DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ? • Why the world came to be filled with discord? • If God really exists, why doesn’t He fix it? • Is there a penalty we must pay for sinful acts? • Is there a way we can escape this dilemma? • Is the Old Testament important today? • Is prayer important in our belief system? • Is faith important in our relationship with God? • What does it mean to worship in Spirit and Truth? • What does “Born Again” really mean? ********************** I acknowledge that I’m not a member of the clergy, nor am I able to claim an educational degree of any high importance (especially in theology). I do however have many years experience fortified by attending church, Bible study, seeking out the council of the Holy Spirit and learned mentors, and doing some serious praying. The result was this book, “My View from the Pew”, which when translated means...a layman's attempt to simplify and bring to an understandable and workable theology that which otherwise might be (in some cases) unnecessarily complicated.

The black Pentecostal church, once the pillar of the community and the standard bearer of the Christian faith was seen as that sanctified, set-aside church, where people came to receive Salvation. The Pentecostal churches comes in every race, creed and color; however, the black Pentecostal church had its own way of worship. By writing this book, highlighting issues and situations occurring in the church today, is not to reprimand, insult, or make fun of the church. The purpose of writing this book is to examine the changing standards and the way we go about conducting services, to see if it is expedient for us to maintain these changes in reaching our ultimate goal winning souls for Christ. Today, it appears that instead of the church being set-apart, it rather be assimilated with the world. Years ago, one could spot a Saint from a mile away. Today you would be hard pressed to pick one out. Even the very thing that distinguished the Pentecostal church from all other churches, its music, has become indistinguishable. Lets look at these issues and discuss if we are going down the right path. Let us pray and seek guidance so that we may preserve the church as Jesus wants it to be, a House of Prayer. Sharon D. Smith, Author Cover art: courtesy of Compass Print Inc., Ray Ellis Gallery of Savannah, GA. Reproduction of Morning Prayer by Ray Ellis. Cover design by Westbow Press.

Just who was Abraham Lincoln? How did he become one of the most admired persons who ever lived? What daily experiences lead him on the path to the Presidency of the United States of America at the most difficult time of its existence? Why is he the man visitors come streaming to discover in the heartland of central Illinois This work of Historical Fiction answers the question of what Lincoln's daily life was like. By selecting 3 very different years and researching them on a day-to-day, month-by-month basis, the picture of our 16 President becomes clearer. What Did Lincoln Do in 1832? is told through the eyes of Peggy Rutledge, one of Anne's younger sisters, and details the daily life in the remote log cabin New Salem Illinois Lincoln Do in 1842? is told through the eyes of Jed, a twelve-year-old boy whom Lincoln befriends in the booming town of Springfield Illinois What Did Lincoln Do in 1862? is told in a stream-of-consciousness style by Tad Lincoln, Abraham's youngest son. It details the year in the White House in which Willie dies and writes the Emancipation Proclamation. This work of Historical Fiction is grounded in research and footnoted for those whose spark is lit to do further study on this unique American who strode from obscurity to center stage not so long

In this upbeat book Robbie Castleman shows parents how to guide their toddlers and teenagers to participate more fully in the worship of the church. This significantly revised and updated edition includes a new preface and new appendices with ideas for children's sermons and intergenerational community.

WINNER of the 2021 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award. Finalist for the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize. Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. One of Publishers Weekly's Best Fiction Books of 2020. One of Amazon's 100 Best Books of 2020. “The people of this community are stifling, and generous, cruel, earnest, needy, overconfident, fragile and repressive, which is to say that they are brilliantly rendered by their wise maker, Catherine Lacey.” --Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers A figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzy In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origin. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are—a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths. Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

Returning to Baltimore from Los Angeles to bury her late father, Glynda Naylor and her three sisters celebrate their father's life and search for answers about who the real Edward Naylor, who had raised them after their mother's death, was. Original. 35,000 first printing.