This essay is an attempt to contribute effective strategies to engage our own time and culture once more with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and – for a weary world – to awaken the Catholic imaginative vision.

    Andy writes,            “Our goal is to create weekend experiences so compelling and helpful that     even the most skeptical individuals in our community would walk away with      every intention of returning the following week…with a friend!”Later he says,            “I want people to fall in love with the Author of Scripture. And while we can’t            make anyone fall in love, we can certainly arrange a date.”  For the first time, Andy explains his strategy for preaching and programming to “dual audiences”: mature believers and cynical unbelievers. He argues that preaching to dual audiences doesn’t require communicators to “dumb down” the content. According to Stanley, it’s all in the approach.You’ll be introduced to North Point's spiritual formation model: The Five Faith Catalysts. Leaders responsible for ministry programing and production will no doubt love Andy’s discussion of the three essential ingredients for creating irresistible environments.  For pastors willing to tackle the challenge of transitioning a local congregation, Andy includes a section entitled: Becoming Deep and Wide.If your team is more concerned with who you are reaching than who you are keeping, Deep & Wide will be more than a book you read; it will be a resource you come back to over and over!“Couldn't be prouder of my son, Andy. And I couldn't be more excited about the content of this book. I wish a resource like this existed when I was starting out in ministry.”-          Dr. Charles Stanley, Founder, In Touch Ministries“Deep and Wide pulls back the curtain for all of us to see what is required behind the scenes to build a prevailing church.  I was both challenged and inspired by this book.”-          Bill Hybels, author of Just Walk Across the Room“The most common question I get from pastors is, ‘How do I get the people in my church to be open to change?’ From now on my answer will be, ‘Read Deep and Wide by Andy Stanley’.  Thanks Andy.  Great book!”-          Craig Groeschel, Pastor, LifeChurch.TV, author, It: How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It“No one has given me more practical handles for establishing a focused vision than Andy Stanley. Deep and Wide is a rich resource to help all of us stay intentional about the main thing - building a church that reaches people who are far from God.”-          Steven Furtick, Lead Pastor, Elevation Church

    The fact is, many simply do not know how to pray. Even St Paul notes this sad fact when, in Romans 8:26, he says, We do not know how to pray as we ought. In this short book, written for a popular audience by well-known Catholic biblical scholar Dr. Tim Gray, we discover the secret of the saints which can enable us to enter into a lively dialogue with God. Their secret: the ancient art of Lectio Divina (divine, or sacred reading), which is reading, meditating on, and praying the Scriptures. As St. Cyprian notes, Diligently practice prayer and lectio divina. When you pray, you speak with God; when you read [the Scriptures], God speaks to you. Here, we discover that we don't need a mystic gene or divine epiphany to hear God; we simply need to take up the Bible and read.

    PICTURES have been used profusely to aid in understanding each lesson. SACRED SCRIPTURE has been used extensively to give life to the formulas in which doctrine is expressed. This Catechism combines modern outlook and language with a solid time-tested exposition of the teaching of the Church.

    Something Beautiful for God interprets her life through her conversations with Malcolm Muggeridge, the quintessential worldly skeptic who experienced a remarkable conversion to Christianity because of her exemplary influence. He hails her as a "light which could never be extinguished."

    The personal tones of the translations, the blend of reverence and humor so characteristic of him, show how deeply Merton identified with the legendary authors of these sayings and parables, the fourth-century Christian Fathers who sought solitude and contemplation in the deserts of the Near East.The hermits of Screte who turned their backs on a corrupt society remarkably like our own had much in common with the Zen masters of China and Japan, and Father Merton made his selection from them with an eye to the kind of impact produced by the Zen mondo.

    For more than four-hundred years, Introduction to the Devout Life by Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales has been regarded as the essential guide to holiness and loving God. This spiritual classic takes on new life in Lift Up Your Heart, where Rev. John Burns has interpreted ten meditations for the modern reader and distilled them into a ten-day mini-retreat that can easily be completed in the midst of a busy life. This practical book goes right to the heart of helping you kick the habit of floating along on your spiritual journey to start actively pursuing holiness and devotion to God. During the course of the retreat, you'll learn the basics of forming a daily prayer routine, including how to offer yourself to God, meditate on his love, and maintain peace in the face of suffering and clarity in the midst of temptation. The meditations will help you:Adopt gratitude as a daily prayer practice.Examine and reorder your priorities and relationships to better reflect your love for God.Discern between good and evil in your life.Desire to love and serve as Jesus did.In a very real sense, Burns helps you take St. Francis de Sales as your spiritual director for ten days. As you do so, you’ll feel God’s fatherly love and restart your faith life, equipped with the tools to connect with God and live for heaven now.

    Pope Clement XI and Benedict XIV gave like decisions.

    Words like "judgment," "faith," "dogma," "salvation," "sinner"—even "Christ"—formed what she called her "scary vocabulary," words that had become so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable. She found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Blending history, theology, storytelling, etymology, and memoir, Norris uses these words as a starting point for reflection, and offers a moving account of her own gradual conversion. She evokes a rich spirituality rooted firmly in the chaos of everyday life—and offers believers and doubters alike an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary world.

    I expected to love the children who hung on my legs after Sunday morning services until they grew up and had children of their own. I even expected to be buried wearing the same red vestments in which I was ordained.Today those vestments are hanging in the sacristy of an Anglican church in Kenya, my church pension is frozen, and I am as likely to spend Sunday mornings with friendly Quakers, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists as I am with the Episcopalians who remain my closest kin. Some-times I even keep the Sabbath with a cup of steaming Assam tea on my front porch, watching towhees vie for the highest perch in the poplar tree while God watches me. These days I earn my living teaching school, not leading worship, and while I still dream of opening a small restaurant in Clarkesville or volunteering at an eye clinic in Nepal, there is no guarantee that I will not run off with the circus before I am through. This is not the life I planned, or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine, and the central revelation in it for me -- that the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human -- seems important enough to witness to on paper. This book is my attempt to do that.After nine years serving on the staff of a big urban church in Atlanta, Barbara Brown Taylor arrives in rural Clarkesville, Georgia (population 1,500), following her dream to become the pastor of her own small congregation. The adjustment from city life to country dweller is something of a shock -- Taylor is one of the only professional women in the community -- but small-town life offers many of its own unique joys. Taylor has five successful years that see significant growth in the church she serves, but ultimately she finds herself experiencing "compassion fatigue" and wonders what exactly God has called her to do. She realizes that in order to keep her faith she may have to leave.Taylor describes a rich spiritual journey in which God has given her more questions than answers. As she becomes part of the flock instead of the shepherd, she describes her poignant and sincere struggle to regain her footing in the world without her defining collar. Taylor's realization that this may in fact be God's surprising path for her leads her to a refreshing search to find Him in new places. Leaving Church will remind even the most skeptical among us that life is about both disappointment and hope -- and ultimately, renewal.

    Delves into the historical background of virtually everything people find hard to understand about our Religion, such as priestly celibacy, sacred images, the Church and the Bible, the primacy of Peter, Communion under one kind, invocation of the Saints, etc. First published in 1876, when there was much anti-Catholic sentiment in the U.S., it sold 1.4 million copies in 40 years and has been reprinted many times since.

    No available in paperback edition - see ISBN 9781938983917

    The founder of the world's largest religious media empire shares her beloved wit and down-to-earth spirituality in MOTHER ANGELICA'S PRIVATE AND PITHY LESSONS FROM THE SCRIPTURES. Editor Raymond Arroyo draws on hundreds of never-before-released private lessons to present the renowned nun's definitive take on the Good Book. Angelica provides readers with guided meditations, probing personal questions, and reveals an often-overlooked practical spirituality. She doesn't just explain the stories, she relates them to our daily lives, helping even those who've never opened the Bible experience its power and life-altering lessons. The apostles Paul ("the little shrimp"), Peter ("that great bungler") and all the characters of the Scriptures are suddenly human again, complete with their foibles and triumphs. Here is the Greatest Story, newly told as only Mother Angelica can. The Bible and you will never be the same.A portion of the royalties from this book goes to support the work of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery

    The light of the Christian faith is flickering out all over the West, and only the willfully blind refuse to see it. From the outside, American churches are beset by challenges to religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing culture. From the inside, they are being hollowed out by the departure of young people and a watered-down pseudo-spirituality. Political solutions have failed, as the triumph of gay marriage and the self-destruction of the Republican Party indicate, and the future of religious freedom has never been in greater doubt. The center is not holding. The West, cut off from its Christian roots, is falling into a new Dark Age. The bad news is that the roots of religious decline run deeper than most Americans realize. The good news is that the blueprint for a time-tested Christian response to this decline is older still. In The Benedict Option, Dreher calls on traditional Christians to learn from the example of St. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century monk who turned from the chaos and decadence of the collapsing Roman Empire, and found a new way to live out the faith in community. For five difficult centuries, Benedict's monks kept the faith alive through the Dark Ages, and prepared the way for the rebirth of civilization. What do ordinary 21st century Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox -- have to learn from the teaching and example of this great spiritual father? That they must read the signs of the times, abandon hope for a political solution to our civilization's problems, and turn their attention to creating resilient spiritual centers that can survive the coming storm. Whatever their Christian tradition, they must draw on the secrets of Benedictine wisdom to build up the local church, create countercultural schools based on the classical tradition, rebuild family life, thicken communal bonds, and develop survival strategies for doctors, teachers, and others on the front lines of persecution. Now is a time of testing, when believers will learn the difference between shallow optimism and Christian hope. However dark the shadow falling over the West, the light of Christianity need not flicker out. It will not be easy, but Christians who are brave enough to face the religious decline, reject trendy solutions, and return to ancient traditions will find the strength not only to survive, but to thrive joyfully in the post-Christian West. The Benedict Option shows believers how to build the resistance and resilience to face a hostile modern world with the confidence and fervor of the early church. Christians face a time of choosing, with the fate of Christianity in Western civilization hanging in the balance. In this powerful challenge to the complacency of contemporary Christianity, Dreher shows why those in all churches who fail to take the Benedict Option aren't going to make it.

    Thérèse of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and Mother Teresa—who wouldn't want these women as friends and guides? Lively, determined, devout but never passive, they were all straight-shooters with an abundance of common sense. They were also deeply in love with God, clinging to him with a tenacity that freed them to do the impossible. Using the Great Commandment as her guide, Gina Loehr focuses on how each of these women lived out one particular aspect of the command to love God with heart, mind, and soul and neighbor as self. Practical tips offer suggestions on how to be like the Teresas and points for reflection drive the lessons home. These friends of God will help you become, as they were, expert in living out Christ's perfect law of loveThe audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.