Limping through Life A Farm Boy’s Polio Memoir Jerry Apps “Families throughout the United States lived in fear of polio throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, and now the disease had come to our farm. I can still remember that short winter day and the chilly night when I first showed symptoms. My life would never be the same.” —from the Introduction Polio was epidemic in the United States starting in 1916. By the 1930s, quarantines and school closings were becoming common, as isolation was one of the only ways to fight the disease. The Sauk vaccine was not available until 1955; in that year, Wisconsin’s Fox River valley had more polio cases per capita than anywhere in the United States. In his most personal book, Jerry Apps, who contracted polio at age twelve, reveals how the disease affected him physically and emotionally, profoundly influencing his education, military service, and family life and setting him on the path to becoming a professional writer. A hardworking farm kid who loved playing softball, young Jerry Apps would have to make many adjustments and meet many challenges after that winter night he was stricken with a debilitating, sometimes fatal illness. In Limping through Life he explores the ways his world changed after polio and pays tribute to those family members, teachers, and friends who helped him along the way.

Put your flawed foot forward. Pick up most leadership books and you’ll find strategies for leveraging your power and minimizing your areas of weakness. But think about the leaders whose names have gone down in history. Most of them were so messed up that, if they were looking for work today, no executive placement service would give them the time of day. God’s criteria for choosing leaders runs counter to the conventional wisdom. Our culture equates strength with effectiveness, but God favors leaders who know the value of brokenness. In Leading With a Limp, you’ll discover what makes flawed leaders so successful. They’re not preoccupied with protecting their image, they are undaunted by chaos and complexity, they are ready to risk failure in moving an organization from what is to what should be. God chooses leaders who aren’t deceived by the myths of power and control, but who realize that God’s power is found in brokenness. If you are a leader–or if you have been making excuses to avoid leading–find out how you can take full advantage of your weakness. A limping leader is the person God uses to accomplish amazing things. To go deeper, check out the Leading With a Limp Workbook.

For Jurgen Moltmann, theological anthropology must be liberating. It should take a stand against dehumanizing images and concepts of human life and point out ways to "true humanity." In his view, a theologian can develop such a liberating anthropology only if he speaks explicitly from the perspective of God's kingdom as conceived in the Bible and the Christian tradition and if he speaks to and in his context, as one who experiences contemporary sufferings and hopes. But how? This book analyzes the development of Moltmann's theology in the light of this quest for a liberating view on human life. It examines the anthropological concerns in the different stages of his theological enterprise: his post-war Trummertheologie, the "loose theological threads" of the 1950s, his theology of hope and promise in the 1960s, his theology of the cross, human rights and play in the 1970s and his ecological and "charismatic" theology of the 1980s and 1990s. Moltmann's theological thinking has taken place consciously at the intersection of personal experiences, historical challenges, biblical testimony and the fundamentals of the Christian tradition. Analyzing his quest for a liberating anthropology in a chronological way, this study therefore gives an impression of the frictions and fault lines of Christian anthropology in the context of the societal changes during the second half of the twentieth century. A concluding chapter discusses some of the problems accentuated in the course of this analysis and evaluates some valuable leads for a Christian anthropology today. TON VAN PROOIJEN submitted this study as his doctoral dissertation at the Free University of Amsterdam. His current research interests include anthropology and politics, particularly the concept of humankind in Christian Democratic political thought.

"Phil Beuth spent his entire broadcasting career with one company. As the first employee of a fledgling media startup in 1955, Phil worked his way up over a 40-year span, as Capital Cities grew to become one of America's most influential and successful media companies. Limping on Water is a Dickensian rags-to-riches tale of a disadvantaged boy, born with cerebral palsy, who rose to become a top executive at one of America's most respected and successful media companies, Capital Cities Communications, a member of two Broadcasting Halls of Fame, head of Good Morning America and a Division President of ABC. More than simply recollections of a career at a celebrated company and the famous people encountered along his path, Phil's story is a keen insider's chronicle of that 'Mad Men' golden era of television; a time when broadcasting as we know it came into being."--

We're all going to die. Yet in our medically advanced, technological age, many of us see death as a distant reality--something that happens only at the end of a long life or to other people. In The End of the Christian Life, Todd Billings urges Christians to resist that view. Instead, he calls us to embrace our mortality in our daily life and faith. This is the journey of genuine discipleship, Billings says: following the crucified and resurrected Lord in a world of distraction and false hopes. Drawing on his experience as a professor and father living with incurable cancer, Billings offers a personal yet deeply theological account of the gospel's expansive hope for small, mortal creatures. Artfully weaving rich theology with powerful narrative, Billings writes for church leaders and laypeople alike. Whether we are young or old, reeling from loss or clinging to our own prosperity, this book challenges us to walk a strange but wondrous path: in the midst of joy and lament, to receive mortal limits as a gift, an opportunity to give ourselves over to the Lord of life.

An email conversation between a noted poet.walker and a noted performance.walker about being temporarily prevented from walking "e;normally"e; by illness/surgery. Their reflections cover cultural perceptions and personal values associated with walking, personal anecdotes, philosophical reflection, practices for daily-life and an alphabet of falling.

The stories of Scripture are for everyone. No exceptions. Emmy Kegler has a complicated relationship with the Bible. As a queer woman who grew up in both conservative Evangelical and progressive Protestant churches, she knows too well how Scripture can be used to wound and exclude. And yet, the stories of Scripture continue to captivate and inspire her--both as a person of faith and as a pastor to a congregation. So she set out to fall in love with the Bible, wrestling with the stories inside, where she met a God who continues to seek us out--appearing again and again as a voice, a presence, and a promise. Whenever we are pushed to the edges, our voices silenced, or our stories dismissed, God goes out after us--seeking us until we are found again. And God is seeking out those whose voices we too quickly silence and dismiss, too. Because God's story is a story of welcome and acceptance for everyone--no exceptions. Kegler shows us that even when we feel like lost and dusty coins--rusted from others' indifference, misspent and misused--God picks up a broom and sweeps every corner of creation to find us.