HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Confessions describes Saint Augustine's conversion to Christianity and is the basis for his reputation as one of Christianity's most influential thinkers.

As we enter a new millennium, there is a growing vacuum of leadership among the younger generation. The need is great for young men and women who will rise to the challenge--in the face of great opportunities and great obstacles--to be obedient to the call of leadership. This is the rallying call Paul Borthwick puts forth inLeading The Way. He asserts that leadership is not just reserved for those with the right education, abilities, status or background. Rather, God is calling all young Christians who have the vision and responsibility to persevere, to fill this growing leadership vacuum.

"The Catechism of the Catholic Church" was a document of outstanding importance which sold millions of copies worldwide. Many critics at the time of publication said the Catechism lacked sufficient coverage of the social teaching of the Catholic Church, teaching on justice, peace and human rights. To remedy this, the Vatican commissioned this remarkable new publication from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Burns & Oates are now its proud publishers. Throughout the course of her history, and particularly in the last hundred years, the Church has never failed, in the words of Pope Leo XIII, to speak the words that are hers with regard to questions concerning life in society. To maintain this tradition, Pope John Paul II has for his part published three great encyclicals that represent fundamental stages of Catholic thought in this area. Moreover, numerous Bishops in every part of the world have contributed to a deeper understanding of the Church's social doctrine as have numerous scholars. This book also shows the value of Catholic social teaching as an instrument of evangelisation because it places the human person and society in relationship with the light of the Gospel. The principles of the Church's social doctrine, which are based on the natural law, are then seen to be confirmed and strengthened in the faith of the Church by the Gospel of Christ. The Pope hopes that the present publication will help humanity in its quest for the common good.

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."

How do you teach the grace and quiet confidence that comes with the permission to be yourself? How do you teach someone to know what to do when they don’t know what to do? That kind of leadership cannot be taught. It must be experienced and understood, and it is a profoundly personal and dynamic journey.

Leading with Humanity is an invitation to take the first steps on the inside-out journey of understanding what it is to become and be a leader – discovering who we are meant to be in a world obsessed with what we do. Drawing from great thinkers and leaders through the centuries – and decades of personal leadership experience – Peter Laburn’s Leading with Humanity combines time-tested philosophical notions with proven research principles into an authentic guide for anyone striving to be a better human being, and thus a better leader, in business and life.

Living as a human being is challenging in a world that encourages and incentivises us to operate as human doings.

The author examines the Christian literature of the first three centuries for evidence of the development both of the special priesthood of the ordained and the general priesthood of all believers. He demonstrates that the development of the special priesthood was closely linked to the emerging division between the clergy and the laity, and that these developments harmed the expression of the general priesthood. 'The Priesthood of Some Believers' is the only detailed and comprehensive study of the way the development of the special priesthood affected that of the general priesthood.

The general decline of American mainline Protestant churches today is well documented. Church redevelopment imagining and actualizing new life for dying churches is a productive and vital response to congregational decline, but it can be daunting. Here is guidebook for church leaders, to help them reinvigorate their churches with both practical advice and tested theory. A comprehensive case study of Beneficent Congregational Church, which successfully turned the tide and quadrupled its worship attendance, provides inspiration as well as concrete strategies for church redevelopment. The study indicates that successful and faithful church redevelopment involves a shift from a modern-patronage ministry model to a postmodern-plural ministry model. Building on current church redevelopment literature by bringing selected Biblical and theological texts into conversation with leadership concepts, systems theory, social sciences, and congregational studies, this book creates a multidisciplinary transformative conversation. The result is both strategic proposals for growing your church and a model for doing practical theology in your own ministry context. Dedicated, trained leadership in cooperation with the power of the Spirit can create the possibility of new life in dying congregations."

This vital revised and expanded update to How to Thrive in Associate Staff Ministry (Alban, 2000) provides guidance to the growing population of staff members employed by churches. Churches are expanding their staffs, but the turnover rate remains high, often due to stress, isolation, and conflict on the job. Lawson and Boersma address what it takes to thrive personally, professionally, and relationally within associate staff ministry. Based on updated research and interviews with over 600 veteran associate staff members from many different denominations, Lawson and Boersma describe the priorities, attitudes, and practices that can help associate staff members thrive in their ministry roles. They present, explain, and illustrate a four-part Model for Thriving in Associate Staff Ministry, a concrete framework that readers can use to help achieve satisfaction and balance in their own lives. In addition to addressing those in associate staff roles, the book also includes chapters to help supervising pastors and church boards support their associate staff members. Each chapter includes questions for personal reflection or discussion with others to help readers engage with the material and determine what steps they might take to improve their own experience in associate staff ministry."

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.

Are churches looking for the wrong kind of leaders? The last decade has witnessed a rising number of churches wrecked by spiritual abuse--harsh, heavy-handed, domineering behavior from those in a position of spiritual authority. And high-profile cases are only a small portion of this widespread problem. Behind the scenes are many more cases of spiritual abuse that we will never hear about. Victims suffer in silence, not knowing where to turn. Of course, most pastors and leaders are godly, wonderful people who don't abuse their sheep. They shepherd their flocks gently and patiently. But we can't ignore the growing number who do not. We have tolerated and even celebrated the kind of leaders Jesus warned us against. We need gentle shepherds now more than ever, and in Bully Pulpit, seminary president and biblical scholar Michael J. Kruger offers a unique perspective for both church leaders and church members on the problem of spiritual abuse, how to spot it, and how to handle it in the church. "Every Christian from pulpit to pew needs to read this wise and timely work." - Karen Swallow Prior "Both urgent and timely." - Sam Storms "Thoughtful, wise, and biblical." - Mark Vroegop

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.