For most people, their 60s is a time to slow down and smell the roses. Not for Alvin and Jean Witten, however. Instead, they went to Mozambique to search for churches.

In relentless heat, by car and by motorbike, on foot, and bicycle, they delved into every corner of this vast country, negotiating swollen rivers and broken bridges, roads that could hardly be called roads, hair-raising overnight accommodations, meals that were hard to stomach, bureaucracy, corruption and incompetence, in order to hunt down and officially count the 1 300+ congregations known to exist there.

For five years they gave up their closeness to family, friends and creature comforts in pursuit of this mission, experiencing joy and pain, learning things about themselves along the way, and forging lifelong bonds.

“We thank you for the inspiration and strength

That you have given to Madiba,

Enabling him, over so many years, to draw out the best in others,

rousing us always, by word and example,

to seek the highest good for every child of this nation.”

So prayed Archbishop Thabo Makgoba with Nelson Mandela in his home in 2009 at the request of Graca Machel. This marked the start of an unusual relationship between southern Africa’s Anglican leader and Mandela in his quietening years. Join Makgoba in his journey towards faith, from his boyhood in Alex as the son of a ZCC pastor to Bishopscourt and praying with Mandela. He shares his feelings about his pastoral approach to the world icon, and how they influenced his thinking on ministering to church and nation in the current era. What did praying with those nearest and dearest to Mandela mean? What was his spirituality? In trying to answer these questions, Makgoba opens a window on South Africa’s spiritual make-up and life.

Are you a current or emerging Christian leader who yearns to make a significant long-term difference?
Do you sometimes wonder how to distinguish what is imperative from what is important?
Are you a board member who wants your church or parachurch leadership team to become more intentional and on-target about doing the right things the right way?
"The Leader's SEEcret" is a parable that explores and applies God's Word to today's world of leadership diversions. It delves underneath the surface issues of a leader's or manager's knowledge and skills.
"The Leader's SEEcret" will help you discover, understand, and apply ten core features of one ancient principle. You will understand how to infuse the situations you face as a leader or manager with that timeless reality. And you will learn how you can inspire your staff to do so, too.
Along the way, "The Leader's SEEcret" shows the failure and regret a leader causes when his or her current leadership priorities conflict with lifetime purposes.
This story comes in a concise, get-to-the-point writing style, making it very helpful for individual or group study.
One warning: The principle undergirding LeaderSlip is simple---but not necessarily easy. If you take the challenge, you will become a more effective leader and---perhaps even more crucial---you will protect yourself from eventual failure.

English-born Francis Asbury was one of the most important religious leaders in American history. Asbury single-handedly guided the creation of the American Methodist church, which became the largest Protestant denomination in nineteenth-century America, and laid the foundation of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements that flourish today. John Wigger has written the definitive biography of Asbury and, by extension, a revealing interpretation of the early years of the Methodist movement in America. Asbury emerges here as not merely an influential religious leader, but a fascinating character, who lived an extraordinary life. His cultural sensitivity was matched only by his ability to organize. His life of prayer and voluntary poverty were legendary, as was his generosity to the poor. He had a remarkable ability to connect with ordinary people, and he met with thousands of them as he crisscrossed the nation, riding more than one hundred and thirty thousand miles between his arrival in America in 1771 and his death in 1816. Indeed Wigger notes that Asbury was more recognized face-to-face than any other American of his day, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

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.

Heralding a new era in literary studies, the Oxford English Literary History breaks the mould of traditional approaches to the canon by focusing on the contexts in which authors wrote and how their work was shaped by the times in which they lived. These are books that every serious student and scholar of the period will need on their shelves.

James Simpson covers both high medieval and Tudor writing, showing how the coming of the Renaissance and Reformation displaced the earlier, hospitably diverse literary culture. Out went the flourishing variousness of medieval writing (Chaucer, Langland, the 'mystery' plays, feminine visionary writing); in came writing - by Wyatt, Surrey, and others - that prized coherence and unity, even while reflecting a sense of what had been lost.

Before he was a civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a man of the church. His father was a pastor, and much of young Martin's time was spent in Baptist churches. He went on to seminary and received a Ph.D. in theology. In 1953, he took over leadership of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta. The church was his home. But, as he began working for civil rights, King became a fierce critic of the churches, both black and white. He railed against white Christian leaders who urged him to be patient in the struggle-or even opposed civil rights altogether. And, while the black church was the platform from which King launched the struggle for civil rights, he was deeply ambivalent toward the church as an institution, and saw it as in constant need of reform. In this book, Lewis Baldwin explores King's complex relationship with the Christian church, from his days growing up at Ebenezer Baptist, to his work as a pastor, to his battles with American churches over civil rights, to his vision for the global church. King, Baldwin argues, had a robust and multifaceted view of the nature and purpose of the church that serves as a model for the church in the 21st century.

Deepen your biblical and theological knowledge without the time, expense, and formality of seminary.

Take Your Theological Education to the Next Level

Deepen your biblical and theological knowledge without the time, expense, and formality of seminary. In this extensively updated book, discover all the major topics in a typical seminary master's program authoritatively taught by respected professors, authors, and leaders. This introduction to a biblical studies degree is ideal for the layperson or anyone in vocational ministry who lacks the time or finances to attend classes, who lives where formal training is unavailable, or whose previous education is primarily secular. Study what you want, when you want. Subjects include:

· systematic theology

· surveys of the Old and New Testaments

· apologetics

· world religions

· church history

· homiletics

· leadership

· Christian education

· and more

The Diaconal Church presents a highly topical debate about an innovative model of church described in David Clark's book Breaking the Mould of Christendom. Thirteen scholars from different denominations discuss the themes which underpin the model of the diaconal church. In the final chapter, Clark argues that the diaconal church has a contribution of paramount importance to make to sacred and secular institutions alike.

Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, is one of the most studied but least understood popes of the twentieth century while his pontificate remains the most turbulent and controversial. Although there is a general consensus that he faced serious problems during his tenure-fascist aggression, the Second World War, the Nazi genocide of the Jews, the march of communism, and the Cold War-there is disagreement on his response to these developments. Applauded by some as an "apostle for peace" for his attempt to prevent the outbreak of war, he has been denounced by others as an "advocate of appeasement" for this same effort. Praised by both Christian and Jews for his "Crusade of Charity" during the war, he was denounced by many for his "silence" during the Holocaust. These conflicting interpretations, dubbed the Pius Wars, are often narrow in focus, lack objectivity, and have shed more heat than light. Written by one of the foremost historians of Pius XII, the present biographical study, unlike the greater part of the vast and growing historiography of Pope Pius XII, is a balanced and nonreactive account of his life and times. Its focus is not on the pope's silence during the Holocaust, though it does address the issue in a historical and objective framework. This is a biography of the man as well as the pope. It probes the roots of his traditionalism and legalism, his approach to modernity and reformism in Church and society, and the influences behind his policies and actions. This book is the first biography of Eugenio Pacelli to appear in English since the opening of the papers of the pontificate of Pius XI (1922-1939), in which Pacelli served as nuncio to Germany and secretary of state, along with the publication of the memories of figures close to Papa Pacelli.

In a world in which resources are unjustly distributed, identities are under threat and solidarity is fragile, the toughest task facing humanity is the quest for community. Yet the contribution of the church to that task is undermined because its message and organization remain stuck in the past. Christians fail to grasp that in the gifts of the kingdom community - life, liberation, love and learning - they hold the key to what the search for community is all about. This book describes those gifts and how a servant church, through the creation of its diaconate as an order of mission, might offer a fragmented world new hope.The Methodist Church in Britain is taken as a model of what could be achieved.

Classic reflections on gospel wisdom from a modern martyr show the ongoing relevance of the gospel in an age of idolatrous power and capricious violence.

Archbishop Doye Agama influences the church and community ministry of some 15,000 active clergy on four continents. Around 10,000 people may read his online postings and musings in a single week. This series of handbooks will give you insights into the journey of wisdom that has made the Apostolic Pastoral Congress and its remarkable leader, one of the most significant emerging church movements of our generation; and perhaps this century.