ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award Can a one-time crosscultural experience truly be life-changing? Veteran trip leader and intercultural guide Cory Trenda says yes-if we let the trip launch a journey of integrating the experience into our ongoing life. In After the Trip Trenda provides a unique guide for individuals and teams to make the most of a crosscultural trip after returning home. Readers will find help with navigating the crucial reentry process, remembering and sharing key stories, interweaving new insights into everyday life, and engaging in continuing learning and service. Combining practical tips, reflections, and stories from Trenda's own decades of crosscultural travel, this is an essential resource for organizations, churches, schools, and all travelers who want crosscultural trips to be a catalyst for lasting good. The trip itself is just the beginning; real life change happens after the trip.

A new edition of the definitive guide to the sites visited by St. Paul on his missionary journeys. Fully updated and redesigned with new maps and plans, and many new colour photographs. Expanded, with new sections on St John and his writing of the Book of Revelation on the island of Patmos, together with other Greek islands that may be visited as part of your holiday. Highlights include: the Seven Churches of the Revelation, notably Ephesus and Pergamum; the splendours of Istanbul and Athens; the glories of Ancient Greece and Macedonia. The islands of Cyprus and Malta, with their layers of history, are described. These lands are rich in reminders of the hardships faced by early Christians to establish their faith. This is an essential aid to prepare for a pilgrimage and a quality souvenir to evoke many lasting memories.

The author shows in this book how a parish can incorporate its children into full participation with the worshiping community. Tapping their creativity to design a spectacular array of materials for worship -- a storyteller's cloak, prayer cards, confessions stones, rap sermons, sculpture, and painting -- liturgy comes intensely alive for parishioners of all ages. As Fairless demonstrates, the full participation of children in corporate worship, while not a simple matter, is deeply rewarding. An introduction by Louis Weil, professor at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, provides the theological rationale for the inclusion of all baptized members in the worship life of the community.

We live in an age of bombardment of the senses, ceaselessly assaulted by traffic noise, canned music, the ubiquitous waiting-room TV, coworkers' conversations. Even those treasured moments of quiet prayer time before worship have been snatched from us by conversations all around us in the church. The sanity solution? Contemplative prayer. Throw away the script, the shuffling through prayer books for just the "right" words, and accept the fact that God simply wants you to gaze at him while he directs his loving gaze at you. No words, no formulas-just loving, attentive presence. Franz Jalics, SJ, shows you how. His simple, practical book is filled with fine insights and a realistic sense of present-day people and their concerns. Questions at the end of each brief chapter invite you to relate your life experience to the kind of prayer he wants to teach you.

This is a comprehensive study of the impact of ritualism on the Church of England, other Anglican churches, and non-Anglican churches in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on an exhaustive study of archival and contemporary printed sources, Dr Yates presents a new and refreshing approach to this fascinating subject.

In Being in Love, William Johnston addresses the question of the purpose of prayer. He shares with the reader the discovery of new ways to a prayerful life that is both meditative and active. His message is to surrender in love to God, to love God with one's own being, through prayer. Here Being in Love shows us how to pray-with heart, mind, intellect and body-as a form of communicating with God, one another, and the world around us. Johnston reveals, using his relationship with the Eastern traditions as a backdrop, the need and importance of finding stillness in our inner lives. He demonstrates in a clear and practical way, how we can make prayer a place for meditation and personal growth.

Why do people sing hymns? Are hymns poetry? What makes a good hymn? The author discusses the nature of hymns and their particular appeal, examines the English hymn as a literary form, and systematically describes its development through four centuries, from the Reformation to the mid-twentieth century.

In Being in Love, William Johnston addresses the question of the purpose of prayer. He shares with the reader the discovery of new ways to a prayerful life that is both meditative and active. His message is to surrender in love to God, to love God with one's own being, through prayer. Here Being in Love shows us how to pray-with heart, mind, intellect and body-as a form of communicating with God, one another, and the world around us. Johnston reveals, using his relationship with the Eastern traditions as a backdrop, the need and importance of finding stillness in our inner lives. He demonstrates in a clear and practical way, how we can make prayer a place for meditation and personal growth.

"Scott Hahn, the bestselling author of The Lamb's Supper and Reasons to Believe, celebrates the touchstones of the Catholic life, guiding readers to a deeper faith through the Church's rites, customs, and traditional prayers. ""
"
"Signs of Life "is beloved author Scott Hahn's clear and comprehensive guide to the Biblical doctrines and historical traditions that underlie Catholic beliefs and practices. Devoting single chapters to each topic, the author takes the reader on a journey that illuminates the roots and significance of all things Catholic, including: the Sign of the Cross, the Mass, the Sacraments, praying with the saints, guardian angels, sacred images and relics, the celebration of Easter, Christmas, and other holidays, daily prayers, and much more.
In the appealing conversational tone that has won him millions of devoted readers, Hahn presents the basic tenets of Church teachings, clears up common misconceptions about specific rituals and traditions, and responds thoughtfully to the objections raised about them. Each chapter concludes with loving, good-natured, inspiring advice on applying the Church's wisdom to everyday life.

This is the first full-length study of the place and meaning of pilgrimage in European Renaissance culture. It makes new material available and also provides fresh perspectives on canonical writers such as Rabelais, Montaigne, Margurite de Navarre, Erasmus, Petrarch, Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa. Wes Williams undertakes a bold exploration of various interlinking themes in Renaissance pilgrimage: the location, representation, and politics of the sacred, together with the experience of the everyday, the extraordinary, the religious, and the represented. Williams also examines the literary formation of the subjective narrative voice in his texts, and its relationship to the rituals and practices he reviews. This wide-ranging and timely new work aims both to gain a sense of the shapes of pilgrim experience in the Renaissance and to question the ways in which recent theoretical and historical research in the area has determined the differences between fictional worlds and the real.

The Power and Freedom of a Humble Life

Pride is often the true reason why we get our feelings hurt, why we feel rejection, why we won't admit to mistakes, why we want to be seen with certain people, and why we stay angry.

Jesus gives us the perfect example of a powerful life lived without conceit, smugness, or arrogance. So why do we not want to admit to our pride? It is because of our pride!

In The Power of Humility, R. T. Kendall challenges us to look deeply into our hearts and motives to recognize the pride and self-righteousness there. Using personal stories and enlightening examples from the Bible, he demonstrates how pride interferes with a close relationship with God and reveals how to overcome pride and become more like Jesus.

This short board book, with bright, vibrant, and playful illustrations,

introduces young children to important parts of our

Faith the Mass and prayer. The tabs help children pick out

elements in each of the spreads, making this book an interactive

experience as well. 12 pages.

In this volume, Gregg Allison offers an overview of specific doctrines and practices that unite and distinguish different churches and denominations as each finds its unique expression through churches' views of identity, leadership, church government, sacraments, ministries, and the future.

Edited Gigi Taylor. Book features easy to flip pages and fits in your pocket. Each page corresponds to each bead of the Rosary. Reflections on each mystery. Includes Luminous Mysteries. Size: 4 x 6. 78 pages. Spiral Bound. Color.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION With more than 3 million copies in print, Germaine Copeland's bestselling volumes of Prayers That Avail Much(R) have helped believers learn how to pray, know what to pray, and confidently claim answers to prayer. As readers put these scriptural prayers to work for them, they will see God moving to perform His Word. Readers no longer need to feel helpless in the face of difficult or painful situations.

Congregational Music, Conflict and Community is the first study of the music of the contemporary 'worship wars' - conflicts over church music that continue to animate and divide Protestants today - to be based on long-term in-person observation and interviews. It tells the story of the musical lives of three Canadian Mennonite congregations, who sang together despite their musical differences at the height of these debates in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Mennonites are among the most music-centered Christian groups in North America, and each congregation felt deeply about the music they chose as their own. The congregations studied span the spectrum from traditional to blended to contemporary worship styles, and from evangelical to liberal Protestant theologies. At their core, the book argues, worship wars are not fought in order to please congregants' musical tastes nor to satisfy the theological principles held by a denomination. Instead, the relationships and meanings shaped through individuals' experiences singing in the particular ways afforded by each style of worship are most profoundly at stake in the worship wars. As such, this book will be of keen interest to scholars working across the fields of religious studies and ethnomusicology.

This is the third edition of this popular guide book to the biblical sites in both Israel and Jordan. It has been revised and rewritten, with new pictures, illustrations, maps, and plans. The Pilgrim Books team has conducted or accompanied more than forty pilgrimage groups to the Holy Land and have produced a book that is concise and informative. It contains a mine of practical information on both countries and is profusely illustrated, so that it becomes a colorful souvenir, the stimulant to a host of happy memories for years after your return.

It is often claimed that we live in a secular age. But we do not live in a desacralized one. Sacred forms - whether in 'religious' or 'secular' guise - continue to shape social life in the modern world, giving rise to powerful emotions, polarized group identities, and even the very concept of moral society. Analyzing contemporary sacred forms is essential if we are to be able to make sense of the societies we live in and think critically about the effects of the sacred on our lives for good or ill. The Sacred in the Modern World is a major contribution to this task. Re-interpreting Durkheim's theory of the sacred, and drawing on the 'strong program' in cultural sociology, Gordon Lynch sets out a theory of the sacred that can be used by researchers across a range of humanities and social science disciplines. Using vividly drawn contemporary case material - including the abuse and neglect of children in Irish residential schools and the controversy over the BBC's decision not to air an appeal for aid for Gaza - the book demonstrates the value of this theoretical approach for social and cultural analysis. The key role of public media for the circulation and contestation of the sacred comes under close scrutiny. Adopting a critical stance towards sacred forms, Lynch reflects upon the ways in which sacred commitments can both serve as a moral resource for social life and legitimate horrifying acts of collective evil. He concludes by reflecting on how we might live thoughtfully and responsibility under the light and shadow that the sacred casts, asking whether society without the sacred is possible or desirable.

Christianity Today Award of Merit In the midst of our hectic, overscheduled lives, caring for the soul is imperative. Now, more than ever, we need to pause-intentionally-and encounter the Divine. Soul care director Barbara Peacock illustrates a journey of prayer, spiritual direction, and soul care from an African American perspective. She reflects on how these disciplines are woven into the African American culture and lived out in the rich heritage of its faith community. Using examples of ten significant men and women-Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Darrell Griffin, Renita Weems, Harold Carter, Jessica Ingram, Coretta Scott King, James Washington, and Howard Thurman-Barbara offers us the opportunity to engage in practices of soul care as we learn from these spiritual leaders. If you've yearned for a more culturally authentic experience of spiritual transformation in your life and community, this book will help you grow in new yet timeless ways. Come to the river to draw deeply for your soul's refreshment.

In this die-cut oversized board book shaped like a Christmas tree, bestselling author Dr. Mary Manz Simon tells the story of Jesus's birth through decorations we place on an evergreen each year, helping little ones better understand and remember the reason we place ornaments and lights on the tree and what each symbol means. My Christmas Story Tree: Contains a presentation page to commemorate the child in your life Has a cover that sparkles with bright glitter and foil Can be used to create your own Christmas tradition each year Leads little ones through the first Christmas story in a way they will easily understand In addition, My Christmas Story Tree is: A perfect holiday and Christmas gift for toddlers ages 0-4, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and new moms Great for lap reading or as a bedtime story, with large illustrations and vibrant colors to keep kids engaged Helps start conversations about Christmas traditions and why we celebrate Jesus's birth by decorating a pine tree each year