Resurrecting Excellence aims to rekindle and encourage among Christian leaders an unselfish ambition for the gospel that shuns both competition and mediocrity and rightly focuses on the beauty, power, and excellence of living as faithful disciples of the crucified and risen Christ. Drawing on ancient traditions and on contemporary voices, L. Gregory Jones offer both a theology of excellence and portraits of pastors, lay leaders, and congregations that embody "a more excellent way."--Publisher's description.

The author of the highly praised memoir Things Seen and Unseen now bears witness to the way death yields new life as she searches for direction in the wake of her brother's death. “Honest and human and surprisingly humorous in its clarity of vision.” —The Washington Post Book Review In her memoir Things Seen and Unseen, Nora Gallagher reflected on a year of spiritual renewal and the fact of mortality with uncommon wisdom and grace. We rejoin her in Practicing Resurrection. A desire to reclaim her own “wild life” and a sense of the sacred in the world compels her to assess everything: her marriage, her writing career, and her commitment to parish life. A profound testimony to the urgency of living with meaning, to the natural world’s solace and sacredness and a beautiful and often harrowing account of the search for vocation. Gallagher

During the late second and early third centuries C.E. the resurrection became a central question for intellectual commentary, with increasingly tense divisions between those who interpreted the resurrection as a bodily experience and those who did not. The relationship between the resurrected person and their mortal flesh was also a key point of discussion, especially in regards to sexual desires, body parts, and practices. Early Christians struggled to articulate how and why these bodily features related to the imagined resurrected self. The problems posed by the resurrection thus provoked theological analysis of the mortal body, sexual desire and gender. Resurrecting Parts is the first study to examine the place of gender and sexuality in early Christian debates on the nature of resurrection, investigating how the resurrected body has been interpreted by writers of this period in order to address the nature of sexuality and sexual difference. In particular, Petrey considers the instability of early Christian attempts to separate maleness and femaleness. Bodily parts commonly signified sexual difference, yet it was widely thought that future resurrected bodies would not experience desire or reproduction. In the absence of sexuality, this insistence on difference became difficult to maintain. To achieve a common, shared identity and status for the resurrected body that nevertheless preserved sexual difference, treatises on the resurrection found it necessary to explain how and in what way these parts would be transformed in the resurrection, shedding all associations with sexual desires, acts, and reproduction. Exploring a range of early Christian sources, from the Greek and Latin fathers to the authors of the Nag Hammadi writings, Resurrecting Parts is a fascinating resource for scholars interested in gender and sexuality in classical antiquity, early Christianity, asceticism, and, of course, the resurrection and the body.

Theologian Douglas Harink invites readers to rediscover Romans as a treatise on justice, tracing Paul's thinking on this theme through a sequential reading of the book and finding in each passage facets of the gospel's primary claim—that God accomplishes justice in the death and resurrection of Jesus Messiah.

Bestselling author Andrew Farley takes readers on an imaginative journey through the enemy's plan of attack. This creative, modern-day parable exposes evangelical readers to the reality of the supernatural and equips them to do battle against the hidden--but very real--realm of Satan and his demonic forces. Now in paper.

There is no question that bringing men and women to new birth in Christ is essential. But, argues Eugene Peterson, isn t it obvious that growth in Christ is equally essential? Yet the American church does not treat Christian growth and character formation with equivalent urgency. We are generally uneasy with the quiet, obscure conditions in which growth takes place. Building maturity in Christ is too often relegated to footnote status in the text of our lives. / In Practice Resurrection Peterson brings the voice of Scripture especially Paul s letter to the Ephesians and the voice of the contemporary Christian congregation together in understanding what is involved in the practice of becoming mature growing up to the stature of Christ.

Though bringing people to new birth in Christ through evangelism is essential, says Peterson, isn't it obvious that growth in Christ is equally essential? Yet the American church does not treat Christian growth and character formation with equivalent urgency. We are generally uneasy with the quiet, obscure conditions in which growth takes place, and building maturity in Christ too often gets relegated to footnote status in the text of our lives. In Practice Resurrection Peterson brings the voice of Scripture -- especially Paul's letter to the Ephesians -- and the voice of the contemporary Christian congregation together to unpack what it means to fully grow up "to the stature of Christ." Peterson's robust discussion will move readers to restore transformed Christian character to the center of their lives. This helpful study guide is designed to enable small groups in schools or churches -- or even individuals -- to delve deeper into the timely wisdom of Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ. Peter Santucci here breaks up Peterson's book into thirteen "sessions," each of which contains a summary, select quotes to consider, questions for interaction, and a prayer drawn from the text of Ephesians that is covered in the corresponding book chapter.