A major literary event—the eagerly anticipated publication of a long-lost novel from legendary writer and three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee John Oliver Killens, hailed as the founding father of the Black Arts Movement and mentor to celebrated writers, including Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Arthur Flowers, and Terry McMillan. Wanderlust has taken Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson on numerous adventures, from Mississippi to Washington D.C., Vietnam, London and eventually to Africa, to the fictitious Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya, where the young musician hopes to “find himself.” But this small sliver of a country in West Africa, recently freed from British colonial rule, is thrown into turmoil with the discovery of cobanium—a radioactive mineral 500 times more powerful than uranium, making it irresistible for greedy speculators, grifters, and charlatans. Overnight, outsiders descend upon the sleepy capital city looking for “a piece of the action.” When a plot to assassinate Guanaya’s leader is discovered, Jimmy Jay—a dead ringer for the Prime Minister—is enlisted in a counter scheme to foil the would-be coup. He will travel to America with half of Guanaya’s cabinet ministers to meet with the President of the United States and address the UN General Assembly, while the rest of the cabinet will remain in Guanaya with the real Prime Minister. What could go wrong? Everything. Set in the 1980s, this smart, funny, dazzlingly brilliant novel is a literary delight—and the final gift from an American literary legend.

Though obedient ministers usually don't have problems following God and his Word, they often have difficulty helping those to whom they minister. Dr. LeBlanc provides scientific knowledge of human nature and applies it to Christian ministry, providing understanding via an ethnological model that shows how ministers can understand communities through the experience of its residents. Using sociological and anthropological terminologies to describe the scientific criteria that differentiate communities, Dr. LeBlanc will show you how your ministry can be formulated to be productive in your community. As you read, you'll gain confidence and assurance of your personal divine calling, and you'll discover how to reach your congregation in ways you've never thought possible. Pick up Dr. LeBlanc's roadmap and find your way to success in your ministry.

Focusing on pastoral leadership within local churches or groups of churches, Derek Tidball provides a comprehensive survey of the variety of ministry models and patterns found in the New Testament with applications for today's ministry.

John Oliver Killens's politically charged novels And Then We Heard the Thunder and The Cotillion; or One Good Bull Is Half the Herd, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His works of fiction and nonfiction, the most famous of which is his novel Youngblood, have been translated into more than a dozen languages. An influential novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and teacher, he was the founding chair of the Harlem Writers Guild and mentored a generation of black writers at Fisk, Howard, Columbia, and elsewhere. Killens is recognized as the spiritual father of the Black Arts Movement. In this first major biography of Killens, Keith Gilyard examines the life and career of the man who was perhaps the premier African American writer-activist from the 1950s to the 1980s. Gilyard extends his focus to the broad boundaries of Killens's times and literary achievement--from the Old Left to the Black Arts Movement and beyond. Figuring prominently in these pages are the many important African American artists and political figures connected to the author from the 1930s to the 1980s--W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Alphaeus Hunton, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Harry Belafonte, and Maya Angelou, among others.

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR “The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem "If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox) The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis. "One hopes that this book is read widely—that Robinson’s audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination."―New York Review of Books "If there’s any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity’s efforts to try and turn the tide before it’s too late." ―Polygon (Best of the Year) "Masterly." —New Yorker "[The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it’s terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It’s my book of the year." —Locus "Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom." ―Bloomberg Green

This book brings a critique to the theology of the ordained ministry in contemporary Catholicism, a theology that fosters clericalism. It challenges a theology that views the ordained as "set apart" for a particular work over and against the laity. This book brings critique to current practices, including lifelong commitment to the ordained ministry, the requirement of celibacy for the ordained, and the exclusion of women from the ordained ministry. The author examines history, reclaiming elements that have been distorted or forgotten, and asks, "What is retrievable in the tradition that is freeing and redeeming for a renewed theology?" The critique of the traditional theology and current practices in the ordained ministry and the retrieval of relevant elements of the tradition is a springboard for reconstructing a theology of the ordained ministry. The model of the Trinity is suggested as an image for the ordained ministry itself and through its relational nature, the ministry of the whole church. The model of the Trinity sets the ordained ministry in its rightful context of the Christian community, where all of the gifts of the baptized are valued and where ministry is collaborative, non-hierarchical, and mutually enriching for the people of God.