We are formed by the images we view. From classical art to advertisements and from news photos to social media, the images we look at mold our ideas of race, gender, and class. They shape how we love God and our neighbor. This practical guide helps us look closely at and understand how a wide variety of images make meaning as aesthetic and cultural objects. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt teaches us how to learn from art rather than critique it and how to respond to images in Christian ways, allowing them to positively transform us and how we love. The book includes twenty-three images, most in full color, that range from classical European paintings to Central African sculpture, from Chinese ink painting to political propaganda, and from stark anthropological photographs to unconventional installations.

Feeling overwhelmed and unproductive? The answer isn’t to do more. What image forms in your mind when you think of productivity? An assembly line? Spreadsheets? Business suits or workplace uniforms? In the ancient world, productivity didn't conjure images like these. Instead, it referred to crop yield and fruit bearing. This agrarian imagery helps us understand productivity through a biblical lens. Jesus taught, By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit (John 15:8). Who doesn’t want to have a truly productive life—to bear much fruit? But how does this happen in the places we hold dear—the home, workplace, and in our communities? We often feel overworked and overrun, defeated and discouraged. The world says be productive so that you can get all you can out of this life. The Bible says be productive so you can gain more of the next life. In Redeeming Productivity, author Reagan Rose explores how God’s glory is the purpose for which He planted us. And he shows how productivity must be firmly rooted in the gospel. Only through our connection to Christ—the True Vine—are we empowered to produce good fruit. This book shows how we can maintain the vitality of that connection through simple, life-giving disciplines. Readers will discover manageable applications like giving God the first fruits of our days. Additionally, Reagan discusses how our perspective on suffering is transformed as we see trials as God’s pruning for greater productivity.

Nothing has exposed the gap between the church and the broader society quite like the volatile topics of sexuality, relationships, identities, orientations and even gender. With a pastor's heart and a missiologist's mind, Debra Hirsch helps us discover a holistic, biblical vision of sex and gender that honors God and offers good news to the world.

A fully developed biblical perspective of work and leisure finds the holistic balance missing from today in Puritan enjoyment of both as important to life.

Power has a God-given role in human relationships and institutions, but it can lead to abuse when used in unhealthy ways. Speaking into current #MeToo and #ChurchToo conversations, this book shows that the body of Christ desperately needs to understand the forms power takes, how it is abused, and how to respond to abuses of power. Although many Christians want to prevent abuse in their churches and organizations, they lack a deep and clear-eyed understanding of how power actually works. Internationally recognized psychologist Diane Langberg offers a clinical and theological framework for understanding how power operates, the effects of the abuse of power, and how power can be redeemed and restored to its proper God-given place in relationships and institutions. This book not only helps Christian leaders identify and resist abusive systems but also shows how they can use power to protect the vulnerable in their midst.

F. X. Durrwell’s In the Redeeming Christ is a gentle, forgotten masterpiece that reveals the relationship between personal holiness, sacramental life in the Church, and the salvation of the world. Now re-published with an introduction by Scott Hahn, it is a beautiful meditation on the Christian life. At the beginning of In the Redeeming Christ, priest and theologian F. X. Durrwell states: “The Christian’s salvation lies in his personal sanctification. There too lies the salvation of others.” Durrwell’s classic offers a hopeful and lucid vision of the Christian spiritual life to inspire and teach readers about the mystery of living in personal holiness—and becoming most truly themselves—by being “in Christ” as a member his body. Such contemporary theologians as Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre have begun to discover the importance of both the idea of personal holiness and what this highly original thinker had to say about it.