It can refer to awe before unutterable holiness, but it can also refer to the coercion where some voices are silenced in the interest of control by the dominant voices. It is the latter silence that Walter Brueggemann explores, urging us to speak up in situations of injustice.  Interrupting Silence illustrates that the Bible is filled with stories where marginalized people break repressive silence and speak against it. Examining how maintaining silence allows the powerful to keep control, Brueggemann motivates readers to consider situations in their lives where they need to either interrupt silence or be part of the problem, convincing us that God is active and wanting us to act for justice.

    A perfect way to live Lent to the full this year - Lent is a time to refocus our hearts and revive our love of the Lord and one another.A Companion for the Forty Days of Lent, featuring original meditations on the Gospel reading of each day by fifteen gifted authors.Each issue of the Lenten Companion is never the same as the last and contains these one-of-a-kind extras that you won’t find anywhere else:- Inspiring reflections from some of the most gifted Catholic writers for each day- Faith-filled essays- Prayers, poetry, and devotions- Meditations for the Way of the Cross- A treasury of spiritual insights

    But the reality is, the lives of many Christians look a lot more like the culture than like Christ. The question the devout are seeking today is, what does it really look like to follow Christ in a culture of darkness? In this short book, Dale Partridge assaults the watered-down, lukewarm Christianity that is harbored in many modern churches and replaces it with the raw, biblical Gospel found in the New Testament.

    But are all of these people really our friends? The bond of Christian friendship is different. Built on our unity with Christ, these are real life, flesh and blood relationships - both sacred and sacrificial. Christina Fox offers insight into how we can weave friendships that last through any season and reflect Christ to the world.

    When adopted, these habits will transform your leadership too. The habits include: Dreaming Prayer Invitations Contact Preparation Mentoring Fellowship Growth When your leaders adopt and practice these habits, your groups will move from once-a-week meetings to an exciting lifestyle of ministry to one another and the lost! Each habit is discussed in detail, providing "how-to" steps with an implementation guide at the end of each chapter. This resource will also be a valuable teaching tool for training your leaders and guiding your coaches as they mentor your group leaders. Help your leaders discover how to make each habit a part of their life . . . and watch them become more effective!"

    Whether you're a Catholic or not, you may be totally clueless or just unaware of some aspects of Catholic traditions, history, doctrine, worship, devotion, or culture. If so, then this book is right for you!Open the book and find: What it means to be a Catholic Who's who in the Catholic hierarchy How Catholics worship The origins and importance of the Sacraments of Initiation

    In this realistic yet positive book, renowned Bible teacher Alistair Begg examines the first seven chapters of Daniel to show us how to live bravely, confidently and obediently in an increasingly secular society.Readers will see that God is powerful and God is sovereign, and even in the face of circumstances that appear to be prevailing against his people, we may trust him entirely.We can be as brave as Daniel if we have faith in Daniel's God!"The message of Daniel is incredibly relevant for us in our generation. Not because it maps out a strategy for how to deal with our new lack of status ... or because Daniel was a great man and we need to follow his example. The reason is that it will help us to believe in Daniel's God." Alistair Begg, author.

    Just because we grow up doesn’t mean we should lose our wonder at the world, or the people around us. When we do, we lose so much because curious is how God made us to be.   Without curiosity a Christian’s life is incomplete. His relationship with God is incomplete. His connections to others are incomplete. He doesn’t know how to interact with the world around him—politics, media, art, entertainment, science, and so much more simply fly past or overwhelm him. Without curiosity he can never discover deep things, deep connections God tucked below the banal surface of life.   Author Barnabas Piper explores what curiosity is, and how it affects relationships. What if people so sought to learn about each other that the most unlikely people became advocates and friends?   It would be transformative, and it would stem from curiosity.

    As we pull back the curtain on His life, we discover that Jesus knows what it’s like to be marginalized. He understands how it feels to have society shove you to the side, to not really be accepted, and in the end to be totally rejected. He can identify with life in the margins because when God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, He landed in the margins. On purpose. And He chose to land there because it’s in the margins that broken lives get mended, prisoners are set free, and the poor hear the Good News.Reimagine Your Life Welcome to the crowded margins of life. It’s a place where normal people don’t feel normal. Where the daily grind drowns out the soft cry within that says, “I do not have it together.” Where just beneath the surface we long for meaning and—dare we hope?—wholeness. Rick McKinley writes from experience: Only God can rescue a person from the margins. Why? Because when He came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, in the margins is where he landed. On purpose. To find you. Don’t wait till you get yourself together. Meet Jesus in the margins just as you are, and reimagine your life through the lens of His transforming love. Story Behind the BookThis book was birthed out of Rick’s ministry at Imago Dei Community Church. Rick’s heart is to communicate God’s Word in an understandable way to those who are outside the reach of traditional churches. He often calls this “unpacking the gospel”—a gospel he sees as the predominant theme in all of Scripture. Rick says the kind of people he ministers to “are not afraid of the language of theology, but the theological ideas need to be brought down from the mountain.”

    If the church is to speak meaningfully to youth and in turn reap the many benefits that young people have to offer, then its ministry must be predicated on passion — the Passion of Christ, the passion of youth, and the passionate faith that results when these two things come together. The uniqueness of Practicing Passion lies in its relocating youth ministry in practical theology rather than in educational theory or psychological or social development. While youth ministry has routinely capitalized on the passions of adolescents, little attention has been given to the theological mooring that youth need to connect with the church and hold firm amid the growing demands of popular culture. Focusing on the theological resonance between the Passion of Christ and adolescents’ experience of passion, Dean develops a framework for youth ministry that draws on the historic practices of the Christian community as a “curriculum of passion.” Offering a compelling new model for reaching, discipling, and empowering today’s young adults, Practicing Passion is a vital resource for anyone already engaged in or preparing for youth ministry.

    Modern critical biblical scholarship often points out how the church's teachings about Jesus have become encrusted with tradition so that it is hard to see what the core documents--the New Testament--really say about him. Now, with the insight of 200 years of modern critical scholarship and assuming an audience that includes both the well-churched and the non-churched, how should the church present the story and identity of the central personality of their faith, Jesus of Nazareth? Many people will be surprised at the story they hear.

    How can men and women be in community when not married? Or if married, with people not our spouses? Can men and women be "just friends"? How can we date wisely and well? What does it mean to be a woman if you're not a wife? Or a man if you're not a husband? How can we be in healthy, close relationships if we're single?In Beyond Awkward Side Hugs, Bronwyn Lea lays out a biblical vision for relationships between men and women in the church. Jesus' pattern for church living was one of family, of brothers and sisters living in intimate, healthy community with each other. Doing so calls for character and wisdom, for charting a path toward relationships that acknowledge gender but aren't sexualized, that go beyond the awkwardness of simplistic don't-touch/don't-talk rules.Rooted in Scripture and attested by personal and pastoral stories, Beyond Awkward Side Hugs is an invitation to relationship theology that moves beyond unhealthy, eroticized, fear-based patterns and toward gendered, generous relationships between men and women of character, loving one another as Jesus did.

    

    In this book Debbie Blue looks closely at Hagar (mother of Islam), Esther (Jewish heroine), and Mary (Christian matriarch)—and finds in them unexpected and inviting new ways of navigating faith and life. As she sets out to explore these biblical characters who live and move in places and ways outside of the strict boundaries of tradition, Blue encounters many real life characters who challenge her expectations and renew her hope—a Muslim tattoo artist, a Saudi Arabian sculptor, a rabbi in a Darth Vader costume, Aztec dancers at a feast of Guadalupe, an Islamic feminist scholar, and more.Readers who embark with Blue on the sometimes unorthodox, subversive paths of these curious and lively figures will be led to envision more expansive and hopeful possibilities for faith, human connection, and love in our divided, violent world.

    Religion is usually about rules and codes, about “being good,” about what will get you embraced and what will get you shunned. But God, according to Dave, is all about how you can become a closer friend with him, with others, and with yourself.In the tradition of C. S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" and G. K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" comes this illuminating collection of thoughts on faith in a postmodern world. "Not the Religious Type" bridges the gap between the two communities in which many of us live—the secular and the religious—and suggests a new, unexpected way of seeing the world and our place in it. Whether we're the religious type or not, there's a certain part of each of us that invariably wonders if it's true—if there's a God we can connect with who is alive and active, with the kind of perspective on our lives and futures that we could never have on our own. As Dave engagingly explores these most important questions, he invites his readers into “a new and warmer spring,” a way of thinking that will help both secularists who never imagined they would become people of faith and also people of faith who perhaps haven't experienced all from God that they've hoped.