A Church Undone

Decades after the Holocaust, many assume that the churches in Germany resisted the Nazi regime. In fact, resistance was exceptional. Almost all Germans were Christians, and almost all Christians in Germany stood by, becoming intentionally or unintentionally complicit in Nazi policies and practices. In the early 1930s, a movement emerged within German Protestantism with the aim of fully integrating Nazi ideology, German national identity, and Christian faith. The Deutsche Christen, or "German Christians," as they were called, interpreted the Christian faith and the role of the church in society in service of the Nazi revolution. They married centuries-old Christian anti-Judaism to the Nazis' racial antisemitism and sought to eradicate all traces of Judaism from Christianity. The German Christian publication program, designed to advance their ideology, included books and pamphlets, radio talks and speeches, as well as liturgies and retranslations of Scripture. For the first time in English, Mary M. Solberg presents a selection of representative documents of the German Christians. Her introduction to the volume sets the historical context of the movement and offers short introductions to each of the specific readings. The collection includes key responses critical of the German Christians by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, among others. Book jacket.

Do you desire deeper freedom? Do you feel restricted by the knots of sin and shame that conceal the true beauty of your feminine heart? Through this collection of raw and redemptive testimonies from real Catholic women, punctuated with guided reflection and contemplative prayer, Carrie Schuchts Daunt of the John Paul II Healing Center offers you an encounter with truth and healing tailored to your specific identities as daughter, sister, bride and mother. Undone ushers you through a vulnerable search for truth through essential spiritual exercises, prayer guides, and reflection material. Sharing personal testimonies of illness, loss of faith, rejection, promiscuity, abortion, broken marriage, infertility, miscarriage, addiction, betrayal, bulimia, and depression, the fifteen women in Undone identify shame and fear as major barriers to their relationships. In their stories, they share how their shame was untangled and their identity restored. This chorus of bold women—including Lisa Brenninkmeyer, founder of Walking with Purpose; Jen Settle, managing director of the Theology of the Body Institute; Debra Herbeck, founder of Be Love Revolution; Judy Bailey, executive director of John Paul II Healing Center; and Jeannie Hannemann, founder and executive director of Elizabeth Ministry International—will encourage you to explore and undo the knots in your own life as well. Daunt shares the same prayer exercises and spiritual reflection material used at the John Paul II Healing Center’s Undone women’s conferences, including inner healing prayers spiritual exercises for identifying core wounds spiritual exercises for renouncing false belief systems reflection questions In Undone, readers find an essential guide to distinctly feminine healing that will leave them willingly and eagerly stripping away the bondage of sin and shame allowing them to become the women God calls them to be.

Pastor Laura Truax, originator of the "reverse tithe" at LaSalle Street Church in Chicago, wasn't always in this same place of faith. In Undone she shares her journey of seeing Scripture with new eyes. Whether a big crisis shakes us or little things wear away at us, these are moments where we are confronted with ourselves. This is not the way that things are supposed to be. We feel like failures. We are undone. Worse yet, we realize that underneath our masks and facades, we are not the person we are pretending to be. Who are we, really? Laura Truax knows what it's like when life hits the fan. But she discovered that these times of exposure and vulnerability can become opportunities to find out who we really are and what we are meant to be. When we come to the end of ourselves, God can meet us there to help us face our fears, take off our masks and rediscover our true self as part of his larger story. Your journey isn't done. Come discover how you can become the person you long to be.

Preachers dread the arrival of Easter, because these holy days bring the daunting task of finding new ways to tell the old stories everyone's heard so many times before. But what if it were only we preachers who are bored with these stories? asks Will Willimon. What if people keep showing up at Easter because the story of God's victory over death continues to hold power for them? What if the point were not to capitulate to the culture's insatiable appetite for novelty, but to tell the old stories faithfully, trusting in the power of the Spirit to make the text, the congregation, and yes, even the preacher come alive again in the preaching event? With Willimon's Undone by Easter pastors can face the prospect of preaching their next Easter sermon with joy and confidence rather than worry about finding something to say.

Close to 60 percent of young people who went to church as teens drop out after high school. Now the bestselling author of unChristian trains his researcher's eye on these young believers. Where Kinnaman's first book unChristian showed the world what outsiders aged 16-29 think of Christianity, You Lost Me shows why younger Christians aged 16-29 are leaving the church and rethinking their faith. Based on new research, You Lost Me shows pastors, church leaders, and parents how we have failed to equip young people to live "in but not of" the world and how this has serious long-term consequences. More importantly, Kinnaman offers ideas on how to help young people develop and maintain a vibrant faith that they embrace over a lifetime.

In this book, beloved speaker Fr. Mike Schmitz unfolds the mystery of brokenness. He reminds us that we have been fought for by a God who wants us as we are, not as we should be or hope to be. The Lord’s will for us is to find our identity in him and to thrive, living the life he has given us.

Become empowered to face your own messy, complicated life with fresh courage and bravery. Undone is author Michele Cushatt's quest to make peace with a complicated life. It is an honest confession of a diagnosis of cancer and the joys and disappointments of motherhood and marriage, ripe with regret over what is and, yet, still hopeful for what could be. With enough humor to ease the rawness of the story, Undone takes you on a roller-coaster two-year journey through the unexpectedness of life. A look back makes Michele long for a do-over, the chance to make fewer mistakes and leave less of a mess to clean up. A look forward makes Michele wonder if all her attempts to control life have robbed her of the vibrancy of it. And, in the middle of this internal chaos, she finds her once-pristine house filled with the sights and sounds of three small, uncontainable children who just want to be loved. In the end, Undone turns complication into a beautiful canvas, angst into joy, and the unknown into an adventure, revealing that sometimes life's most colorful and courageous stories are written right in the middle of the mess.

An original and thoughtful approach to a grace-filled theology of leadership. In a post-Christian culture, parish clergy can find themselves at a loss, ill-equipped to deal with a reality for which seminary did not prepare them. As a result, the Church and its clergy can seem to flounder from one “program” to the next or get enamored with secular self-help strategies. To learn to lead well in this new context, the Church needs to help clergy refocus on what both works and is true to their tradition and theology. Enter Scott Benhase, whose Done and Left Undone proposes an ascetical theology of leadership based in St. Benedict’s Promise of Stability, Obedience, and Conversion of Life. The Promise helps clergy move forward from their inward identity to their outward askesis (discipline), their inner life experience of resting in the mercy of God’s grace in harmony with their outward role in the church. Benhase believes parish clergy can lead faithfully and well without following a program or leadership style that does not fit them. Leading from ascetical grace does not require parish clergy to be something they are not. It invites them, rather, to a way of being and an askesis that will help them be both faithful and effective in parish leadership.