For: *Individual use *Group training Greeters are the welcoming arms that people long to find in a church. This practical guidebook will help you reach out to people who need to experience the warmth of belonging to a church family. Serving as a Church Greeter sheds light on *The Ministry of Church Greeters *The Need for Warmhearted Greeters *Developing a User-Friendly Foyer *A Better Way of Doing Things *The Parking Lot Ministry Zondervan Practical Ministry Guides provide you with simple, practical insights for serving in today s churches. Written by experienced pastors and church workers, these easy-to-read, to-the-point booklets address the fundamentals of different ministries as practiced effectively in real life. You ll find biblical insight and wise, field-tested advice you can apply today, as well as discussion questions to help you think through and integrate what you read."

BARONESS COX OF QUEENSBURY was appointed a Life Peer in 1982. A former deputy speaker of the House of Lords, she is a tireless advocate for international human rights. She visits the most forgotten people in the world - often in highly dangerous conditions - to carry their stories of abuse and persecution back to the West. She has risked her life many times while taking aid to war victims in Armenia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and South Sudan, and Syria. Honorary Vice President of the Royal College of Nursing, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, recipient of the Wilberforce Award and of the Commander Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, she has also received honorary degrees from universities on three continents. Her motivation is profoundly Christian: "Faith without deeds is dead; love without action is dead." This new edition has been revised throughout to bring Baroness Cox's remarkable story up to date.

The Mission of God is a basic book for every Christian who is serious about his part in the mission of God to the world. It reflects responsible Biblical understanding and current changes in missionary thinking. Already widely known in German as Missio Dei, this English edition will extend its influence.

The Roman Catholic leadership still refuses to ordain women officially or even to recognize that women are capable of ordination. But is the widely held assumption that women have always been excluded from such roles historically accurate? How might the current debate change if our view of the history of women's ordination were to change?
In The Hidden History of Women's Ordination, Gary Macy offers illuminating and surprising answers to these questions. Macy argues that for the first twelve hundred years of Christianity, women were in fact ordained into various roles in the church. He uncovers references to the ordination of women in papal, episcopal and theological documents of the time, and the rites for these ordinations have survived. The insistence among scholars that women were not ordained, Macy shows, is based on a later definition of ordination, one that would have been unknown in the early Middle Ages. In the early centuries of Christianity, ordination was understood as the process and the ceremony by which one moved to any new ministry in the community. In the early Middle Ages, women served in at least four central ministries: episcopa (woman bishop), presbytera (woman priest), deaconess and abbess. The ordinations of women continued until the Gregorian reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries radically altered the definition of ordination. These reforms not only removed women from the ordained ministry, but also attempted to eradicate any memory of women's ordination in the past.
With profound implications for how women are viewed in Christian history, and for current debates about the role of women in the church, The Hidden History of Women's Ordinationoffers new answers to an old question and overturns a long-held erroneous belief.

Since it was published in 1983, the first edition of the original Twelve Keys to an Effective Church has benefited thousands of congregations around the world. The thoroughly revised and updated Twelve Keys Leaders' Guide, designed to accompany Twelve Keys to an Effective Church, offers leaders an indispensable, step-by-step resource for creating and implementing their long-range plans. It clearly shows how to examine a church's strengths and move the congregation toward action, accomplishment, and achievement. This valuable guide thoroughly explains the basic principles of the planning process and gives helpful insights into the dynamics of memory, change, conflict, and hope in congregations. You will discover possibilities to build the momentum, deepen the resources, and advance the strengths of your congregation. This important resource can also be used to help build an effective, successful business, develop a strong, healthy non-profit grouping, advance an effective, healthy college or university, and create a strong, healthy family.

Too many males abuse the power they have. Often those males grow up without healthy role models and so, while they look like men, they act like boys. Only now there are adult consequences to their actions. And many of us are caught in the shifting cultural ideas about manhood, unsure of how to make sound decisions or truly be a man. Every day we find evidence that the role of men at home, at work, and out in the world is deeply misinterpreted. In Male vs. Man, Dondre Whitfield equips us to become men rather than simply "grown males." Men are healthy and productive servant-leaders who bring positive change to their communities. Males are self-serving and stuck in negative cycles that we hear and read about daily. They create chaos instead of cultivating calm. Male vs. Man is an uplifting playbook for men who want to level up. It will help men and women alike understand what real manhood is, based on biblical wisdom as well as hard-earned lessons from someone who has been there. With practical guidance and a strong spiritual foundation, Dondre shows how to cultivate the life-changing spiritual, emotional, and psychological attributes of servant leadership at home, at work, and in our communities.