Loneliness knows no season. It can strike during times of busyness and a full social calendar just as easily as it can when plans are canceled and friends are far off. And we may be surprised just how common loneliness is among our friends, family, and colleagues. But it isn't inevitable and it isn't forever. In Transforming Loneliness, Graham invites you to surrender your loneliness to God and work with Him in making healthy choices that lead to life, joy, and community. Through biblical principles and examples, along with true-life stories, you will discover how the core needs that drive your loneliness--the need to be known, to be chosen, to belong, and to be valued--can be met as God transforms your loneliness into a positive experience that accomplishes His purposes and draws you into a closer, more intimate, and more meaningful relationship with Him and others. Loneliness is not the last word. God designed you for connection, and through his power you will find it. Includes a reader's discussion guide and the UCLA Loneliness Survey.

What makes people lonely? And how can Christian communities better minister to the lonely? In The Loneliness Epidemic, behavioral scientist and researcher Susan Mettes explores those questions and more. Guided by current research from Barna Group, Mettes illustrates the profound physical, emotional, and social toll of loneliness in the United States. Surprisingly, her research shows that it is not the oldest Americans but the youngest adults who are loneliest and that social media can actually play a positive role in alleviating loneliness. Mettes highlights the role that belonging, friendship, closeness, and expectations play in preventing it. She also offers meaningful ways the church can minister to lonely people, going far beyond simplistic solutions--like helping them meet new people--to addressing their inner lives and the God who understands them. With practical and highly applicable tips, this book is an invaluable tool for anyone--ministry leaders, parents, friends--trying to help someone who feels alone. Readers will emerge better able to deal with their own loneliness and to help alleviate the loneliness of others. Foreword by Barna Group president David Kinnaman.

Statistics show that, despite our connected world--and partly because of it--we are lonelier than ever. Social media tricks us into thinking that we are engaged in genuine friendships, except we never quite get beyond that feeling of being outside someone else's life and looking in every so often at what they choose to show the world. Instead of intimacy we get little more than what amounts to digital small talk. But there is a solution. With plenty of good humor and practical advice, Jack Eason invites you to discover the benefits of doing life together with other brothers and sisters in Christ. Grounding his message in Scripture, Eason helps you - learn the obstacles to real community - reimagine what real friendship looks like - discover a place of true belonging - and more If you're tired of feeling lonely, this encouraging and community-building book is just what you need.

Presents a guide for dealing with grief and loss, detailing five steps of healing that can lead to a lifestyle alignment with personal values and new possibilities for a re-engaged life. --Publisher's description.

“What does it mean to be lonely?” Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds. A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare’s King Lear points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness—how it is a response to the problem of the “missing mother.” Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience—Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts—Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson’s “Experience,” to name a few—with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower. Written with deceptive simplicity, Loneliness as a Way of Life is something rare—an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.

Women in ministry face needs that are often overlooked by the local church and consequently remain underdeveloped as they seek to lead and guide those in their care. The need to shape emotions to guard and fulfill God’s purpose and the need to bond in order to build a community of authentic, lasting friendships are distinctively feminine and foundational to a successful ministry. As the founder of Inspire Women, Anita Carman is uniquely qualified to offer practical, biblical training and resources to support leaders, and those thinking about leading, on the front lines in our churches. Transforming Leaders covers the three primary emotions, loneliness, rejection, and fear; a leader must overcome to maximize her impact while providing a personalized curriculum to knit the hearts of those she serves.