The last command Jesus gave the church before he ascended to heaven was the Great Commission, the call for Christians to "make disciples of all the nations." But Christians have responded by making "Christians," not "disciples." This, according to brilliant scholar and renowned Christian thinker Dallas Willard, has been the church's Great Omission. "The word disciple occurs 269 times in the New Testament," writes Willard. "Christian is found three times and was first introduced to refer precisely to disciples of Jesus. . . . The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ. But the point is not merely verbal. What is more important is that the kind of life we see in the earliest church is that of a special type of person. All of the assurances and benefits offered to humankind in the gospel evidently presuppose such a life and do not make realistic sense apart from it. The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian -- especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He or she stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God." Willard boldly challenges the thought that we can be Christians without being disciples, or call ourselves Christians without applying this understanding of life in the Kingdom of God to every aspect of life on earth. He calls on believers to restore what should be the heart of Christianity -- being active disciples of Jesus Christ. Willard shows us that in the school of life, we are apprentices of the Teacher whose brilliance encourages us to rise above traditional church understanding and embrace the true meaning of discipleship -- an active, concrete, 24/7 life with Jesus.

This new second edition, refined, updated and revised, contains the story of those 15 years along with revisions in how a humble gathering evolved over two centuries into the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a modern denomination of international stature. The Disciples: A Struggle for Reformation, Revised Edition discusses how Disciples progressed from congregationalism to Covenant, how they survived the tumult of Civil War, how they developed a ministry of missions on a global scale, and how they met the brutal challenge of 21st century COVID.

Chalice Introduction to Disciples Theology offers a comprehensive introduction to theology and ethics from the standpoint of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Including a broad range of Disciples authors, the text represents the racial-ethnic, generational, and theological diversity that characterizes the denomination from a postmodern and postcolonial view. Contributors include: D. Newell Williams, James O. Duke, Verity Jones, William J. Nottingham, Hee An Choi, William Tabbernee, W. Clark Gilpin, Kristine A. Culp, Don Browning, Clark M. Williamson, Rita Nakashima Brock, Dyron Daughrity, Victor L. Hunter, Sharon E. Watkins, Keith Watkins, Thomas F. Best, Belva Brown Jordan, Stephanie A. Paulsell, Kay Bessler Northcutt, Mark Miller McLemore, Darryl Trimiew, Joe R. Jones, William Wright, Boseale Eale, Karen-Marie Yust, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Joseph D. Driskill, Angel Luis Rivera-Agosto, Michael K. Kinnamon, Michael St. A. Miller, Carmelo Álvarez, Christobal Mareco Lird, Don A. Pittman, Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, and Peter Goodwin Heltzel

Every Sunday, thousands of Christians lift their voices in song and their spirits in worship using the acclaimed Chalice Hymnal-join them and sing from a brilliant blend of 620 easy-to-sing traditional and contemporary hymns.

Francisco Varo’s Arte de la Lengua Mandarina, completed ca. 1680, is the earliest published grammar of any spoken form of Chinese and the fullest known description of the standard language of the seventeenth century. It establishes beyond doubt that this “Language of the Mandarins” was not Pekingese or Peking-based but had instead a Jiang-Huai or Nankingese-like phonology. It also provides important information about the nature and formation of pre-modern standard forms of Chinese and will lead to revisions of currently held views on Chinese koines and their relationship with regional speech forms and the received vernacular literature. Finally, it provides a wealth ot information on stylistic speech levels, honorific usage, and social customs of the elite during the early Qing period. The book provides a full translation of the 1703 text of the Arte, an extensive introduction to the life and work of Varo, an index of Chinese characters inserted into the translation, and an index of linguistic terms and concepts. It should be of interest to a diverse readership of Chinese historical, comparative, and descriptive linguists, students of Qing history and literature, historiographers of linguistics, and specialists in early Western religious and cultural contact with China.