Jordan S Stormy Banks

This book is about vision. More precisely, it is about helping a congregation capture a pastor's vision and struggling through the process of seeing that vision fulfilled. H. Beecher Hicks captures that experience through the image of the Old Testament tabernacle---God's spiritual instrument for leading Moses and the Israelites through their wilderness journey and manifesting his glorious presence among them. This book arises out of Dr. Hicks's experiences in recent years of coping with the need of his church for a larger facility in the face of opposition from the community surrounding the church. The book captures and expounds the spiritual qualities required for such changing times. It both teaches and inspires. It shows us how to deal with the ups and downs of defining a vision, confronting change, and dealing with the obstacles that stand in the way, from both inside and outside the church. 'The problem with visions,' Dr. Hicks writes, 'is that they don't come with 'how to' manuals or an 800 number to call for technical support.' Yet God shows his faithfulness in many ways, sometimes after grit and grimy work, sometimes through unexplainable miracles.

Seventeen and terrified, Silas Swann has led a privileged life and has never been forced to fight for anything. He doesn't recognize himself as he stands in a Confederate uniform and holds a loaded weapon, crouching in the overgrown field. He's waiting to fire his weapon at his target in hopes of a kill. But why? Silas can't quite pull the trigger, and he begins to realize it has more to do with what the war stands for than his fear of killing a person. He learns that his enemies are much bigger than a Union soldier. They are personal struggles and the biggest bully in his own company, Moses. As Silas struggles through the marsh in the South, he finds himself in search of forgiveness. Will he find the answer to the war On Jordan's Stormy Banks?

In the 1600s Colonial French settlers brought Christianity into the lands that are now the state of Mississippi. Throughout the period of French rule and the period of Spanish dominion that followed, Roman Catholicism remained the principal religion. By the time that statehood was achieved in 1817, Mississippi was attracting Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and other Protestant evangelical faiths at a remarkable pace, and by the twentieth century, religion in Mississippi was dominantly Protestant and evangelical. In this book, Randy J. Sparks traces the roots of evangelical Christianity in the state and shows how the evangelicals became a force of cultural revolution. They embraced the poorer segments of society, welcomed high populations of both women and African Americans, and deeply influenced ritual and belief in the state's vision of Christianity. In the 1830s as the Mississippi economy boomed, so did evangelicalism. As Protestant faiths became wedded to patriarchal standards, slaveholding, and southern political tradition, seeds were sown for the war that would erupt three decades later. Until Reconstruction many Mississippi churches comprised biracial congregations and featured women in prominent roles, but as the Civil War and the racial split cooled the evangelicals' liberal fervor and drastically changed the democratic character of their religion into arch-conservatism, a strong but separate black church emerged. As dominance by Protestant conservatives solidified, Jews, Catholics, and Mormons struggled to retain their religious identities while conforming to standards set by white Protestant society. As Sparks explores the dissonance between the state's powerful evangelical voice and Mississippi's social and cultural mores, he reveals the striking irony of faith and society in conflict. By the time of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, religion, formerly a liberal force, had become one of the leading proponents of segregation, gender inequality, and ethnic animosity among whites in the Magnolia State. Among blacks, however, the churches were bastions of racial pride and resistance to the forces of oppression.

Using the metaphor of God's leading the Israelites through the wilderness by way of the tabernacle, H. Beecher Hicks offers insight based on his own experiences for how to help a congregation capture a vision, overcome obstacles, and see God at work through that vision.