But what exactly does this practice offer to Christians?In Mindfulness and Christian Spirituality, Tim Stead explores how practicing mindfulness can help Christians better live out their faith. Stead explains what mindfulness is and what is beneficial about it. He also reflects on how it can impact what and how we believe and seeks to find how mindfulness enables our Christian faith to work for us. Mindfulness practices that are designed to help readers make space for God in their everyday lives are included.

    However, James K. A. Smith claims that their ideas have been misinterpreted and actually have a deep affinity with central Christian claims.Each chapter opens with an illustration from a recent movie and concludes with a case study considering recent developments in the church that have attempted to respond to the postmodern condition, such as the "emerging church" movement. These case studies provide a concrete picture of how postmodern ideas can influence the way Christians think and worship.This significant book, winner of a Christianity Today 2007 Book Award, avoids philosophical jargon and offers fuller explanation where needed. It is the first book in the Church and Postmodern Culture series, which provides practical applications for Christians engaged in ministry in a postmodern world.

    Isn't it full of regressive views? Didn't it condone slavery? Why look to the Bible for guidance on how to have a more just society? But Timothy Keller sees it another way. In Generous Justice, Keller explores a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace: a generous, gracious justice. Here is a book for believers who find the Bible a trustworthy guide as well as those who suspect that Christianity is a regressive influence in the world.Keller's church, founded in the eighties with fewer than one hundred congregants, is now exponentially larger. More than five thousand people regularly attend Sunday services, and another twenty-five thousand download Keller's sermons each week. A recent profile in New York magazine described his typical sermon as "a mix of biblical scholarship, pop culture, and whatever might have caught his eye in The New York Review of Books or on Salon.com that week." In short, Timothy Keller speaks a language that many thousands of people yearn to comprehend. In Generous Justice, he offers them a new understanding of modern justice and human rights.

    Here Ehrman reveals what scholars have unearthed:•The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was & how salvation works•The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later•Jesus, Paul, Matthew & John all represented fundamentally different religions•Established Christian doctrines—such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus & the trinity—were the inventions of still later theologiansThese aren't idiosyncratic perspectives of just one scholar. They've been the standard widespread views of scholars across a full spectrum of denominations & traditions. Why is it most people have never heard such things? This is the book that pastors, educators & anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for—a compelling account of the central challenges faced when attempting to reconstruct Jesus' life & message.

    Pretending Jesus is less than He is resulted in someone I wasn't compelled to worship. So I began a journey to discover the whole Jesus--including the seemingly rough and wild parts--revealed in the Bible. And I found Him to be bigger and better than I ever dreamed.--Lisa HarperThrough a powerful blend of storytelling and biblical insights, Lisa Harper invites you to engage with the Jesus of the gospels, a person so provocative that no one left an encounter with Him unchanged. Pharisees fumed, paralytics turned cartwheels, and pariahs found love and acceptance.Come meet the Jesus who is both safe and strong--and learn how this radical Redeemer can liberate you to live and love with abandon.Includes questions for group discussion or personal reflection.

    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.

    Dubay explores the reasons why all of the most eminent physicists of the twentieth century agree that beauty is the primary standard for scientific truth. Likewise, the best of contemporary theologians are also exploring with renewed vigor the aesthetic dimensions of divine revelation. Honest searchers after truth can hardly fail to be impressed that these two disciplines, science and theology, so different in methods, approaches and aims, are yet meeting in this and other surprising and gratifying ways.This book relates these developments to nature, music, academe and our unquenchable human thirst for unending beauty, truth and ecstasy, a thirst quenched only at the summit of contemplative prayer here below, and in the consummation of the beatific vision hereafter.

    Culture is a garden to be cultivated."Many bemoan the decay of culture. But we all have a responsibility to care for culture, to nurture it in ways that help people thrive. In Culture Care artist Makoto Fujimura issues a call to cultural stewardship, in which we become generative and feed our culture's soul with beauty, creativity, and generosity. We serve others as cultural custodians of the future.This is a book for artists, but artists come in many forms. Anyone with a calling to create—from visual artists, musicians, writers, and actors to entrepreneurs, pastors, and business professionals—will resonate with its message. This book is for anyone with a desire or an artistic gift to reach across boundaries with understanding, reconciliation, and healing. It is a book for anyone with a passion for the arts, for supporters of the arts, and for "creative catalysts" who understand how much the culture we all share affects human thriving today and shapes the generations to come.

    Drawing together history and readings from scripture, Wills explains the beads on the rosary and the moments in Christ's life they represent, illustrating each mystery with a stunning Tintoretto painting. The result is an illuminating and poignant exploration of the power of prayer that will edify and inspire readers.

    Secular, radical, liberal, and evangelical interpreters variously shape and mold the martyr’s legacy to suit their own pet agendas.Stephen Haynes offers an incisive and clarifying perspective. A recognized Bonhoeffer expert, Haynes examines “populist” readings of Bonhoeffer, including the acclaimed biography by Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. In his analysis Haynes treats, among other things, the November 2016 election of Donald Trump and the “Bonhoeffer moment” announced by evangelicals in response to the US Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage.The Battle for Bonhoeffer includes an open letter from Haynes pointedly addressing Christians who still support Trump. Bonhoeffer’s legacy matters. Haynes redeems the life and the man.

    When he and his wife lost their adored little girl, his trust in God turned to bitter anger. As he and his wife struggled to save their marriage and his faith, they discovered that home is more than just rooms and a roof. Home is a place where people are sometimes wounded or betrayed. Home is also where God is strong in the broken places. Woodlief takes readers through his house, room by room, showing that home is: • Where we cry out to God as we seek him in the small things • Where the sacred and the mundane meet • The place that makes us better than we could ever be on our own • More than the place where we eat and sleep…it is where we learn grace Woodlief’s heart-touching stories leavened with humor will appeal to a wide audience, especially those trying to reconcile the idea of a loving God in a broken world.

    Its exalted language and soaring metaphors inspire devotion and worship. But too often the expositor's scrutiny has reduced this letter to a string of theological ideas and practical topics. Timothy Gombis has rediscovered Ephesians as a deeply dramatic text that follows the narrative arc of the triumph of God in Christ. Here Paul invites the church to celebrate and participate in this divine victory over the powers of this present age. In Gombis's dramatic reading of Ephesians we are drawn into a theological and cultural engagement with this epochal story of redemption. The Drama of Ephesians stands in the scantly occupied shelf space between commentaries and specialized studies in Ephesians, giving us a unified and dynamic perspective on this classic text. It is a book that will renew your excitement for studying, preaching and teaching this great letter of Paul.

    In it, John Barclay led readers through a recontextualized analysis of grace and interrogated Paul’s original meaning in declaring it a “free gift” from God, revealing grace as a multifaceted concept that is socially radical and unconditioned—even if not unconditional. Paul and the Power of Grace offers all of the most significant contributions from Paul and the Gift in a package several hundred pages shorter and more accessible. Additionally, Barclay adds further analysis of the theme of gift and grace in Paul’s other letters—besides just Romans and Galatians—and explores contemporary implications for this new view of grace.

    Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony. Nearly a decade in the making, The Evolution of God is a breathtaking re-examination of the past, and a visionary look forward.

    But these thrilling, dizzying transformations are forcing the church to decide where it fits in all this progress. Shane Hipps presents the promise and peril of the emerging culture and its relationship to the emerging church. Looking beyond the details of what’s happening in communities of faith, Hipps analyzes the broader impact of technology and media on the church while engaging readers with questions such as: • Is media/technology value-neutral? • How has technology changed the way we think about Scripture, community, and worship? • What cultural opportunities has the church missed? • How should the church position itself to take advantage of coming cultural trends? Providing both history and prophecy, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture invites us to engage new cultural realities while staying connected to our spiritual heritage.