'[He] inspired a generation ... He changed the course of history' Barack Obama As Martin Luther King, Jr. prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best-known lectures. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962 and A Gift of Love includes these classic sermons, along with two new lectures. Drawing inspiration from both his Christian faith and the non-violent philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, A Gift of Love illustrates King's vision of love and peaceful action as social and political forces for change.

A fresh approach to the hot-button topic of women in ministry

Based on his study of a key word for teaching in the New Testament an activity often thought to be prohibited to women and on various other kinds of public speaking in which women in Scripture clearly participated, scholar John Dickson builds a case for women preachers.

This expanded edition of Hearing Her Voice, published originally as a short ebook, presents an entirely new and convincing biblical argument. Focused and purposefully limited in its conclusions, Dickson s case has the potential to change minds and merits careful consideration by complementarians and egalitarians alike.

This book will be useful for pastors, Bible teachers, college and seminary students, professors, and lay leaders who wrestle with the topic of women s roles in ministry, and it will appeal to many with its fresh approach to this hot-button topic."

Lado a Lado (Still Side by Side) is an introduction to biblical equality. Each chapter is introduced with a question and brief answer, followed by a more in depth explanation. It is a valuable resource for individuals or groups who are seeking answers to the questions surrounding gender and the church.

From the moment Pope Francis stepped on to the balcony of St Peter's Basilica for the first time, a global audience sensed that not only the Catholic Church but the world at large could be entering a new spiritual, political and social age. In the days following Pope Francis' election, there would be further early signs of the simplicity worthy of the first apostles and the leader that inspired them. Not since John XIII appeared on the scene half a century earlier had a new Pope opened the windows of the Church in such a way as to let in some much needed fresh air. Nevertheless, for the excitement generated by the first Latin American Pope and a man who claimed to want to put the poor back at the centre of the Church's social teaching, people could still only guess where it might be all be leading. Francis: Pope of Good Promise is neither an instant media job, nor a hagiography based on authorised interviews, but the product of diligent investigation across a wide range of official and independent sources - a measured, objective portrait of a man who, in circumstances that he neither sought nor foresaw, found himself handed the highest office at a time of crisis not just for the Church but for long established institutions worldwide from banks to political parties.

After many years of experience with churches, I observed that the maturing of the churches in general was being thwarted by the lack of genuine apostolic and five fold ministry. The book was written to illustrate the need for genuine fatherly leadership from the heart of maturity. Most books about apostolic leadership, although good and helpful, were more or less written from the point of view of application and performance of ministry rather than from the aspect of heart. Key editorial points are: Why we need leaders to be fathers. Why fathers should be honored and the results in the church when they are not. Why true blessing depends on fathers. The marks of a true apostle and how to recognize them The need for a team spirit. Passing the baton to future leaders. This book will throw great light on the understanding of those who want to see true oversight work in churches and the blessing it will bring to all concerned.

In 1631, Marie Guyart stepped over the threshold of the Ursuline convent in Tours, leaving behind her eleven-year-old son, Claude, against the wishes of her family and her own misgivings. Marie concluded, "God was dearer to me than all that. Leaving him therefore in His hands, I bid adieu to him joyfully." Claude organized a band of schoolboys to storm the convent, begging for his mother's return. Eight years later, Marie made her way to Quebec, where over the course of the next thirty-three years she opened the first school for Native American girls, translated catechisms into indigenous languages, and served some eighteen years as superior of the first Ursuline convent in the New World. She would also maintain, over this same period, an extensive and intimate correspondence with the son she had abandoned to serve God. The Cruelest of All Mothers is, fundamentally, an explanation of Marie de l'Incarnation's decision to abandon Claude for religious life. Complicating Marie's own explication of the abandonment as a sacrifice carried out in imitation of Christ and in submission to God's will, the book situates the event against the background of early modern French family life, the marginalization of motherhood in the Christian tradition, and seventeenth-century French Catholic spirituality. Deeply grounded in a set of rich primary sources, The Cruelest of All Mothers offers a rich and complex analysis of the abandonment.

Despite its physical comforts, Jennie's life under the critical eye of her tyrannical mother is hard, and she grows up desperate for a love she has been denied. As she blossoms into a young woman World War II breaks out. Life is turned upside down by the vagaries of war, and the charming, urbane Charles comes into her life - and he loves her ... doesn't he? ... On the other side of the scarred mountain, in the wake of a disaster that tears through his family and their tight-knit mining community, Harry finds the burden of manhood abruptly thrust upon his young shoulders. He bears it through the turmoil of the Depression years, sustained only by his love for Megan. But his life too takes many unexpected turns, and the onset of war brings unimaginable changes. ... Nothing is as it was, or as it seems ... Blaenavon and Abergavenny surge to life in this vibrant, haunting, joyful masterpiece - a celebration of the Welsh people from the 1920s to the 1940s. It's the saga of two families and their communities, and the story of two young people who should have found each other much sooner. It's the story of the people of the mountains and the valleys who formed the beating heart of Wales. The Mountains Between immediately became a regional best-seller. Now in its 3rd edition, it was author Julie McGowan's first book, and is based in her much-loved homeland of Wales. Her second book, Just One More Summer, is a wonderfully intricate read based in Cornwall, while her newly-released third book, Don't Pass Me By, is also a Welsh spectacular.

In Britain and the West Christians have watched helplessly while teachers, politicians and the media have prised apart sacred and secular, consigning the sacred to the realm of the private and unimportant. After a careful analysis of the state of Western churches, Robinson and Smith challenge conventional leadership styles. They reject fix-it programmes, which rarely transplant well, and urge ministers to focus on what really matters: to help people to experience intimacy with God, to encounter the grace of God and speak about it to others. From a Christian viewpoint there can never be two worlds, only God's world, but Christians have retreated into sacred space, rather than reaching out. This book cuts across contemporary leadership thinking.

Just as our life is in our blood, the life for Christ's body is in His blood. Changing a church is more than a new goal or direction. Our churches need more than an organizational "transition"; we need a full "transfusion" of Jesus' blood, His life, within every disciple. Anything less than that will only perpetuate more of the dysfunction and unhealthy church practices that have already plagued us for too long. We are in desperate need of the internally transforming power of the gospel of grace and the presence of Christ so that our salvation is then worked out in a way the rest of the world will notice. It isn't enough that we believe in the facts contained in the gospel, we must allow the gospel itself to infect our souls and transform us from within. The DNA of Jesus' lifeblood is needed in our churches and nothing shy of a full transfusion that touches every cell will be sufficient.

In this book Neil Cole (author of "Organic Church, Church Transfusion" and "Journeys to Significance") and Phil Helfer, co-founders of Church Multiplication Associates, will first point out that change is possible with God, but only with God. In the second half of the book they will lay out some of the actual practical considerations to weigh if you want to release real organic health in your church.

Using multiple examples of very different kinds of churches that have been through the process, the authors present ways that leadership and practices need to change in order to release organic church movements from their midst. Chapters cover: Leadershifts necessaryDetoxification from dependence issues.How to ignite change virally.How to grandparent movements.How to measure success in movements.

This book (another in the Leadership Network series) applies organic life principles to established churches with practical help that is holistic and natural. The content in this book will be helpful whether you are pastor of an established church or wanting to revitalize a small organic church.

Jesus didn't die and rise from the dead so that we can be like everyone else in the world. Our faith is more than just a better doctrine or a bigger goal with a capital giving campaign; it is a better life. Jesus is the difference, and what a difference he makes...don't be satisfied with less.

This is the biography of a contested memory, how it was born, grew, changed the world, and was changed by it. It's the story of the story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began. Joseph Smith, the church's founder, remembered that his first audible prayer, uttered in spring of 1820 when he was about fourteen, was answered with a vision of heavenly beings. Appearing to the boy in the woods near his parents' home in western New York State, they told Smith that he was forgiven and warned him that Christianity had gone astray. Smith created a rich and controversial historical record by narrating and documenting this event repeatedly. In First Vision, Steven C. Harper shows how Latter-day Saints (beginning with Joseph Smith) and others have remembered this experience and rendered it meaningful. When and why and how did Joseph Smith's first vision, as saints know the event, become their seminal story? What challenges did it face along the way? What changes did it undergo as a result? Can it possibly hold its privileged position against the tides of doubt and disbelief, memory studies, and source criticism-all in the information age? Steven C. Harper tells the story of how Latter-day Saints forgot and then remembered accounts of Smith's experience and how Smith's 1838 account was redacted and canonized. He explores the dissonance many saints experienced after discovering multiple accounts of Smith's experience. He describes how, for many, the dissonance has been resolved by a reshaped collective memory.

"How do we preach in a way that affirms Christian theology while also honoring the insights of other faith traditions?" "How do we preach about and help create genuine Christian community in a social networking culture?" Questions Preachers Ask examines many questions that are on the minds of preachers today, questions that focus on how to preach the gospel in a culture where biblical knowledge cannot be presumed and where the Bible is often viewed as untrustworthy. Well-known preachers, scholars, and authors, including Barbara Brown Taylor, Gail O'Day, Anna Carter Florence, Richard Lischer, and Thomas Lynch, provide the answers. This book, compiled to honor writer, preacher, teacher, and scholar Thomas G. Long at the end of his teaching career, addresses practical questions such as "How do we proclaim the good news to young adults who are on the margins of church or have left it?" and "How do we preach to faith communities that are highly diverse?" Perfect for preachers at any stage of their ministry, these essays offer hope and guidance for handling the difficult task of preaching in today's congregations.