Böcker utgivna av Resource Publications (CA)

""In these meditations upon Scripture, the author quickly, lightly opens up the sacred text to us in a way that--to my knowledge--has never been attempted in the entire history of the Christian faith. Through irony, pun, parody, spoof, and joke he reads Scripture with tongue in cheek, a rhyme in his pen, and a smile on his face. If you ever wondered what the Bible would sound like if it were written by Ogden Nash (and who hasn't?), here it is, Charlie Barrett's religious rhymes.""--William H. Willimon, acclaimed author and Dean of the Chapel emeritus, Duke University

The letters of John are some of the most simple yet profound texts in the New Testament. The Apostle John wrote three epistles at the close of the first century to counteract the heresy of Gnosticism and to focus on what it meant to know God by walking in His light. He contrasted the Christian life in stark opposites--light and darkness, love and hatred, truth and lies, life and death. In Living in the Light, Derrick McCarson reveals the heart of John's message: salvation is not found in hidden, secret knowledge, but in the fellowship of Christ. Moreover, the evidence of salvation is seen by loving others, abiding in the truth and obedience to God's commands. Living in the Light is a verse-by-verse commentary on the epistles of John. This volume is ideal for believers who are looking to go deeper in their discipleship with Christ. With an emphasis on practical application and precise exposition, this book will enhance the reader's personal Bible study.

Meditate on these things . . .The discipline of meditating day and night in the Book of the Lord (Joshua 1; Psalm 1) is a costly art, hard won in any age--perhaps even more so in today's stressful times of multi-tasking ministry and cut-and-paste computing.First hand-written in black-and-red notebooks from scraps of paper, using only a King James Bible and a Strong's Concordance, The House of God records the spiritual exercise of a working pastor and itinerant preacher over eighteen months, the last six spent confined to hospital with injured legs.For pastors and students of the Gospel ministry, the book furnishes a three-year course for weekly private worship, complete with original hymns, select Bible readings, and intense devotional meditations on Paul's First Epistle to Timothy.The author prayerfully aims to nourish ""the inner man of the heart"" and to encourage the practice of Scripture meditation. May it prompt King Jesus' servants to heed their life and doctrine as people of God called to ""the house of God, the Church of the living God, the ground and pillar of the truth.""

Traveling in New Mexico in 1971, Will George converts to Bhakti Dharma, a new religious movement influenced by Hinduism and Sikh tradition. Returning to his home in Minnesota, he renounces his previous life, provoking a crisis for everyone in his family. Peter, Will's older brother, is a graduate student at the University of Chicago who studies early Christian asceticism partly to understand his brother's devotion. He gains insight into kundalini yoga, gender roles in the ashram, the guru's charisma, and events such as Jonestown and controversies about Hare Krishna. In Thailand Peter has a profound encounter during a Buddhist meditation retreat. Meanwhile, Will's religious search continues in India, where he dies in suspicious circumstances. Peter retraces his brother's steps to investigate his death and wrestles with what it means to be his brother's keeper. The developing relationship between the two brothers dramatizes the theme of renunciation, as expressed both in explicit religious vows and in other choices they make. Acts of renunciation reveal a longing for sacrifice and self-transcendence, and sometimes also a dangerous and destructive urge. This novel explores how family relationships and religious commitments conflict, intertwine, and shape each other.

Life is not fair. What does this reality imply about the nature of God and the destiny of human beings? In this engaging book, Thompson asserts that "fairness" is not an expectation of the faithful within the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. Biblical narrative discloses the mystery of a paradoxical deity that indwells with the suffering of creation and thereby provides a mercy that exceeds the evasive goal of fairness. The process of healing and redemption of this cracked creation occurs through the tears and suffering of the biblical God whose authentic power is revealed within divine vulnerability and weakness. The Jesus of history truly manifested the fullness of this paradoxical God, for he disclosed the richness of the divine Being by emptying himself and taking the form of a redemptive servant. When the church grasps for power and control, avoids compassionate and costly ministries among the poor and powerless, and renders primary focus upon gaining heavenly rewards, it rejects its Christ-centered mission, relinquishes its paradoxical purpose, and ceases to strive toward becoming an extension of the incarnation. Thompson explores various paradoxical facets of each person of the Trinity and richly illustrates with stories from his vast experience as a parish theologian.

Everyone Has a Unique Pathway to Faith. Take the First Step!- Perhaps you are open to the Christian faith, but in no way convinced. You have legitimate questions or lingering doubts. - Perhaps you seek a spiritual rooting--that comes from deep beliefs. - Perhaps you hope to experience the living God--in a way that's real and sticks. - Perhaps you are searching for something compelling--a vision for your life! If you are willing, simply, to take the first exploring step, this booklet charts the way forward. It fulfills Jesus's promise that ""those who seek will find."" Welcome to a discovery-path of unlimited potential. It can bless you--beyond measure! Vignettes Inside: The First Step - A Tale of Two Operators - Jesus: Poser or Pedigree? - Something Has Gone Really Wrong! - Jesus Came to Fix What We Can't - The Meaning of the Cross - The Sign of the Resurrection - What's Unique about Christianity - Miscues in Approaching Faith - Faith & Flying - Navigating Forward - Rear View Mirror - Stepping Up - What Surfers Know To pursue your questions, curiosity, and longings, Steps to Faith can be read personally, with a Christian friend, or by a class/group at church.

Our lives move along with ups and downs, and we cope with them the best we can. But underneath there is a hunger for something more. There are times of stress such as when a loved one dies, a job is lost, a child is on a dangerous path, a difficult situation goes on and on. There are many other stressors that we all encounter.This book offers quotations from ancient and modern authors and poems and reflections that give a thought or image that seeps through the cracks that the stresses have made, and a deeper level is reached. There a new insight occurs, a new reality is discovered, or faith and hope are renewed. William Lancaster said: ""Reading these poems . . . I feel planted, secure, that all is right with the world. I put my head down on the desk like a school kid and felt that the hand of God was on my shoulder. This God said, 'Bill, I am your God. You are my child, all of you.'""If you want a deeper and stronger faith in the God who loves you, this book can impact your life.

Can Christians be spiritual and religious? Do they even know the difference between the two? Through a guide for guardian angels entering into basic training for service to ""womankind,"" Bound, an Earth Walker's handbook overhauls Western Christianity with integrity and clarity. Tackling subjects such as hypocrisy, racial prejudice, and misogyny, Bound cuts traditional religion back to its healthy roots: love, rigorous honesty, and fellowship. It then draws from contemporary sources, modern science, and an intriguing third-party perspective to graft openness, inclusiveness, and diversity, yielding an authentic way to be Christian today. Written for the layperson by a layperson, readers will appreciate Charles S. Stone's use of fantasy, humor, and novelty to capture insights that evoke that gratifying sense of ""aha!"" about good and evil, humanity, and salvation--ultimately seeking to answer life's most basic questions: What is God? Who are we? How should we live?

This volume presents the narrative of the author's personal spiritual journey, which is marked by numerous constructive life-changing paranormal experiences that can only be accounted for as special initiates of the divine spirit providing intimations and illuminations. These events are set in the context of the rich literature available, which reports similar events in the lives of many other persons, under both normal and extreme circumstances. The author, a clinical psychologist and pastoral theologian, interprets this broad panoply of psycho-spiritual data in terms of psychological science and biblical perspectives. He concludes that the divine spirit is pervasive throughout the universe and present in all the dynamics of life forms, constantly endeavoring to communicate with humans. Thus, the paranormal may well be more normal than the normal human experience and the veil between time and eternity, between the mundane and transcendent worlds, and between life and the life to come is apparently more permeable in both directions than we suppose.

Why does it feel like most of the world today considers irrelevant the gospel we cherish and so faithfully proclaim in our churches? Why do our Christian responses fail to satisfy the heart quests of our neighbors? Does the shallowness of our neatly packaged answers alienate us from them and from each other?More Questions than Answers offers the hope of reconciliation through exploring how we can develop listening relationships. Walking together in what becomes a spiritual accompaniment, we learn to attune ourselves to one another and to the Spirit within us. Then we dare to reach across the chasm that separates us and discover an authentic faith emerges.

Christian theology is increasingly recognized to be now a non-western enterprise since the high concentrations of Christians in the world are no longer found in the Western societies. Christian Theology and African Traditions takes seriously this present recognition of the southward movement of Christianity from the western world to a non-western setting. It seeks to reposition Christian theology and faith to engage the African traditions in classical category of theology proper, bibliology, anthropology, Christology, pneumatology, soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology and provides unique insights and problems that these classical and systematic categories poses to African Christianity. Similarly, it provides theological blueprint for non-Africans who are interested in knowing the nature and shape of the Christian theology in non-western settings. Consequently, Christian Theology and African Traditions goes beyond the mere criticism of Western misrepresentation of African traditions to seeing how the Christian theology in its systematic character engages the African traditions. With this methodological template, the work describes in the space of twelve chapters the different classical teachings of the Christian faith on God, scriptures, spirits and demons, the nature of the human person, the persons of Christ, salvation, the Holy Spirit, the church, and the future life in dialogue with some specific traditions of the African people.

Here is the true story of a man from India who comes to the United States to go to seminary, which he finds to be both a demanding social environment and a vigorous philosophical and theological world. After four years of seminary he gets married and completes a doctorate in philosophy. Soon he finds himself in a profound spiritual crisis teaching philosophy in an ivory tower. He hears protests in the streets for civil rights, peace, and environmental integrity. Events conspire to produce a critical turning point in his story. He finally goes into the ministry but is now forced to face the terrors of his own emotional immaturity. The lessons are hard to learn and the road is steep that leads to personal and intellectual adulthood. The energy that drives The Meaning of These Days is the quest for personal, spiritual, and philosophical integrity in a world of suffering beings, both human and nonhuman. The author identifies with the magi, in W. B.Yeats' well-known poem of 1914, who search for ""the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor."" Religious leaders of many backgrounds and all informed seekers after Truth in today's busy marketplace of ideas will welcome a book that combines philosophy and world theology with the spiritual life in such an engaging, poetic, and novel way.

Norma Jean Duncan found God following a personal revelation of his love. In a life now dedicated to him, she offers her readers an account of her journey that illustrates the difficulties of living in a secular world with a heavenly perspective. Duncan weaves personal reflections into her discussions on the glory of God, prayer, love, forgiveness, obedience, and terminal illness and shows the relevance of scriptural wisdom to the life of every modern believer. There are chapters on eternal scriptural truth, and the factors that corrupt it and lead to the promotion of intolerance and injustice in organized religion. The author examines this difficulty in relation to subjects like creation, sexuality, gender submission, faith and works, the spiritual standing of those who have no knowledge of Christ, and the rise of aggressive atheism. Through discussion of these controversial but important topics, her intention is that the Christian community will lead and not follow the contemporary secular world.

What is the relationship between the gospel and the church's responsibility toward the poor? Can social action be evangelism? Wasted Evangelism is an exploration in the Gospel of Mark on the subject of evangelism and social action. A proclamation-centered definition of ""evangelism"" based on the etymology of the word ""evangelize"" and a few isolated proof-texts is devoid of much of the biblical content that Mark offers to us through his Gospel, detaching the concept of evangelism from the narrative meaning that Mark gives to the gospel of Jesus Christ.In Wasted Evangelism Chip Anderson develops an exegetically based, narrative understanding of biblical evangelism, which, according to Mark's Gospel, includes God's care for the economically vulnerable and his concern for the issues of poverty. The studies gathered in this volume propose that social action should not be considered a separate, distinct responsibility for the church, but is rather a vital component of evangelism. A close examination of Mark's Gospel and the biblical texts associated with idolatry, poverty, and justice provides an opportunity for church leadership to rethink the evangelistic activities of their churches and to reconsider what it means to engage their surrounding communities as agents of God's kingdom.

We the Storytellers provides examples and techniques for expressing deeply held beliefs through the oldest form of communication--stories. This book can be used as a resource on narrative theology for preachers, teachers, and storytellers.Narrative theology is about peeling back the known to discover the unknown. Rather than pronouncing facts, it gives an opportunity for an ""ah ha"" experience. In a sermon it allows the hearer to grasp an element of truth through fiction or personal story--Jesus's method. And narrative theology is about revealing the relationship between God and God's people. What better way to look at relationships than through stories?The book is written in two parts. Part 1 asks what is a sacred story and offers a number of possibilities. Part 2 is a workshop on acting, writing, and presentation skills aimed at those who are drawn to expressing themselves through stories.The stories here are from Sally's own life experiences--the monologues from her imagination. Each story is related to a theme and is humorous, poignant, and human. We the Storytellers will inspire and equip its readers to develop and perform their own sacred stories.

Rather than pledging allegiance to the military effort as dictated by Prussian law in 1867, many devout Anabaptists deemed it prudent to become pioneers in Kansas. The year was 1876 and odd numbered sections of railroad land were being marketed by the Santa Fe across Kansas. Towns developed around train depots; local shopping became available. Marie Harder Epp was born in America to these relocated Anabaptists. She was a Kansas Mennonite farmer and also the village poet. Her poems, written for oral delivery, tell the story of life in Holland and West Prussia following the Reformation, the relocation to Kansas, and the creation of a church community on the tall grass prairies. A church was organized to focus these hard-working Germans on divine realities as they buried their dead, married their young, and dealt with the harsh prairie winds. Marie's poems also describe the changeover from buggies to cars, from German to English, and from isolation to global outreach. With time, the Anabaptists learned through cultural adaptation that they could be both staunch Mennonites and also patriotic Americans.

Designed primarily for the layperson, The Catholic Imagination is a journey through the liturgical year by way of weekly reflections on the life of the church. Through reading, thinking, and discussion, the religious imagination is stimulated and structured so the reader can reflect and act upon the richness of our faith to enter into a relationship with God. Reflections on the lives of the saints, their writings, their meaning for our times, the importance and value of creation and the natural world, the significance of the sacraments, sacramental devotions, and the timelessness of the gospel message encourage the reader to coordinate their actions with the weekly topic. Ideas on the church's artistic environment and related Scripture enhance the written materials. Special supplements are provided for Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, due to their importance in the life of the church. Just as we repeat the themes of the liturgical year over and over again, simple little lessons and readings like this go a long way in the continuing education of the lay Catholic with their straightforward message and inspirational writing style that capture the faith.

Early literary man learned that free speech and free labor were frequently suppressed or obliterated by powerful governments in the Near Eastern world. This is the source of the Bible's passionate interest in liberation from political and economic repression. Moses and his people in Egypt, for example, experienced the rapid disintegration of their traditional right to religious liberty and self-directed labor. They attempted to rectify the situation at Sinai and in Canaan. Mesopotamians and Egyptians, Greeks, Sicilians, and Romans labored against tyranny as well. Robert Kimball Shinkoskey focuses on stories, laws, and movements dealing with the problem of political idolatry in the ancient world. His purpose is to show that the Bible is a civic narrative as much as a religious one, and that the Ten Commandments are articles in a constitutional law system that promotes the steady rule of law rather than the capricious rule of man.

This, This...Whenever it is dark in the houseI turn on a small light for comforta small light in the kitchenover the sink.In winter when day fadesI pull a chair to a windowto read by the light of sunsetnews of a distant world,and light from the kitchencollects on the floor in dim puddles.It reminds me that we are poor.It reminds me of my mothercutting sprouts from potatoes,how she would call when I complained""Come. Look!"" water pouring from the tap""Look, this we have in abundance.""James A. Zoller lives and writes in rural western New York where he and his wife, Donna, raised their four children. Simple Clutter is the first of his books, which include Living on the Flood Plain and Ash & Embers. Zoller has spent the last thirty-four years teaching writing and literature at Houghton College. In the near future Zoller looks forward to shifting his attention full time to his writing projects, which includes several more collections of poems, a collection of short stories, and a composition text to be called Crossing the River. In addition to teaching and writing the three books named here, he has written columns for local newspapers, undertaken a travel blog (flood-plain.blogspot.com), published short stories, and written ceremonial poems for various public occasions, including the weddings of his children.

Rev Brinson profoundly presents this subject with a perspective and hope that one day the wrongs of the past will be redressed. Though it is sensitive to the soul and reminds us of our painful past, it yet gives us continuous hope for the future.""Rev. Harold Branch, M/Div, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Virginia Beach, VAWith the heart of a believer and honesty of a historian, Reverend Brinson weaves a tapestry of truth, justice, and most importantly, redemption.""Rev. A. McKinley Royal, Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church, Thomson, GAJohn D Brinson, (M.Div., San Francisco Theological Seminary), the oldest son of a Baptist Minister, and native son of Montgomery, Alabama, was a participant in the Civil Rights Struggles in the late 50''s and 60''s. A Christian Minister in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the author of two other books: ''Ministry of Deacons in North America'', and ''Black Queen Without a Throne''. He is currently acting as advisor for a program whose purpose is to direct and enhance the journey of young black males towards manhood.

If you have never been inside of a prison, there are things you will not know about the community there. You may guess at them, but that is not the same. What it feels like. What it sounds like. What goes on there; these all define portions of what it is. These definitions, or parameters of life inside, come to you quite viscerally. You feel them in and through your skin before you actually give word or shape to understanding them. You sense before you think. The themes that come from a prison poet are varied. Most poems you would not have to know the poet was a prisoner to gain access to the import of the word-pictures. Human experience, while diverse, shares some common archetypal qualities. But, some will grow in meaning knowing where the poems were planted. I think themes about being captive are universal, but when you know the poet is in a prison, it can open you to listen differently. Is that a good thing? I don''t know. But it is true.N. Thomas Johnson-Medland is Director of BAYADA Hospice in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He is the author of In the Same Place; Bathed in Abrasion; Bridges, Paths, and Waters: Dirt, Sky, and Mountains; Cairn-Space; Entering the Stream; Along the Road; From the Belly of the Whale; Danse Macabre; Feed My Sheep, Lead My Sheep; Windows and Doors; For the Beauty of the Earth; Duende; and Turning Within. He lives in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania with his wife, Glinda, and two sons, Zachary Aidan and Josiah Gabriel.