Pastoral Helps
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Heirs Together
$16.99Add to cartA church where everyone–adults, young people and children–has one vision and moves together. It almost sounds too good to be true. The vision which has inspired Daphne Kirk for over thirty years, and which she has actively sought to pass on to others, is of a church which includes all ages (children, young people and adults) in every aspect of its life. This is the vision of the intergenerational Church. Kirk writes with great energy and passion, presenting a radical picture of intergenerational cell life without glossing over the difficulties of initiating and sustaining that life.
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Pastoral Care : A Practical Guide
$29.99Add to cartAt the heart of the local church is the Christ-like care it manifests to its own members and those in the community. Increasingly, with fewer full-time ministers, this role is falling to the laity, often without formal training. This book will help ordained and lay members of the church to be more confident and better equipped in pastoral skills. Included are sections on understanding pastoral ministry, how to minister safely, developing appropriate skills for use in church and in the wider community and how to minister to oneself. A practical, hands-on book that all in pastoral ministry should read, and one that will help new pastors to survive and thrive in a long-term ministry in the church.
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Living Hope : A Practical Theology Of Hope For The Dying
$22.99Add to cartLiving Hope explores the meaning of Christian hope, its theology and psychology. It reflects on the sources of hope and wrestles with the concern for a hope that is not just a set of cliches, but which is engaging and realistic, suggesting practical ways of nurturing hope in those we care for. Russell Herbert argues that resurrection is central to Christian hope, drawing on the insights of psychology, nursing science and Jurgen Moltmann’s theology of hope. The book integrates theological reflection with a number of case studies and practical suggestions for clergy and pastoral carers.
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Intergenerational Cell Resources
$24.99Add to cartIntergenerational Cell Resources is intended to supplement Heirs Together. The four Ws of Welcome, Worship, Word and Witness are clearly explained and laid out, with guidelines and useful suggestions for the prayer night and the social outreach event which form an integral part of each meeting series. The meeting outlines in this book provide you with all the practical help you need to run your cell meeting, including photocopiable handouts and forms for delegating the various components.
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All Age Everything
$18.99Add to cartThere are many differing opinions on children and their ability to worship. Some churches aim for frequent, all-age services as their way of encouraging children to encounter God, while others rely on the groups that children are sent to during the service. Like all areas of ministry with children, all-age worship is not easy–there are barriers to face, mistakes to make and lessons to learn. This revised edition of All-Age Everything is full of ideas and suggestions to make all-age worship a true intergenerational worship experience. It looks at every part of an all-age service, from how to go about the initial planning, followed by tips for welcomes and beginnings, to endings and blessings. The ideas can be adapted to suit your own church setting, but, most of all, they make meeting God fun for the entire church family, however young or old.
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Disciple Making Culture
$15.99Add to cartA PRACTICAL GUIDE TO HELP YOU CULTIVATE HEALTHY CHURCH CULTURE
Church leaders who focus on programs, strategy, and curriculum can easily miss what ties them all together: culture. Cultivating culture is the difference between churches who flourish and those who flounder at disciple-making. Leaders must cultivate a healthy disciple-making culture. But how?
Author Brandon Guindon’s book Disciple-Making Culture provides a how-to guide for cultivating a healthy disciple-making culture throughout your church. He walks readers through key components of healthy culture, which he has uncovered over the course of his more than twenty years of disciple-making in various contexts. Using time-tested principles, he answers a challenging question: “How do we actually live out the Great Commission-as a church?”
Learn a relational method for making disciples at your church that is built upon how Jesus and the early church made disciples. Gain the tools needed to transform your church’s culture. Walk away with a reproducible model that’s been successfully implemented by thriving disciple-making churches around the world. Allow the pages of Scripture to become not only words-but also real-life experiences.
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30 Days To Understanding The Bible Study Guide (Student/Study Guide)
$13.99Add to cartIn this six-session video Bible study (DVD/digital downloads sold separately), bestselling author, pastor, and theologian Max Anders guides participants through the entire Bible, providing them with an understanding of all the major biblical characters, the major events, and the major points of geography they need to know to get a solid grasp of the story of the Old and New Testaments. By spending just 15 minutes a day in personal study for five days each session, participants will come to understand not only the facts and history of the Bible but also its teachings that have become such an important foundation of Western civilization.
Participants will learn about the Ten Great Subjects of the Bible (the Bible, God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, angels, man, sin, salvation, Church, and future things) and some of the more puzzling points of Scripture, such as why there are four Gospels, how to understand Jesus’ parables, the importance of miracles, the importance of the Resurrection, and much more.
The Bible is an enormous book covering much information and many subjects, and while it is not possible to learn everything about it in 30 days, they will gain a beginning knowledge-an overview-they can use to build a more complete understanding in the years ahead. In just fifteen minutes a day for thirty days, group members can gain a foundational grasp of the most important book ever written.
Designed for use with the 30 Days to Understanding the Bible Video Study (sold separately).
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Heavens Morning Breaks
$22.99Add to cartAt the heart of this book is the importance of balancing the Christian gospel with the hopes and wishes of a grieving family, even if these wishes do not entirely fit with the minister’s personal theology. Brooks examines the changes in funeral practice over the last 20 years before looking at issues such as cremation versus burial, life after death and difficult funeral services–where suicide or the death of a child may be a factor, or where mourners are few.
With a chapter on pastoral care for the bereaved as well as resource sections containing suggested orders of service, hymns, songs, prayers and readings, this is a helpful addition to literature on funerals for those involved in ministry.
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Embody : Five Keys To Leading With Integrity
$18.99Add to cartPastors and other leaders feel trapped in systems and institutions where actions and decisions often seem to have little to do with the scripture they read or the theology they profess. They are swept into leadership norms that resemble business models more than mission. They see in others and (sometimes) recognize in themselves the disconnect between their own theology and their leadership. They feel unable to fully integrate their beliefs with their behavior.
Many leaders–younger ones, especially–are frustrated and disillusioned by this disconnect. They see hypocrisy all around them, and in themselves. They see that our culture is at a critical juncture, which gives ministry a greater sense of urgency. But they want to do things differently, to be what they believe. They want to embody their Christian beliefs in every decision, every act of ministry leadership.
The functional authority of scripture must be evident in the way church leaders lead, both within the congregation and in the public square. The way we church leaders lead proves the bible does–or does not–matter. In Embody, Karoline Lewis shows how to frame leadership in the church and public square theologically, and from the perspective of incarnation. She shows how leadership can be a direct line between what you believe and what you do. She incorporates examples of Jesus’ leadership and the Paraclete in the Gospel of John, showing how leadership was achieved by walking beside.
Embody offers practical things for the reader to consider and do, instruction and guidance for how to make the ‘integration steps’ necessary in order to become an embodied leader, and exploration of core components of embodied leadership.
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Semi Final Musings
$26.99Add to cartThe target audience for this volume is ministry leaders, Pastors, elders and deacons, as well as those individuals who would like to grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ. The audience will be of necessity: men and women who are either in College or Seminary and/or in ministries working in churches.
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Rediscipling The White Church
$20.99Add to cart“Many white Christians across America are waking up to the fact that something is seriously wrong–but often this is where we get stuck.”
Confronted by the deep-rooted racial injustice in our society, many white Christians instinctively scramble to add diversity to their churches and ministries. But is diversity really the answer to the widespread racial dysfunction we see in the church? In this simple but powerful book, Pastor David Swanson contends that discipleship, not diversity, lies at the heart of our white churches’ racial brokenness. Before white churches can pursue diversity, he argues, we must first take steps to address the faulty discipleship that has led to our segregation in the first place. Drawing on the work of philosopher James K. A. Smith and others, Swanson proposes that we rethink our churches’ habits, or liturgies, and imagine together holistic, communal discipleship practices that can reform us as members of Christ’s diverse body.
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Recovering From Biblical Manhood And Womanhood
$18.99Add to cartWhile evangelicalism dukes it out about who can be church leaders, the rest of the 98% of us need to be well equipped to see where we fit in God’s household and why that matters. Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is a resource to help church leaders improve the culture of their church and disciple men and women in their flock to read, understand, and apply Scripture to our lives in the church. Until both men and women grow in their understanding of their relationship to Scripture, there will continue to be tension between the sexes in the church. Church leaders need to be engaged in thoughtful critique of the biblical manhood and womanhood movement and the effects it has on their congregation.
Do men and women benefit equally from God’s word? Are they equally responsible in sharpening one another in the faith and passing it down to the next generation? While radical feminists claim that the Bible is a hopelessly patriarchal construction by powerful men that oppresses women, evangelical churches simply reinforce this teaching when we constantly separate men and women, customizing women’s resources and studies according to a culturally based understanding of roles. Do we need men’s Bibles and women’s Bibles, or can the one, holy Bible guide us all? Is the Bible, God’s word, so male-centered and authored that women need to create their own resources to relate to it? No! And in it, we also learn from women. Women play an active role as witnesses to the faith, passing it on to the new generations.
This book explores the feminine voice in Scripture as synergistic with the dominant male voice. Through the women, we often get the story behind the story–take Ruth for example, or the birth of Christ through the perspective of Mary and Elizabeth in Luke. Aimee fortifies churches in a biblical understanding of brotherhood and sisterhood in God’s household and the necessity of learning from one another in studying God’s word.
The troubling teaching under the rubric of “biblical manhood and womanhood” has thrived with the help of popular Biblicist interpretive methods. And Biblicist interpretive methods ironically flourish in our individualistic culture that works against the “traditional values” of family and community that the biblical manhood and womanhood movement is trying to uphold. This book helps to correct Biblicist trends in the church today, affirming that we do not read God’s word alone, we read it within our interpretive covenant com
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Pre Marriage Course Study Journal (Student/Study Guide)
$14.99Add to cartToday we are facing a global crisis when it comes to families. There is an urgent need to invest in marriage and family life, for strong societies are built on strong families, and strong families are built on strong marriages. Marriages today are under more pressure than ever, and with the amount of marital breakdown we are experiencing, more people are seeing the need of the need to prepare. The choice to marry–no longer an assumption in our society–presents a key moment for learning.
The Pre-Marriage Course, developed by Nicky and Sila Lee of Alpha, has been revised and updated to provide practical tools to help engaged couples build a strong foundation for a lasting marriage. This update includes talks from experts including Dr. Gray Chapman, Dr. Henry Cloud, and Dr. Sue Johnson on topics such as money, sex, love languages, healthy boundaries, and building connections. The course will also cover how engaged couples can:
*Express their feelings and learn to listen
*Recognize the importance of commitment
*Resolve conflicts with one another
*Keep love alive and develop a fulfilling sexual relationship
*Talk about goals and values as a coupleThe Pre-Marriage Course is based on a Christian understanding of love and serves to strengthen marriages within the church while being accessible for all couples from any cultural background, with or without a background in the Christian faith.
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Beyond The Childrens Corner
$27.50Add to cartBeyond the Children’s Corner is a practical handbook to help churches become more welcoming to children and families in worship. It encourages PCCs and ministry teams to reflect on the spiritual needs of children, the pastoral needs of families, and how to remove barriers and manage change effectively.
Based on multiple training sessions and extensive casework, informed by research by the Church of England’s Life Events team and the Methodist Church, it explores:
? The changing needs of modern families;
? What tells you it’s time for change;
? ‘Quick wins’ to make the worship space more welcoming and spiritually imaginative;
? Engaging children in spiritually nourishing worship;
? Children and contemplative worship – what to do about noise;
? Building and sustaining relationships with families and children.Many books on All-Age Worship focus the service itself. Beyond the Children’s Corner explores how children and adults can be truly integrated as the church community, covering parents’ perspectives, the church building and the challenge of change as well as what happens in worship.
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Adept Church : Navigating Between A Rock And A Hard Place
$15.99Add to cartA theologically grounded, yet practical, user-friendly guide for church leaders seeking to save their churches. A methodical, logical approach for strategic development and decision-making. A clear process for showing congregations how to define their reality, and a map showing the way to move forward.
Offers a clear process to help congregations understand their situation by taking an honest “look in the mirror.”
Helps congregations build a realistic roadmap for moving forward.
Illustrates how the status quo (institutionalism) is rewarded and that seeking transformation goes against institutionalism.
Outlines what it means to be an adept church, a church that can navigate between a rock and a hard place because it makes decisions based upon where it needs to go and not where it is currently.
Provides practical, first step for congregations to move forward.
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For His Glory Leader Guide
$15.99Add to cartDiscover Your True Worth in Christ.
What comes to mind when you hear the word masterpiece? Perhaps you think of a beautiful painting, a spectacular home renovation, or a captivating sunset. But few of us would describe ourselves with that word. We tend to listen instead to the lies that define us as rejected, unwanted, less than, ugly, stupid, or a failure. Sometimes we can feel more like worthless junk than a valuable masterpiece. Yet that is exactly what God’s Word says that we are!
In For His Glory, Marian Jordan Ellis leads us in an in-depth study of Ephesians to help us dismantle the lies we’ve believed about ourselves and replace them with a new identity built on God’s Word. The truths in this beloved epistle speak to the core beliefs we carry about ourselves, revealing to us our part in God’s magnificent design to redeem a people for Himself who reflect His glory to the world. Drawing on her own journey of transformation and her passion to equip women to overcome shame, insecurity, inferiority, and condemnation, Marian invites us on a journey to discover our true worth in Christ, our status as beloved children of God, and our glorious calling as His masterpiece.
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Holding Up Half The Sky
$21.00Add to cartWomen have played significant roles in ministry and leadership throughout the history of the church and the pages of the Bible. Today, women make up more than half the church, and do much of the mission, ministry, and discipleship in the life of the church. But women have often been held back from ministry roles. Graham Joseph Hill outlines the biblical vision for women in ministry and leadership. He offers a biblical and passionate call for women to be released to teach, to lead, to preach, to serve, to pastor, and to minister in every area of the church. The Bible paints a radical vision of women, empowered and emboldened for full ministry participation in Christ’s church. The biblical vision for women and for their role as teachers, witnesses, disciplers, and leaders transforms not only personal lives, but also the church and the world. This book offers a biblical case for women teaching and leading in the church. Hill then explores practical ways that we can empower and release more female leaders in the church, and ways that we can amplify the voices and honor the gifts of women in the way Jesus intended. Together women and men can revitalize the church and renew the world.
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Delighted : What Teenagers Are Teaching The Church About Joy
$22.99Add to cartWhat would youth ministry look like if it were based on a pursuit of authentic Christian joy?
Joy is not often a word young people associate with church–but it should be. By reimagining three common practices in youth ministry through the theological lens of joy, veteran youth workers Kenda Creasy Dean, Wesley Ellis, Justin Forbes, and Abigail Visco Rusert demonstrate how to shift this association and become more honest about what youth ministry can, and can’t, do to support young people and their faith. Grounding youth ministry in joy rather than in fear also models a way forward for the church. It reminds us that youth ministry is not a tool for anxious congregations to use to ensure their survival. Rather, youth ministry–like all ministry–is a way to help people name and experience God’s delight, free from fear and anxiety about their futures.
Delighted is the first book to emerge from the Yale Center for Faith and Culture’s Adolescent Faith and Flourishing project, offering a sustained reflection on joy’s practical importance for youth ministry. With reflection questions offered at the end of each chapter, Delighted is easy for youth ministers, volunteers, and pastors to pick up and use immediately–tapping into young people’s instinctive desire for joy for the entire church, as well as for ministry with teenagers.
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Sundays Sermon For Mondays World
$25.99Add to cartWhat can preachers do to help congregants navigate everyday life with the courage, imagination, and savvy it takes to testify in action and word to God’s mercy and justice?
Christianity’s witness depends on credible Christian lives carried out in ordinary settings of everyday life. Sunday’s Sermon for Monday’s World helps preachers design sermons that equip believers to act with improvisational, creative courage in the ordinary settings of their Monday-to-Saturday lives.
How can we who preach inspire the “ordinary prophets” of our time–those who, in Christ’s name, will act in great or small ways as agents of redemptive interruption? Sally A. Brown, with her extensive experience both in parish ministry and training others for ministry, shares preaching strategies that equip these ordinary prophets to take daring action.
Brown begins by reconsidering the power and limits of the missional model of Christian witness and argues that Christian witness today must be adaptive, and therefore imaginative and improvisational. She then turns to the connection between the sermons our listeners hear on Sunday and their capacity to timely, inventive action in everyday situations.
Sunday’s Sermon for Monday’s World will inspire both preachers and those who listen to them to move from sanctuary to street, week after week, eager to discern and participate in the ongoing, redemptive work of God already under way amid the ordinary scenes and settings of their Monday-to-Saturday lives.
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Surrendered Participant Workbook (Workbook)
$17.99Add to cartLearn How to Surrender Like Jesus.
Are you facing a problem in life that you just can’t fix, no matter what you do? Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “Let go and let God.” But it’s easier said than done. Is it possible that giving up on what you can’t change is God’s path to peace for your life? In this six-week Bible study of Jesus in the wilderness, Barb explores Jesus’ time of testing and contrasts it with the Israelites’ failures in the wilderness.
As you learn from Jesus’ example, you’ll discover six principles that will equip you to let God lead you to victory despite your circumstances as you deal with the problems and pain you are facing:
1. Recognize You Can’t Handle It
2. Stop Following Your Feelings
3. Give Up Control and Reach for God
4. Embrace God’s Better Blessing
5. Let Go of Fear
6. Experience the Blessings of a Surrendered LifeIf you’re tired of following your feelings or being disappointed by unchanging circumstances, learn how to surrender like Jesus and experience God’s power and peace in your life as never before.
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For His Glory Participant Workbook (Student/Study Guide)
$17.99Add to cartDiscover Your True Worth in Christ.
What comes to mind when you hear the word masterpiece? Perhaps you think of a beautiful painting, a spectacular home renovation, or a captivating sunset. But few of us would describe ourselves with that word. We tend to listen instead to the lies that define us as rejected, unwanted, less than, ugly, stupid, or a failure. Sometimes we can feel more like worthless junk than a valuable masterpiece. Yet that is exactly what God’s Word says that we are!
In For His Glory, Marian Jordan Ellis leads us in an in-depth study of Ephesians to help us dismantle the lies we’ve believed about ourselves and replace them with a new identity built on God’s Word. The truths in this beloved epistle speak to the core beliefs we carry about ourselves, revealing to us our part in God’s magnificent design to redeem a people for Himself who reflect His glory to the world. Drawing on her own journey of transformation and her passion to equip women to overcome shame, insecurity, inferiority, and condemnation, Marian invites us on a journey to discover our true worth in Christ, our status as beloved children of God, and our glorious calling as His masterpiece.
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Marriage Course Study Journal
$14.99Add to cartToday we are facing a global crisis when it comes to families. Marriages are under more pressure than ever. Many children are growing up without experiencing the security of their parents’ love and commitment to each other-and consequently are finding it harder to receive God’s unconditional love. There is an urgent need to invest in marriage and family life, for strong societies are built on strong families, and strong families are built on strong marriages.
The Marriage Course, developed by Nicky and Sila Lee of Alpha, has been revised and updated to provide practical tools to help couples at every stage of their relationship. This update includes talks from experts including Dr. Gray Chapman, Dr. Henry Cloud, and Dr. Sue Johnson on topics such as money, sex, love languages, healthy boundaries, and building connections. The course will also cover how couples can:
*Better understand each other’s needs
*Communicate more effectively
*Grow closer by learning methods to resolve conflicts
*Recover from the way they may have hurt each other
*Recognize how their upbringing has affected their relationship
*Improve relationships with parents and in-lawsThe Marriage Course is based on a Christian understanding of love and serves to strengthen marriages within the church while being accessible for all couples from any cultural background, with or without a background in the Christian faith.
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Birth : The Mystery Of Being Born
$26.00Add to cartThis volume explores the connections between our own birth, the experience of having children, and the new birth of the Christian life. Seasoned pastor James Howell offers theological perspectives on a variety of themes associated with birth, such as who we are in light of having once lived in utero, why people might have children, infertility, adoption, baptism, and how to make sense of it all in light of God coming to us first in Mary’s womb and then as an infant. The book includes artwork, photos, and drawings.
About the Series
Pastors are called to help people navigate the profound mysteries of being human, from birth to death and everything in between. This series, edited by leading pastoral theologian Jason Byassee, provides pastors and pastors-in-training with rich theological reflection on the various seasons that make up a human life, helping them minister with greater wisdom and joy. Future volumes will cover addiction, disability, friendship, illness, parenting, and technology. -
Connections Year A 3 Volume Set
$155.00Add to cartDesigned to empower preachers as they lead congregations to connect their lives to Scripture, Connections features a broad set of interpretive tools that provide commentary and worship aids on the Revised Common Lectionary.
This nine-volume series offers creative commentary on each reading in the three-year lectionary cycle by viewing that reading through the lens of its connections to the rest of Scripture and then seeing the reading through the lenses of culture, film, fiction, ethics, and other aspects of contemporary life. Commentaries on the Psalms make connections to the other readings and to the congregation’s experience of worship.
This set contains all three volumes for Year A.
Connections is published in partnership with Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
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Surviving A Dangerous Sermon
$18.99Add to cartPreachers increasingly see the need to deliver sermons that are “dangerous” in a variety of ways: the way they challenge hearers’ comfort levels and challenge established powers and hierarchies. Author Frank Thomas helps readers understand those dangers–especially the forces of power and hierarchy that are so intrinsic in our everyday lives and in society as a whole. He teaches how to anticipate and navigate those forces, to open opportunities for dangerous preaching, and to mitigate negative impact on congregants, the preacher, and the preacher-congregation relationships.
Surviving a Dangerous Sermon is a logical follow-up to Thomas’s previous book, How to Preach a Dangerous Sermon. It equips preachers to say what must be said, in a way that it is heard, so that the sermon has a chance to do its work on human hearts, without negative consequences.
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Bridging Theory And Practice In Childrens Spirituality
$22.99Add to cartBridging Theory and Practice in Children’s Spirituality explores the different contexts, methods, and situations that influence and foster a child’s spirituality and faith development. Through a blend of theoretical understanding held in tension with practical application, it equips those who are in, or being prepared for, the varied contexts where children are spiritually formed.
It represents a broad range of Christian expression writing from a Christ-centered perspective that furthers the conversation about the next steps in children’s spirituality and faith development. Moving beyond the basics of faith nurture and what makes for effective ministry, this resource deepens our understanding of the practices in children’s by bringing together the best of theory and practice and includes contributions from:
*Dr. Scottie May (Wheaton College)
*Dr. Kevin Lawson (Biola University)
*Dr. Erik Carter (Vanderbilt University)
*John Roberto (Vibrant Faith)
*Dr. Dana Kennamer Pemberton (Abilene Christian University)
*Dr. Shirley Morganthaler (Concordia University – Chicago)
*Dr. Holly Catterton Allen (Lipscomb University)
*Dr. Robert Keeley (Calvin College and Calvin Seminary)
*Dr. Mimi Larson (Wheaton College)
*Lacy Finn Borgo ( Renovare Institute) and others.Pastors, professors, seminary students and children’s ministry leaders and practitioners all believe that nurturing a child’s spiritual development is important. Yet often they are unsure about which current trends should be embraced. This book will help equip these people with the grounding needed to evaluate trends and with specific suggestions for moving forward. With short, accessibly written chapters it helps pastors and leaders stay up to date with current trends and is an excellent resource for teaching in college and seminary classrooms.
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Way Of Worship Student Workbook (Workbook)
$12.99Add to cartThe Way of Worship Student Workbook is a practical guide that accompanies The Way of Worship, providing questions for discussion and reflection, as well as hands-on activities to better prepare you for a lifestyle of worship. It is a resource to encourage those who are answering the calling of God on their lives to lead worship.
The Way of Worship (available separately) provides a biblical theology of worship, as well as a practical manual for practicing private and public worship as a way of life. This accompanying workbook serves as a journal and guidebook, allowing those who read and study The Way of Worship to further explore the concepts, internalizing and applying them to life.
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I Still Believe Leaders Guide
$14.99Add to cartMany small group leaders feel ill-equipped to create natural conversation that leads to a meaningful experience for their group members. This I Still Believe Leader’s Guide works in conjunction with the video series to equip group leaders with helpful tips on leading a group, thoughtful discussion questions for each week, and suggested scripture to read. Create a directed, safe, and open environment to lead your group to trusting and leaning on God and his promises during life’s most difficult times.
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I Still Believe Participants Journal (Student/Study Guide)
$14.99Add to cartThe most difficult aspect of life is enduring trials and difficulties of any kind. From cover to cover, one of the strongest themes threaded throughout Scripture is holding onto God and his promises when suffering comes into our lives. The I Still Believe Journal is a thirty-five-day journey into discovering his strength in our darkest moments.
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Smart Church Finances
$15.99Add to cartWhat can the Church learn from the business world?
You’re a leader of a ministry, nonprofit, or church. You trained to be a faithful counselor, preacher, interpreter of God’s Word–so why do you find yourself spending so much energy on administration tasks that threaten to drain your time, energy, and joy?
Look to this book for the coaching you needed, yesterday. Written from years of ministry and business experience, Business for Ministry is built on a solid foundation of business principles but–unlike many business books–in a straightforward style that anyone can grasp. You’ll learn how to:
*Communicate vision and strategize with a team
*Steward resources well (yes, including budgeting)
*Prioritize goals, wisely make decisions, and evaluate outcomes based on vision and data
*Leverage the existing talents of men and women at your church, many of whom don’t fit in “traditional” ministry rolesThis field guide to building a holistic, sustainable system for your church will both help you address the business needs of your church and free your leaders to serve, fully and joyfully.
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I Still Believe Small Group DVD Kit
$39.99Add to cartThe I Still Believe Small Group Kit combines a 5-episode DVD series, 35-day devotional journal, and thorough leader’s guide to serve as a five-week guided tour for small groups through the biblical response to commitment, sacrifice, grief, loss, and also God’s sovereignty and redemption. This kit comes as a ready-to-use package that makes it easy to implement small groups in your church or ministry.
Includes: Video Series, Leader’s Guide, and Study Journal
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Top 50 Creative Bible Lessons Fun Activities For Preschoolers Ages 2-5
$24.99Add to cartTop 50 Creative Bible Lessons for Preschoolers has everything you need to teach children ages two to five for a whole year! It’s filled with great Bible stories; step-by-step, easy-to-use instructions; fun activities; and TONS of reproducible pages. These lessons have everything you need to reach young children with the good news of God’s amazing love.
Each Bible Lesson for Preschoolers Includes:
*Bible story plus visual
*Memory verse and discussion questions
*Take-home sheets (and coloring pages)
*Step-by-step instructions and tips for kids Sunday school teachers
*2-3 flexible Bible activity options, including Bible puzzles, Bible crafts, games, snack ideas (AND MORE!)Imagine having a full year of fun and age-appropriate lessons that include teacher-friendly activities. All materials are easy-to-find, making prep a snap! Easily adapt these flexible lessons to Sunday school, children’s church, midweek Bible study, Christian school classroom, or your family home. Packed with puzzles, games, crafts, and awesome Bible stories, these kids’ Bible lessons will keep your preschoolers actively involved in creative learning.
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Welcoming The Future Church
$17.99Add to cartIf you’re not reaching the future of the church, your church has no future. As much sting as that statement has, it’s hard to argue with. Yet many churches have no idea how to attract and retain younger generations.
If you want to understand how to reach, teach, and empower young adults in your church, Jonathan “JP” Pokluda is ready to show you how. Sharing stories of successes and failures during his years of ministering to Millennials, JP offers you transferable principles that will help you mobilize the next generation toward Jesus. He encourages and equips you to:
– be real
– teach the whole truth
– hold traditions loosely
– find young leaders
– give the ministry away
– and so much moreTomorrow’s church is out there, waiting for you to care, to reach out, to understand their struggles, and to show them why today’s church needs, wants, and cherishes them.
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Acts Leader Guide (Teacher’s Guide)
$15.99Add to cartThe Acts of the Apostles is a unique and crucial book that chronicles the story of God’s grace flooding out to the world through the lives of the apostles in the decades immediately following Christ’s ascension into heaven.
In Acts: Catching up with the Spirit, author and biblical scholar Matthew Skinner provides a broad yet theologically attuned introduction to this important book and its message of fulfilling the Great Commission.
Skinner explores six key themes that illustrate the ways in which reading Acts is capable of igniting our imagination about the character of the Christian gospel, the work of God’s people (the church), and the challenges of living faithfully in a complex and changing world. The Leader Guide contains everything needed to guide a group through the six-week study including session plans, activities, and discussion questions, as well as multiple format options.
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5 Loaves Two Fish 12 Volunteers
$14.99Add to cartSixty-two percent of food pantries and meal programs in the United States are faith-based. Most of these ministries are transactional; people needing food interact with church volunteers to earn access to direct service.
Elizabeth Magill advocates relational ministry as a better model for food ministry. People donating food or money eat with the people who need food and get to know them as they serve alongside them. Those needing food share all aspects of the ministry, including planning, setting up, leading, serving, and cleaning. As volunteers become better acquainted, they can form deep, meaningful relationships, creating a new way to be the church.
Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers tells the stories of 8 churches that share food ministry with people who need their services. Full of practical advice, this book emphasizes that building relationships and offering radical welcome is more important work for churches than efficiency or order.
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Restoring The Shattered Self
$32.99Add to cartNearly every professional counselor will encounter clients with a history of complex trauma.
Yet many counselors are not adequately prepared to help those suffering from complex posttraumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), including survivors of child abuse, religious cult abuse, and domestic violence. A lack of consistent terminology in the field makes finding resources difficult, but without reliable training counselors risk inadvertently retraumatizing those they are trying to help. In this second edition of Restoring the Shattered Self, Heather Davediuk Gingrich provides an essential resource for Christian counselors to help fill the gap between their training and the realities of trauma-related work. Drawing on over thirty years of experience with complex trauma survivors in the United States, Canada, and the Philippines, she ably integrates the established research on trauma therapy with insights from her own experience and an intimate understanding of the special concerns related to Christian counseling. In addition to presenting a three-phase treatment model for C-PTSD based on Judith Herman’s classic work, Gingrich addresses how to treat dissociative identity disorder clients, respond to survivors’ spiritual issues, build resilience as a counselor in this taxing work, and empower churches to help in the healing process. This new edition is updated throughout to match the DSM-5 and includes new content on how the body responds to trauma, techniques for helping clients stay within the optimal zone of nervous system arousal, and additional summary sidebars. With this thoughtful guide, counselors and pastors will be equipped to provide the long-term help that complex trauma survivors need to live more abundantly. -
When Narcissism Comes To Church
$24.99Add to cartWhy does narcissism seem to thrive in our churches?
We’ve seen the news stories and heard the rumors. Maybe we ourselves have been hurt by a narcissistic church leader. It’s easy to throw the term around and diagnose others from afar. But what is narcissism, really? And how does it infiltrate the church? Chuck DeGroat has been counseling pastors with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as well as those wounded by narcissistic leaders and systems, for over twenty years. He knows firsthand the devastation narcissism leaves in its wake and how insidious and painful it is. In When Narcissism Comes to Church, DeGroat takes a close look at narcissism, not only in ministry leaders but also in church systems. He offers compassion and hope for those affected by its destructive power and imparts wise counsel for churches looking to heal from its systemic effects. DeGroat also offers hope for narcissists themselves–not by any shortcut, but by the long, slow road of genuine recovery, possible only through repentance and trust in the humble gospel of Jesus.
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Healing The Christian Church
$14.95Add to cartAre you looking to improve the relevance, life, and health of your church? In Healing the Christian Church, author Al Pomeroy offers a fresh, unique, and sustainable approach that will consistently produce good ground. Addressing church leadership, he provides practical advice and a resource for those wanting to see their church succeed beyond the status quo, and he discusses how to prevent the church from dealing with unnecessary problems. It requires more than reading the Bible, attending services, and listening to sermons. Leaders must let go of fear, bitterness, envy, and more to build the spirits of those involved. Pomeroy provides opportunities for personal reflection, inspires action, and motivates a response, helping one assess whether their actions are helping or harming the church. Healing the Christian Church conducts an open and honest discussion on how easily a lack of knowledge and apathy has resulted in shattered lives, ineffective leaders, and paralyzed churches. Delivering a fresh approach supported by scripture, it presents several ways to address current and potential problems.
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Wesleyan Journey Pastor Guide (Teacher’s Guide)
$13.99Add to cartThe transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer was a central theme of John Wesley’s life and work.
In The Wesleyan Journey: A Workbook on Salvation, beloved pastor and author Maxie Dunnam invites readers to spend time every day exploring Wesley’s understanding of salvation through prayer, study, and reflection.
Based on John Wesley’s theology and the Bible’s teaching on what it means to be saved, this workbook will help readers consider anew God’s ever-present grace, the experience of acceptance, pardon, and forgiveness, and the lifelong journey to become more Christ-like.
The Pastor Guide offers guidance and tips for pastors on how to use, promote, and share this study, with ideas for how to incorporate it into worship and invite people into the journey. It also contains short session guides and leader helps to facilitate group discussion through an eight-week study.
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Intentional Churches : How Implementing An Operating System Clarifies Visio
$18.99Add to cartIn spite of many church leaders and Christian researchers doubt about the local church’s relevancy and ability to grow, there are many churches growing and making disciples. They are implementing a revolutionary new Intentional Growth Planning operating system.
Pastors and church leaders are frequently frustrated and overworked, not knowing how to create systems and structures to support church growth and the making of more and better disciples. Just as laptops and smart phones have an operating system, the church needs a biblically-based operating system which its various programs and activities can effectively plug in to. In Intentional Churches, church growth leaders Doug Parks and Bart Rendel unveil a proven and practical operational system that will help leaders clarify their unique vision, filter trends and new idea through their mission, improve implementation abilities, and maintain unity and alignment to what matters most. It is a repeatable and transferable process any church can learn!
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Analog Church : Why We Need Real People, Places, And Things In The Digital
$20.99Add to cartWhat does it mean to be an analog church in a digital age?
In recent decades the digital world has taken over our society at nearly every level, and the church has increasingly followed suit–often in ways we’re not fully aware of. But as even the culture at large begins to reckon with the limits of a digital world, it’s time for the church to take stock. Are online churches, video venues, and brighter lights truly the future? What about the digital age’s effect on discipleship, community, and the Bible? As a pastor in Silicon Valley, Jay Kim has experienced the digital church in all its splendor. In Analog Church, he grapples with the ramifications of a digital church, from our worship and experience of Christian community to the way we engage Scripture and sacrament. Could it be that in our efforts to stay relevant in our digital age, we’ve begun to give away the very thing that our age most desperately needs: transcendence? Could it be that the best way to reach new generations is in fact found in a more timeless path? Could it be that at its heart, the church has really been analog all along?
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Embodying Integration : A Fresh Look At Christianity In The Therapy Room
$30.99Add to cartDiscussing spirituality and religion in the therapy room is increasingly accepted, some even forgetting that integration of psychology and Christianity was once a rare thing.
Yet even as the decades-long integration movement has been so effective, the counselor’s lived context in which integration happens grows increasingly complex, and the movement has reached a new turning point. Christian practitioners need a fresh look at integration in a postmodern world. In Embodying Integration, Megan Anna Neff and Mark McMinn provide an essential guide to becoming integrators today. Representing two generations of counselor education and practice, they model how to engage hard questions and consider how different theological views, gendered perspectives, and cultures integrate with psychology and counseling. “Many students,” they write, “don’t want models and views that tend to simplify complexity into categories. They are looking for conversation that helps them dive into the complexity, to ponder the nuances and messiness of integration.” More than focusing on resolving issues, Neff and McMinn help situate wisdom through personally engaging, diverse views and narratives. Arising from conversations between an up-and-coming practitioner and her veteran integrator father, this book considers practical implications for the day-to-day realities of counseling and psychotherapy. Personal stories, dialogues between the coauthors, and discussion questions throughout help students, teachers, mental health professionals, and anyone interested in psychology and faith to enter–and continue–the conversation.
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Connections Year A Volume 3 Season After Pentecost
$55.00Add to cartDesigned to empower preachers as they lead congregations to connect their lives to Scripture, Connections features a broad set of interpretive tools that provide commentary and worship aids on the Revised Common Lectionary.
This nine-volume series offers creative commentary on each reading in the three-year lectionary cycle by viewing that reading through the lens of its connections to the rest of Scripture and then seeing the reading through the lenses of culture, film, fiction, ethics, and other aspects of contemporary life. Commentaries on the Psalms make connections to the other readings and to the congregation’s experience of worship.
Connections is published in partnership with Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
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Your Time Starved Marriage Workbook For Women (Workbook)
$12.99Add to cartReclaim your time. Reconnect your marriage. Do you feel overscheduled and underconnected? Do you wish there was a surefire way to create more meaningful time together each day? Reclaim your time together and all the relational benefits that go with it. Your Time-Starved Marriage isn’t about being more productive-it’s about being more connected.
Six sessions include:
1. Is Your Marriage Slipping into the Future?
2. Busyness-the Archenemy of Marriage
3. Time Styles-Uncovering your Unique Approach to Time
4. Prioritizing Primetime-Maximizing your Moments
5. Time Bandits-Catching Your Time-Stealers Redhanded
6. Time Mines-Where You’re Sure to Strike Gold -
Your Time Starved Marriage Workbook For Men (Workbook)
$12.99Add to cartConnect your time styles–and your hearts.
The way you spend your time not only defines you as a man, it also defines your marriage and reveals the value of your relationship. Your Time-Starved Marriage Workbook for Men helps you find more time with your wife–and enjoy it more together.
Here are the hands-on, practical tools you need to dramatically reclaim the times you’ve been missing together and make every moment with your loved one count. Designed to be used either on your own or in a small group, this workbook helps you work with your wife to incorporate the new lessons you’ve both learned while reading Your Time-Starved Marriage. This workbook includes exercises for each chapter in the book, plus a small-group discussion guide designed to be used with Your Time-Starved Marriage DVD.
You’ll take five or ten minutes on your own to do each exercise and then compare the results with your wife. These exercises are designed to help you deepen your relationship with each other as you apply proven principles that help you manage your time as a couple. Your Time-Starved Marriage Workbooks can help you be more connected to each other, leading to a deeper level of contentment, satisfaction, and commitment in your marriage.
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Extraordinary Ministry In Ordinary Time
$12.99Add to cartWhat energizes someone in pastoral ministry for the long haul? Holy days like Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost are the exception. Ordinary Time, the longest season of the Christian year, is where pastors spend most of their ministry.
James Harnish invites pastors and other ministers to see Ordinary Time as a metaphor for the ordinary days of ministry. “Whether we thrive or merely survive depends on what we do with the ordinary days,” he writes.
Harnish encourages ministers to develop spiritual disciplines and personal relationships to nourish their souls for long-term ministry. He highlights the importance of reflection on scripture, spiritual reading, journaling, prayer, and spiritual conversation with trusted friends.
This 6-week study focuses on themes Harnish found crucial in over four decades of ministry: Power, People, Places, Proclamation, Perseverance, and Promise. Daily readings help readers develop their own spiritual formation practices to sustain their life and ministry.
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Better Together Study Guide (Student/Study Guide)
$12.99Add to cartIn a time when societal disruptions are rampant-have you wanted to cut and run?
Have you considered your own gender versus the opposite in a defensive way?
If we are honest, we all have. And that truth is where we begin to be set free. We are only as strong as our understanding of our differences-and they are many and varied and begin with each our fingerprint. But we were not created alone, or separately. We were in fact created of and from and in the image of the same God. Until God created man AND woman, he called everything he created ‘good.’ When he saw us together, he declared, “It is VERY good” Gen 1:1-31.
So how then, in a current state of division at every intersection of life, do we return to the flourishing of men and women together as originally intended?
In this six-session study (DVD/downloads sold separately), author, activist, and headlining international speaker Danielle Strickland will guide us through our differences and mutuality with a biblical lens and foundation. She will teach and inspire us to face the core challenge that drives all division-FEAR-and to change the story of our culture. We will transform and become examples of equality and equity as in the Garden of Eden where we were made better, together.
Designed for use with Better Together Video Study (sold separately).
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Bible And Moral Injury
$36.99Add to cartThe Bible and Moral Injury offers an exploration (with case studies) of the interpretation of biblical texts, especially war-related narratives and ritual descriptions from the Old Testament, in conversation with research on the emerging notion of moral injury within psychology, military studies, philosophy, and ethics. This book explores two questions simultaneously:
*What happens when we read biblical texts, especially biblical stories of war and violence, in light of emerging research on moral injury?, and
*What does the study of biblical texts and their interpretation contribute to the emerging work on moral injury among other fields and with veterans, chaplains, and other practitioners?The book begins by explaining the concept of moral injury as it has developed within psychology, military studies, chaplaincy, and moral philosophy, especially through work with veterans of the U.S. military’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A major part of this work has been the attempt to identify means of healing, recovery, and repair for those morally injured by their experiences in combat or in similar situations.
A key element for the book is that one feature of work on moral injury has been the appeal by psychologists and others to ancient texts and cultures for models of both the articulation of moral injury and possible means of prevention and healing. These appeals have, at times, referenced Old Testament texts that describe war-related rituals, practices, and experiences (e.g., Numbers 31). Additionally, work on moral injury within other fields has used ancient texts in another way–namely, as a means to offer creative re-readings of ancient literary characters as exemplars of warriors and experiences related to moral injury. For example, scholars have re-read the tales of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad and The Odyssey in dialogue with the experiences of American veterans of the Vietnam war and the moral struggles of combat and homecoming.
Alongside these trends, consideration of moral injury has increasingly made its way into works on pastoral theology, Christian chaplaincy, and moral theology and ethics. These initial interpretive moves suggest a need for an extended and full-orbed examination of the interpretation of biblical texts in dialogue with the emerging formulation and practices of moral injury and recovery. This book will not simply be an effort to interpret various biblical texts through the lens of moral injury. It also seeks to e
