When the kids are gone, you can discover a richer, deeper, and more fulfilling life than you ever imagined! Whether you've been looking forward to it or dreading it, the experience of coming home to an empty nest brings with it a well of emotions, realizations, and one gigantic, all-consuming thought: Now what? As an empty nester, the options before you are practically limitless--a fact that can be as exciting as it is terrifying. In this book, Jim Burns combines his personal experiences with extensive research, interviews with other empty nesters, and his professional work as a family educator to help you navigate your new life as an empty nester and find joy in the opportunities for life-change before you. Rather than offering shallow suggestions of hobbies you should take up, Burns encourages you to actively pursue a fresh start, reinvent yourself, and thrive beyond this new stage. To help you do this, he equips you with practical advice and timeless principles, including how to: Change the relationship you once had with your children--for the better Face big issues (like aging parents, finances, and kids returning home) with confidence And rekindle your fire and purpose to live with passion day by day Amid his wealth of know-how, you'll uncover what may be the most important takeaway of all: hope that the best is yet to come.

After hearing the words no one wants to hear--"you have cancer"--Jim Burns set out to articulate the most important principles for a life well lived and now shares them with you as a collection of essential truths for a healthy, balanced, and successful life. What's truly important for leading a life well lived? After being diagnosed with cancer and facing his mortality, prolific author and family-life expert Jim Burns learned what it really means to live a meaningful life from the perspective and practical wisdom only gained from facing death. Now cancer free, those same life-changing lessons continue to guide and enrich Jim's faith, work, and relationships in immeasurable ways. With his conversational style and heartwarming and entertaining stories, Jim brilliantly distills that hard-earned wisdom into 13 simple yet powerful life principles you can put into practice today. Jim will help you learn how to: Break the cycle of being overcommitted and underconnected once and for all Make family the priority you want it to be with an action plan that will nurture your closest relationships Embrace the discomfort of discipline and avoid the pain of regret Incorporate the vital element of fun in your life for connection and relief in even the toughest times Train your mind in reflexive gratitude to rise above negative circumstances. Don't wait any longer. Let these principles guide you into deeper joy, more purpose, and better connection--and start truly living today.

Developments in the education field are affected by numerous, and often conflicting, social, cultural, and economic factors. With the increasing corporatization of education, teaching and learning paradigms are continuously altered. Deconstructing the Education-Industrial Complex in the Digital Age is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on the shifting structure of school models in response to technological advances and corporate presence in educational contexts. Highlighting a comprehensive range of pertinent topics, such as teacher education, digital literacy, and neoliberalism, this book is ideally designed for educators, professionals, graduate students, researchers, and academics interested in the implications of the education-industrial complex.

Most Christian parents know that the best way to leave a God-honoring legacy to their family is to nurture their children's faith . . . but many don't know where to start! This new resource from Jim Burns, founder of HomeWord, will equip parents to start important conversations with their kids--family time with an eternal impact. Faith Conversations for Families makes it easy to invite God into quality family time. Each section outlines an easy-to-follow dialogue, which is flexible for children of different age groups. In addition, suggested activities and exercises make spiritual formation adaptable for kids with varying learning styles. The six family-friendly topics included in this book are: Who Is Jesus and Why It Matters: Help parents talk with their kids about why His life, death, and resurrection are so important. What Prayer Is All About: Parents can introduce vibrant conversation with God into their family's time together. What It Means to Be Christian: Parents can lead their kids toward a faith commitment and spiritual growth, through open communication and exciting biblical expression. A Strong Family: Parents can teach, guide, and strengthen healthy bonds within the family. Loving and Serving Others: Parents can talk with their children about servant leadership and self-sacrifice and be challenged to serve in and outside of their home. Building Morals and Values: Parents can help their kids discern and navigate cultural influences that run contrary to a biblical worldview. In the heart of every Christian parent is a desire to help their children grow spiritually. Faith Conversations for Families helps parents make that desire a beautiful reality.

If you have an adult child, you know that parenting doesn't stop when a child reaches the age of eighteen. In many ways, it gets more complicated. Both your heart and your head are as involved as ever, whether your child lives under your roof or rarely stays in contact. In Doing Life with Your Adult Children, parenting expert Jim Burns helps you navigate the toughest and the most rewarding parts of parenting your grown kids. Speaking from his own personal and professional experience, Burns offers practical answers to questions such as these: Is it OK to give advice to my grown child? What's the difference between enabling and helping? What boundaries should I have if my child moves back home? What do I do when my child doesn't seem to be maturing into adulthood? How do I relate to my grown child's significant other? What does it mean to have healthy financial boundaries? How can I support my grown children when I don't support their values? Including positive principles on bringing kids back to faith, ideas on how to leave a legacy as a grandparent, and encouragement for every changing season, Doing Life with Your Adult Children is a unique book on your changing role in a calling that never ends.

Parenting teenagers is one of the biggest challenges parents face. New realities make becoming independent more difficult. Teens are traveling a different road and are moving at a different pace than those of previous generations. Today's cultural environment is more complicated and confusing than ever. But fear not! Family expert Jim Burns provides a handy guide for parenting teens. For teens to become responsible adults, parents need to help them grow through developmental changes to attain a healthy self-identity, establish good relationships, make wise decisions, and grow in their relationship with God. Burns shows how parents can shape behavior and character, navigate social media challenges, and communicate and resolve conflict healthily. He also tackles the realities of our day, including cyberbullying, dating violence, self-injury, depression, and much more. Whether you're facing serious troubles or need simple tips for a better family life, this book offers help and hope.

Much more than just the when and how of having "the talk," this invaluable resource encourages building a "theology of healthy sexuality" through the introduction of age-appropriate dialog throughout a young person's life.

The Love Dare challenged individuals to love their spouse more. "Closer" shows wives and husbands how to grow that love together. Introduced with Scripture verses and engaging stories, these 52 devotionals will inspire couples to draw closer through faith conversations--those quiet talks so vital for emotional and spiritual intimacy in a marriage. Guided, practical action steps round out each reading. "Closer," with its flexible weekly format, is an appealing alternative to a daily devotional.

A Powerful Approach to Bringing God's Grace to Kids Did you know that the way we deal (or don't deal) with our kids' misbehavior shapes their beliefs about themselves, the world, and God? Therefore it's vital to connect with their hearts--not just their minds--amid the daily behavior battles. With warmth and grace, Jim and Lynne Jackson, founders of Connected Families, offer four tried-and-true keys to handling any behavioral issues with love, truth, and authority. You will learn practical ways to communicate messages of grace and truth, how to discipline in a way that motivates your child, and how to keep your relationship strong, not antagonistic. Discipline is more than just a short-term attempt to modify your child's actions--it's a long-term investment to help them build faith, wisdom, and character for life. When you discover a better path to discipline, you'll find a more well-behaved--and well-believed--kid.

Spanning several decades but interlocking at all times, these essays focus on novelists like Robert McAlmon and Isaac Rosenfeld, offering fresh views of poets such as Kenneth Patchen and Kenneth Fearing, critics Irving Howe and Alfred Kazin, and beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder.

Children's ministry has the power to change the lives of kids and families. Unfortunately, it's not always clear that the work a person does with kids is really making a lasting difference. Ask children's ministry leaders and kid-influencers if they are making the impact on children's lives as they had hoped and most likely the responses will be mixed. And for good reason. Research over the past decade has revealed an alarming lack of long-term growth in the faith community as children progress through student ministries into adulthood. Clearly, something needs to change. Relational Children's Ministry seeks to reverse this trend by equipping children's ministry leaders with practical tools to disrupt the status quo approach to discipleship with children and realign their ministries for greater long-term impact. Ministry leaders will: Learn how to relate intentionally to kids and families by putting five discipleship invitations modeled by Jesus into practice Explore practical approaches to realign their children's ministry for a new trajectory by hitting three "reset buttons" to ensure long-term discipleship is embedded Encounter examples of disruptive disciple-makers in action and learn key principles that can be translated into their own ministry context Children's ministry leaders will receive practical training to refocus their children's ministry along with time-tested tools to personally recommit to lifelong discipleship. Kid-influencers can become a disciple-making community that redirects the current trajectory for this and future generations.

A new collection of art from one of the UK's most acclaimed sci-fi artists featuring everything, from his initial sketches to his final works and published book covers. Includes covers from the SF greats - Greg Bear, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Silverberg, Joe Haldeman, Oson Scott Card, John Meaney, Ricardo Pinto, Peter F Hamilton, and Timothy Zahn and many more.

Author Jim Burns believes the key to instiling in children a healthy, values-centered view of sexuality is to start the discussion early--being open and honest at every stage. The Pure Foundations series is already guiding parents of preteens and teens through potentially awkward conversations. Now two fully illustrated books--one for pre-readers and one for early readers--complete the series.
How God Makes Babies is an age-appropriate introduction to basic sexuality, helping children ages 6 to 9 understand that God created males and females differently and with a purpose, emphasizing that God is a part of each family from conception to death.

This tenth collection of essays and reviews again throws the spotlight on Paris and some of the painters and places associated with the city. Montmartre in its heyday, the 1890s and thereabouts when Edgar Degas and Alphonse Mucha produced images of the spectacles to be seen in Paris and the leisure activities of its citizens. Some of them, at least. Neither artist was noted for painting scenes of working-class life, nor of poverty. To say that is not to condemn them for it. The same can be said of Matisse and Bonnard who largely created colourful canvases in the sun-drenched South of France. We need to appreciate artists for what they did, not accuse them for not doing what we think they should have done

Jim Burns and Doug Fields wish you the very best for your wedding, but sadly, they won't be able to make it. What they are here for is your marriage. Jim and Doug have seen it all. They have worked with many couples and have studied extensively to uncover the essential elements for making marriages thrive. This book is their early wedding gift to you: a comprehensive, easy-to-navigate road map for beginning your union.
Filled with premium fuel for the journey--including meaningful excercises, hard truths, and conversations starters--this book will nourish and guide your relationship for the long haul.

This eighth collection of reviews, essays, and other pieces takes Paris as its starting point, with essays about artists like Picasso and Soutine, a look at the existentialists, a consideration of the role of the barricade in the various insurrections in the city, and the roles played by the photographer Nadar and the composer Offenbach in shaping images of the city both for its inhabitants and visitors. There are reviews of exhibitions by British painters, Sven Berlin, John Bratby, and Stanley Spencer, and of the work of American poets, Thomas McGrath, Lola Ridge, and William Wantling. The Beats get a look in with articles about little magazines that printed their work, and the effects of the blacklists in Hollywood are explored in several pieces. Jazz is represented with surveys of the music of Tony Fruscella and Willie Dennis, and the birth of rock and roll is explored. Other essays focus on the early days of communism in both Russia and America.

This seventh collection of essays and reviews kicks off with a survey of some overlooked British poets from the 1940s who, through a network of little magazines with anarchist inclinations, attempted to offer an alternative to the MacSpaunDay generation's sensibilities. Another piece considers how British writers were monitored by MI5 and local police forces, while a third switches attention to the USA and looks at the still-controversial case of Alger Hiss and his alleged role as a spy who passed information to Russia. There are essays about lesser-known Beat-related writers like Bob Kaufman and Brion Gysin, inspections of some little magazines of the 1950s and 1960s, and two long reviews which consider the effect that Dadaism had and the role played in the movement by Tristan Tzara. Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie, and Malcolm Cowley also make an appearance.

This sixth selection of essays and reviews looks at a whole list of writers, poets, political activists and others who can be claimed to be rebels in their various ways. The strange communist Joseph Pogany or John Pepper, as he was known in America, is here, as is B. Traven, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in his earlier role as Ret Marut, a German revolutionary. There are essays about communism in Hollywood and about Henry Miller and the writing of The Tropic of Cancer. Beat novelists, bohemians in Paris and elsewhere, jazz musicians like Lester Young and Charlie Parker, surrealism in Prague, and the underground in Amsterdam, all take their place in this wide-ranging survey.

Jim Burns continues his critical history of off-beat writers, artists and jazz musicians of the last century. This is volume 4 of his acclaimed series of essays.