film starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer—Paul encourages you to think anew about important issues including sin, religion, hell, politics, identity, creation, human rights, and helping us discover God’s deep and abiding love.

A wrenchingly honest, eloquent memoir “about true nourishment that comes not from [eating] but from engaging on a spiritual path."—Los Angeles Times In this brave and perceptive account of compulsion and the healing process, Bullitt-Jonas describes a childhood darkened by the repressive shadows of her alcoholic father and her emotionally reclusive mother, whose demands for excellence, poise, and self-control drove Bullitt-Jonas to develop an insatiable hunger. What began with pilfering extra slices of bread at her parents' dinner table turned into binges with cream pies and pancakes, sometimes gaining as much as eleven pounds in four days. When the family urged her father into treatment, the author recognized her own addiction and embarked on the path to recovery by discovering the spiritual hunger beneath her craving for food.