The original guide to "practicing the presence of God" "We must not grow weary of doing little things for the love of God, who looks not on the great size of the work, but on the love of it." In this classic work, which has instructed and inspired millions, a humble 17th-century monk reveals the secrets of daily, moment-by-moment fellowship with God. "In the way of God, thoughts count very little," writes Brother Lawrence, who spent much of his monastic life in the kitchen. "Love does it all." Full of realistic honesty, friendliness, and simplicity, Brother Lawrence shows that it is possible to meet God amongst the pots and pans-in the ordinary, daily events of life. This edition, rendered from the original French into graceful, contemporary English, will nourish and delight all those who seek to practice the presence of God.

Discussion around the bestseller The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher has led many people to want to know more about Benedictine principles.??????? Listen, my child. I want you to put the ear of your heart to the solid ground of the master's wisdom (what I received, I'm passing on to you). It's advice from a spiritual father who loves you-the sort of counsel you receive by letting it shape your whole life. Listening is hard work, but it's the essential work. It opens us up to the God we've rejected by only listening to ourselves. If you're ready to give up your addiction to yourself, this message is for you: to listen is to equip yourself with the best resources available to serve the real Master, Christ the Lord. So begins the famous opening paragraph of Benedict's Rule in Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's vital, new, contemporary paraphrase. The entire text of the Rule is here plus a lengthy introduction from Jonathan, and detailed explanatory notes throughout that explain difficult passages. The result is a classic re-introduced that will enliven any 21st century expression of religious community.

There is a new trend afoot, one that goes against the prevailing Western model, influenced by the values and principles of international commerce. Presented here are five "signs of life," showcased by this network of movements best referred to as "new friars." God's kingdom in the hands of the people of God, the contributors to this book show us, is first and foremost incarnational, which leads necessarily to gospel witness that is devotional, communal, missional and marginal. With a survey of the history of new friar movements and commentary by forerunner, this seminal book, edited by Scott A. Bessenecker, paints a picture of mission that is new only because it has been neglected for so long, a mission that is truly good news to the people in its path. With contributions from Viv Grigg, Craig and Nayhouy Greenfield, Derek Engdahl, Jean-Luc Krieg, Chris Heuertz, Darren Prince, Jose Penate Aceves, John Hayes and Ash Barker, this book brings together a chorus of voices at the front lines of what God is doing through the new friar community.

When Sarah and Tom Arthur were appointed to a suburban church after three years in an urban Christian community, they faced a unique challenge: how to translate the practices of "radical" faith into their new context. Together with their friends and fellow church members Erin and Dave Wasinger, the Arthurs embarked on a yearlong experiment to implement twelve small practices of radical faith--not waiting until they were out of debt or the kids were out of diapers or God sent them elsewhere, but right now. This book is Sarah and Erin's story, told with humor, theological reflection, and practical insight, exploring such practices as simplicity, hospitality, accountability, sustainability, and social justice--but, most of all, discernment. Along the way readers will consider how God might be calling them to embark on their own year of small but radical changes, right where God has planted them. Each chapter includes discussion questions and suggested readings. Foreword by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. For more information, visit [www.YearofSmallThings.com](http://www.YearofSmallThings.com).

Fifty-two readings on living in intentional Christian community to spark group discussion. Gold Medal Winner, 2017 Illumination Book Awards, Christian Living Silver Medal Winner, 2017 Benjamin Franklin Award in Religion, Independent Book Publishers Association Why, in an age of connectivity, are our lives more isolated and fragmented than ever? And what can be done about it? The answer lies in the hands of God’s people. Increasingly, today’s Christians want to be the church, to follow Christ together in daily life. From every corner of society, they are daring to step away from the status quo and respond to Christ’s call to share their lives more fully with one another and with others. As they take the plunge, they are discovering the rich, meaningful life that Jesus has in mind for all people, and pointing the church back to its original calling: to be a gathered, united community that demonstrates the transforming love of God. Of course, such a life together with others isn’t easy. The selections in this volume are, by and large, written by practitioners—people who have pioneered life in intentional community and have discovered in the nitty-gritty of daily life what it takes to establish, nurture, and sustain a Christian community over the long haul. Whether you have just begun thinking about communal living, are already embarking on sharing life with others, or have been part of a community for many years, the pieces in this collection will encourage, challenge, and strengthen you. The book’s fifty-two chapters can be read one a week to ignite meaningful group discussion. Contributors include: John F. Alexander, Eberhard Arnold, J. Heinrich Arnold, Johann Christoph Arnold, Alden Bass, Benedict of Nursia, Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, Leonardo Boff, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joan Chittister, Stephen B. Clark, Andy Crouch, Dorothy Day, Anthony de Mello, Elizabeth Dede, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jenny Duckworth, Friedrich Foerster, Richard J. Foster, Jodi Garbison, Arthur G. Gish, Helmut Gollwitzer, Adele J Gonzalez, Stanley Hauerwas, Joseph H. Hellerman, Roy Hession, David Janzen, Rufus Jones, Emmanuel Katongole, Arthur Katz, Søren Kierkegaard, C. Norman Kraus, C.S. Lewis, Gerhard Lohfink, Ed Loring, Chiara Lubich, George MacDonald, Thomas Merton, Hal Miller, José P. Miranda, Jürgen Moltmann, Charles E. Moore, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Elizabeth O’Connor, John M. Perkins, Eugene H.Peterson, Christine D. Pohl, Chris Rice, Basilea Schlink, Howard A. Snyder, Mother Teresa, Thomas à Kempis, Elton Trueblood, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

"Prayer is not so much about convincing God to do what we want God to do as it is about convincing ourselves to do what God wants us to do." --from the Introduction Activists Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove show how prayer and action must go together. Their exposition of key Bible passages provides concrete examples of how a life of prayer fuels social engagement and the work of justice. Phrases like "give us this day our daily bread" and "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" take on new meaning when applied to feeding the hungry or advocating for international debt relief. If you hope to see God change society, you must be an ordinary radical who prays--and then is ready to become the answer to your own prayers.

A pastor's frank advice for Christians who want to bring the gospel to their neighbors. Gold Medal Winner, 2016 Illumination Book Award in ministry/mission, Independent Publishers How can Christians represent the love of Christ to their neighbors (let alone people in foreign countries) in an age when Christianity has earned a bad name from centuries of intolerance and cultural imperialism? Is it enough to love and serve them? Can you win their trust without becoming one of them? Can you be a missional Christian without a church? This provocative book, based on a recently uncovered collection of 100-year-old letters from a famous pastor to his nephew, a missionary in China, will upend pretty much everyone's assumptions about what it means to give witness to Christ. Blumhardt challenges us to find something of God in every person, to befriend people and lead them to faith without expecting them to become like us, and to discover where Christ is already at work in the world. This is truly good news: No one on the planet is outside the love of God. At a time when Christian mission has too often been reduced to social work or proselytism, this book invites us to reclaim the heart of Jesus' great commission, quietly but confidently incarnating the love of Christ and trusting him to do the rest.

Experience a deeper prayer life through this fresh take on ancient liturgy for believers today. Designed to help individuals, families, and congregations pray together across denominations, this book of common prayer will help you and your community join together each day with the same songs, scriptures, and prayers. Composed under an advisory team of liturgy experts, these three influential and inspiring authors have created Common Prayer--a tapestry of prayer that will help the church be one as God is one. This universal prayer book allows readers to greet each day together, remembering significant dates and Christian heroes in church history, as well as important historic dates in the struggle for freedom and justice. There are morning prayers for each day of the year, evening prayers for each of the seven days of the week, a midday prayer to be repeated throughout the year, and prayers for special occasions. In addition, there are morning prayers for Holy Week. Common Prayer also includes a unique songbook composed of music and classic lyrics to more than fifty songs from various traditions, including African spirituals, traditional hymns, Mennonite gathering songs, and Taize chants. Tools for prayer are scattered throughout to aid those who are unfamiliar with liturgy and to deepen the prayer life of those who are familiar with liturgical prayer. Ultimately, Common Prayer makes liturgy dance, taking the best of the old and bringing new life to it with a fresh fingerprint for the contemporary renewal of the church.

2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalists - Multicultural Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in the Bible Belt in the American South as a faithful church-going Christian. But he gradually came to realize that the gospel his Christianity proclaimed was not good news for everybody. The same Christianity that sang, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound" also perpetuated racial injustice and white supremacy in the name of Jesus. His Christianity, he discovered, was the religion of the slaveholder. Just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, our compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction that undoes the injustices of the past. Wilson-Hartgrove traces his journey from the religion of the slaveholder to the Christianity of Christ. Reconstructing the gospel requires facing the pain of the past and present, from racial blindness to systemic abuses of power. Grappling seriously with troubling history and theology, Wilson-Hartgrove recovers the subversiveness of the gospel that sustained the church through centuries of slavery and oppression, from the civil rights era to the Black Lives Matter movement and beyond. When the gospel is reconstructed, freedom rings for both individuals and society as a whole. Discover how Jesus continues to save us from ourselves and each other, to repair the breach and heal our land.

Readers' Choice Award Winner Best Books About the Church from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore Fast food. Fast cars. Fast and furious. Fast forward. Fast . . . church? The church is often idealized (or demonized) as the last bastion of a bygone era, dragging our feet as we're pulled into new moralities and new spiritualities. We guard our doctrine and our piety with great vigilance. But we often fail to notice how quickly we're capitulating, in the structures and practices of our churches, to a culture of unreflective speed, dehumanizing efficiency and dis-integrating isolationism. In the beginning, the church ate together, traveled together and shared in all facets of life. Centered as they were on Jesus, these seemingly mundane activities took on their own significance in the mission of God. In Slow Church, Chris Smith and John Pattison invite us to leave franchise faith behind and enter into the ecology, economy and ethics of the kingdom of God, where people know each other well and love one another as Christ loved the church.

Description: Delving into the widespread, contemporary longing for a more serious and communal experience of Christianity, this book provides important theoretical underpinnings and casts a vision for a new monasticism within the Wesleyan tradition. Elaine Heath and Scott Kisker call for the planting of neo-monastic churches which embody the Wesleyan vision of holiness in postmodern contexts. This book also points toward some vital shifts that are necessary in theological education in order to equip pastors to lead such communities. Longing for Spring helps Wesleyans of all stripes understand the theory and praxis necessary for planting neo-monastic communities as a new model of the church that is particularly important in the postmodern context. The authors write in an engaging, conversational style that is conversant with postmodern culture, yet thoroughly informed by critical research. Heath and Kisker boldly challenge the imagination of the church, both within and beyond Wesleyan traditions, to consider the possibility of revitalizing the church through the new monasticism. Endorsements: ""Welcome to the world of New Methodism, exciting evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit in the church today. New Methodism comes to us with contributions from the New Monasticism, John Wesley, Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove, and an emerging generation who are leading us to a fresh appreciation of what God intends the church to be. This is a wonderful book that quickly gives the theological rationale for a reformed church and then gives practical advice on how to grow to be a new church. This is exciting "" --Will Willimon Bishop, The North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church ""Longing for Spring connects United Methodism with a historical and theological approach that is very accessible, not to mention inspirational. I read it on an airplane and people around me wondered what I was reading because the authors' writing is so delightful at times that I was laughing out loud I can't wait to make my first appointment of a clergy to a monastic community."" --Sally Dyck Resident Bishop of Minnesota, The United Methodist Church ""Elaine and Scott are the best of guides for hungry Methodists. Their description of Wesleyan renewal is inviting. Their prescription for transformation is possible. I will be using this book in my class, our neighborhood and our congregation. What a blessing "" --Amy Laura Hall Duke University About the Contributor(s): Elaine A. Heath is the McCreless Assistant Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. She is the author of Out of the Night (2008). Scott Kisker is the James Cecil Logan Associate Professor of Evangelism and Wesley Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary, and is the author of Foundation for Revival (2007).

Description: If the church is more than just a building, what could it mean to live in it--to inhabit it as a way of life? From their location in new monastic communities, Otto, Stock, and Wilson-Hartgrove ask what the church can learn from St. Benedict's vows of conversion, obedience, and stability about how to live as the people of God in the world. In storytelling and serious engagement with Scripture, old wisdom breathes life into a new monasticism. But, like all monastic wisdom, these reflections are not just for monks. They speak directly to the challenge of being the church in America today and the good news Christ offers for the whole world. Endorsements: Conversations between contemporary Christian communities and Benedictine monasticism are among the most surprising and promising in the church today. Given that the roots of monasticism and of contemporary Protestantism lie in different parts of the Christian tradition, mutual engagement between contemporary Christians and monastics has been rare. Recently, however, the scene has shifted, and Inhabiting the Church represents the new eagerness to learn the art of living together faithfully from experienced and ancient practitioners. --Christine D. Pohl from the foreword ""Protestants looking for a richer, thicker, more robust and enchanted way of living into the Christian story should not ignore this invitation into the rhythms and cadences of Benedictine spirituality. Indeed, only one kind of person should avoid this book: the reader who does not wish to be changed."" --Lauren F. Winner author of Girl Meets God and Real Sex ""This book is a timely intersection of the new and ancient, breathing fresh life into an aging body. An older generation will nd this book a long-awaited reassurance that the Spirit is still stirring radical nonconformity on the margins of empires. And the contemporary renewal of new monastics and prophetic tricksters will nd a cure for the pretension and sloppiness that can so often taint our vision or tempt us to pretend that there is 'something new under the sun.' With both courage and humility, we will all nd ourselves invited to inhabit the incarnational body that makes God visible to the world . . . May it inspire all of us to become the church that God longs for."" --Shane Claiborne author of The Irresistible Revolution, founding member of The Simple Way, and recovering sinner ""These folks are bringing things both old and new out of the great Christian storehouse The New Monasticism is discovering what is always rediscovered--and always bears great life for the Gospel."" --Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M. Center for Action and Contemplation Albuquerque, New Mexico About the Contributor(s): Jon Stock is a member of Church of the Servant King, publisher of Wipf and Stock, and proprietor of Windows Booksellers in Eugene, Oregon. Tim Otto serves as an Associate Pastor of the Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco. He is also a part-time nurse at the San Francisco county hospital, working with AIDS and cancer patients. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is a member of Rutba House in Durham, North Carolina. He is the author of To Baghdad and Beyond.

'To Baghdad and Beyond' is the story of a young evangelical couple who followed the conviction of their faith into a war zone and discovered an alternative to the violence of empires and the complicity of quietism in the "third way" of Jesus's beloved community. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove writes of his journey from a rural Southern Baptist church to Iraq in a time of war to a Christian community of hospitality in an urban neighborhood. Excited by ways that Christian hope is taking concrete form, Wilson-Hartgrove describes a new monastic movement that is witnessing to a world at war that another way is possible.

FOR DISTRIBUTION OUTSIDE THE USA. Common Prayer helps today's diverse church pray together across traditions and denominations. With an ear to the particulars of how various liturgical traditions pray, and using an advisory team of liturgy experts, the authors have created a tapestry of prayer that celebrates the best of each tradition. The book also includes a unique songbook composed of music and classic lyrics to over fifty songs from various traditions, including African spirituals, traditional hymns, Mennonite gathering songs, and Taize chants. Tools for prayer are scattered throughout to aid those who are unfamiliar with liturgy and to deepen the prayer life of those who are familiar with liturgical prayer. Ultimately, Common Prayer makes liturgy dance, taking the best of the old and bringing new life to it with a fresh fingerprint for the contemporary renewal of the church. Churches and individuals who desire a deeper prayer life and those familiar with Shane Claiborne and New Monasticism will enjoy the tools offered in this book as a fresh take on liturgy.