Preemptive Love

The founder of the Preemptive Love Coalition (PLC), an international development organization based in Iraq that provides lifesaving heart surgeries to Iraqi children and trains local doctors and nurses, presents a firsthand account of lifesaving and peacemaking in the world's most notorious war-torn country.

For all who are displaced. For all who are weary of the way things are. For all who long for a more beautiful world. Preemptive Love founder Jeremy Courtney has seen the very worst of war. He's risked his life saving lives on the front lines. He's come face to face with ISIS, been targeted by death threats, and narrowly escaped airstrikes. Through it all, the most powerful thing he's learned is this: we're not just at war with each other. We're at war with ourselves. But the way things are is not the way they have to be. There is a more beautiful world. To find it, we have to we confront our fear--and end war where it starts: in our own heads and hearts. With stories of people who have lived through war and terrorism, Love Anyway will inspire you to confront your deepest fears and respond to our scary world with the kind of love that seems a little crazy. Because when we do, we become agents of hope who unmake violence and unfurl the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Love Anyway is the story of Jeremy's incredible journey--and an invitation to discover the more beautiful world on the front lines where you live.

The author recalls how, after her near-death visit to Heaven, her life changed and she embraced a life of love, faith, and passion in this world, and advises readers to adopt the path of faith in order to make the most of the time they have.

This book goes on my "sacred shelf" which holds half a dozen honored books that I use to provoke new thoughts.” –Cynthia M. Adams, founder, GrantStation.com Do you have, work for, or dream of starting a business or organization that positively impacts the world while also turning a profit? Radical Business is a blueprint for business owners and businesses ready to usher in a newer, practical form of doing business. By learning more about what a social enterprise is and how it can apply to any business, employee, activist, consumer, or citizen, we can use the golden rule as a catalyst for a different mindset. Radical business is not a brand new operational system, it's a way of returning to the root or origin. A genuinely radical business goes back to its root purpose: to meet a customer's need, solve a problem, and provide value. David Gaines outlines his Seven Seeds Framework for a truly radical business model, including: Supply Chain: Behind Every Product Is a Story Employees: Successful Brands Are Built By Happy Teams Customers: What is Ethical Marketing? Community: Fostering Healthy Interdependence Competitors: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats Environment: Rethinking the Costs & Benefits to Going Green Self: True Sustainability Requires Self Care In Radical Business, Gaines provides real-life business insight with case studies of successful companies who have taken action to grow their profitability and positive impact. He provides actionable steps towards making a positive impact with in-depth analysis of supply chain, employee, customer, competitor, communal, and environmental interactions. As the world rapidly changes, and we realize that it needs more businesses that do good, Radical Business can help us leave the world better than we found it. Readers of Measure What Matters by John Doerr and Your Next Five Moves by Patrick Bet-David will enjoy Radical Business.

How should Christians address specific problems, controversies, and crises in communication today? By looking at influential Christian thinkers throughout history, we can identify wisdom that enriches us today in practical ways. Words and Witnesses explores various influential Christian thinkers and theologians from across church history in order to expand our contemporary conversations in communication studies and media theory. Individual chapters written by contributing scholars focus on major Christian thinkers, starting with Athanasius, St. Augustine, and John Chrysostom, moving through the Middle Ages to address figures such as Anselm, Nicholas of Cusa, Teresa of Lisieux, and arriving in the present with reflections on the work of John Howard Yoder, C. S. Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Kuyper, and Desmond Tutu, among others. Each chapter delves into how the contemporary church, and scholars of media, can turn to these influential Christian thinkers as resources for addressing specific problems in communication today. By analyzing church practices, doctrine, and biblical texts this book provides the church with resources and inspiration to communicate in distinctly Christian ways.

Diana Oestreich, a combat medic in the Army National Guard, enlisted like both her parents before her. But when she was commanded to run over an Iraqi child to keep her convoy rolling and keep her battle buddies safe, she was confronted with a choice she never thought she'd have to make. Torn between God's call to love her enemy and her country's command to be willing to kill, Diana chose to wage peace in a place of war. For the remainder of her tour of duty, Diana sought to be a peacemaker--leading to an unlikely and beautiful friendship with an Iraqi family. A beautiful and gut-wrenching memoir, Waging Peace exposes the false divide between loving our country and living out our faith's call to love our enemies--whether we perceive our enemy as the neighbor with an opposing political viewpoint, the clerk wearing a head-covering, or the refugee from a war-torn country. By showing that us-versus-them is a false choice, this book will inspire each of us to choose love over fear.

The walls between us seem impenetrable. We live in an age of strife and division. Factors such as race, class, values and lifestyles keep us from connecting with others in meaningful ways. It's easy to avoid or ignore those who make us uncomfortable and those we simply do not like, but God's call to the church is to do just the opposite. Leroy Barber has spent decades pursuing reconciliation and justice amongst groups of vastly diverse people. He knows the challenge of embracing those who are difficult to embrace, yet he advocates that the way to radical shalom on earth is through pursuing these relationships. We have the opportunity as the people of God to bring true peace and unity to a world that desperately needs it. Embrace the challenge to show a divided world the bridge-building power of God's love.