The Leadership Labyrinth: Negotiating the Paradoxes of Ministry by noted pastor and author Judson Edwards is an original and wholly unorthodox book on what it takes to be a pastor in the 21st century. It offers no simple answers, gimmicks, or church growth suggestions. Instead, Edwards, who has been a pastor for over thirty years, says that ministry is paradoxical, irrational and fun! He explores more than twenty paradoxes that every pastor needs to understand. If you?ve grown tired of ?self-help? books for pastors, and if you?re skeptical of ?techniques? for being an effective leader, this book is for you. It will jar you out of conventional thinking about church leadership and make you glad again to be a pastor.

There are many biblical stories which can be considered spiritual favorites, "greatest hits" even. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Noah and his ark. Moses and the crossing of the Red Sea. Daniel in the lions den. The Christmas story. Paul on the road to Damascus. This book isn't about any of these stories. In the pages of Hidden Treasures, the latest by pastor and author Judson Edwards, we go a bit off the beaten, scriptural path to meet unfamiliar people and visit unusual places. You'll meet Bezalel, Ahimaaz, and Diotrephes. You'll make stops in books rarely visited, like Lamentations, Habakkuk, Haggai, and 3rd John. Even if you?ve spent a good part of your life studying the Bible, you?ll probably go places in this book that you?ve seldom been before. As you wander the back roads of the Bible, you?ll be impressed with the people you meet and the sights you see. You might even come to believe that there are truths to be learned on the back roads that can?t be learned anywhere else

Unfortunately, to many people the word "sin" has lost its edge. We are more apt to hear about sin in reference to a piece of chocolate cake than in its true theological power. Understood biblically, sin is more than merely something that is "naughty but nice"; sin is a destructive pattern of life. It breaks our relationship with God, others, or ourselves. Reclaiming the word "sin" is the first step to reconciliation with God. When we recognize patterns as sinful, we recognize our own desperate need for the saving power of God in Jesus Christ. What exactly is sin? Just as we organize our cupboards and our schedules to make sense of our lives, Christian thinkers have organized sin into a number of categories in order to understand and surrender these patterns to God. The notion of "seven deadly sins" emerged as a way to recognize specific dangers to our spiritual lives. The origins of the list are unclear. Many scholars say that they emerged from a list of eight bad habits created by Evagrius of Pontus, a fourth-century Greek monastic theologian. Some 200 years later, Pope Gregory the Great reduced the list to seven while writing on the book of Job. Throughout the Bible, we read about the struggle between our sinful nature and God's desire to free us from bondage. In the book of Proverbs, we have an anthology of wisdom teachings. These collections were customarily attributed to King Solomon. Most biblical scholars now conclude that the title is honorary. The authors of Proverbs were the "sages, a social class that served as counselors, bureaucrats, and teachers during the Divided Kingdom and as preservers of tradition in the later periods" (Camp and Fontaine, 938). The purpose of the book is to guide people away from sin and into a wise and godly life.

In Quiet Faith, Judson Edwards writes, "For all of the fine qualities we introverts bring to the table, the truth remains that we are typically viewed as people in need of a personality upgrade. Those of us who are active in the church find that to be especially true in the community of faith. We are consistently, though subtly and indirectly, reminded that we need to be bolder, louder, and more certain in our faith. If we ever really got filled with the Spirit, the church seems to suggest, we would become extroverts." In eight finely crafted chapters, Edwards looks at key issues like evangelism, interpreting the Bible, dealing with doubt, and surviving the church from the perspective of a confirmed, but sometimes reluctant, introvert. In the process, he offers some provocative insights that introverts will find helpful and reassuring. Quiet Faith offers a thoughtful, honest, and entertaining look at what it means to be a Christian in the twenty-first century.