“I believe that God is calling all of us into deeper prayer and is longing for our congregations to become places of prayer,” writes Jane E. Vennard. Pastors and others who want to develop their skills as teachers of prayer and spiritual practices will find in this book not only wisdom for themselves but easily […]
This important book provides the tools that faith communities need to:-determine under what circumstances, if any, a convicted sex offender may be involved in the congregation.-determine how to respond if someone in the congregation is accused of a sexual offense.-be sensitive to and supportive of persons in the congregation who have been victims of abuse.-develop […]
Thompson and a team of contributors-Beverly Thompson, Harvey K. Newman, and Jim Watkins-explore the nature of power and the challenges it proposes to pastoral ministry. By using the metaphor “Alligators in the Swamp,” they illustrate the complexity of power and how it can be used effectively. The text presents and explores the nature of power […]
In this in-depth study of eight diverse mainline Protestant congregations, anthropologist Fredric Roberts finds that when local congregations are evaluated by spiritual and religious standards instead of corporate- or pop-culture-based values there remains much to celebrate. Roberts recommends that congregations work to discover their own uniqueness and to build upon the strength that already exist […]
Celebration of Discipline is a video-based curriculum built on Richard Foster’s most acclaimed book. It is designed to help Christians experience authentic transformation through engagement with classic Christian disciplines. The book, leader’s guide, participant’s guide, and DVD are used to conduct the 13-session series. Based on a book by the same title, published by Harper […]
With Natural Church Development, Christian Schwarz introduced a fascinating approach to church growth that really works and has been accepted all over the world. Now he shows how the biblically-based principles of Natural Church Development can also be a blessing for the spiritual development of the individual believer. Color Your World with NCD is a […]
From the Publisher’s Note: […] The term “confessing church” has come to mean something altogether different in the current Presbyterian context, however, as right-wing organizations seek to use confessional statements as theological sledgehammers to bludgeon Presbyterians into a rigid orthodoxy that divisively excludes certain persons from ecclesiastical leadership. It is in this context that Union Theological Seminary— Presbyterian School of Christian […]
This manual is a Presbytery handbook for creating new churches based on the priorities of planting more new churches, seeing more of our new congregations realize their goals and fufill their potential, and lowering the financial costs of starting new congregations.
A novel is a novel, and novelists succeed through the skillful exercise of the imagination. However, this particular novel imagines the best of American scholarship (Harvard) and the finest of British scholarship (Oxford) agreeing on what are presented as facts regarding the origin of the Christian faith. This one-hour lecture was originally delivered at Westminster […]
Nadiv Lev. “Offerings of the Heart.” This phrase sets the tone for the Jewish spiritual perspective that money is a tool for actualizing God’s presence in the world. Building on this core value and setting aside the financial/spiritual split with which many congregational leaders operate, Rabbi Shawn Zevit brings the depth and breadth of Jewish […]