Shouting Above The Noisy Crowd Biblical Wisdom And The Urgency Of Preaching

What could we accomplish if only we acted more wisely? Could we mitigate the effects of diseases; help the vulnerable feel safer; make progress on justice; cooperate on common problems? We don’t see enough wisdom, but neither did Woman Wisdom herself, who cried out in the streets wanting to gain attention. For every preacher who feels the urgency for more wisdom, this book has heard you. We know the urgency and we want to help. With contributions from: O. Wesley Allen Karoline M. Lewis John C. Holbert Ruthanna Hooke David Schnasa Jacobsen J. Dwayne Howell Margaret Wenig Luke Powery Eunjoo Kim

Preaching from Inside the Story is a book that seeks to carve out an understanding of narrative preaching in an age where there is little agreement about its nature and practice. Capitalizing on the works of Craddock and Lowry, it seeks to find an expanded palette upon which the preacher may engage the larger canvas of narrative preaching. This book will engage the mind by introducing neuroscientific understandings of creativity; build upon the foundations of the philosophy of stories by engaging Aristotle’s foundational understanding of narrative; and renew the Lowry Loop by expanding this seminal work and how it should be understood in our current culture. Preaching from Inside the Story breaks new ground by encouraging preachers to move inside stories and tell them from the inside out providing a positive effect, thereby affording non-narrative preachers to connect with storytelling principles. Ultimately, it is filled with examples of how to do narrative in a very practical way. However, in showing these practical examples, the reader is involved in a deep analysis of those narrative sermons and how they fit into an overall narrative understanding of preaching. In the final analysis, it invites the reader to take a fresh journey into narrative preaching.

The shelves at the big bookstore chains are lined with cracker-barrel wisdom manuals, such as Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and Life's Little Instruction Book. Schools display brightly colored, slogan-filled posters to help them teach "the six pillars of character." Many people are going to their local New Age emporium to purchase energy-harmonizing crystals and to sign up for past-life regression seminars. Alyce McKenzie reminds us that this is a new flurry of an old activity: the search for wisdom, for help in finding the principles that can guide our lives and shape our character. The question for those who proclaim the gospel is simple: by whose wisdom will our people live? The wisdom books and genres of the Bible, long neglected, are now the subject of avid scrutiny by biblical scholars. They've turned up the shining insight that the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is brimming with materials that axe the ancestors of contemporary slogans and self-help manuals. This is indeed good news! We have proverbs and instruction every bit as vivid and compelling as "Don't sweat the small stuff" -- and far more aware of the depth, complexity, and mystery of life in God's world. McKenzie demonstrates how Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and other biblical wisdom can provide fruitful opportunities to preach to those who are hungry for wisdom, and often unaware of the richness and depth of the Bible's wisdom tradition. Key Features: -- Provides an alternative to shallow catch-phrases that parade in our culture as wisdom; -- Helps preachers harvest the biblical gems that are the ancestors of contemporary slogans and self-help manuals; -- Lets preachers tap into a rich vein of instruction on life that has withstood the test of theological reflection and life experience.

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

In this profoundly innovative book, Ashon T. Crawley engages a wide range of critical paradigms from black studies, queer theory, and sound studies to theology, continental philosophy, and performance studies to theorize the ways in which alternative or “otherwise” modes of existence can serve as disruptions against the marginalization of and violence against minoritarian lifeworlds and possibilities for flourishing. Examining the whooping, shouting, noise-making, and speaking in tongues of Black Pentecostalism—a multi-racial, multi-class, multi-national Christian sect with one strand of its modern genesis in 1906 Los Angeles—Blackpentecostal Breath reveals how these aesthetic practices allow for the emergence of alternative modes of social organization. As Crawley deftly reveals, these choreographic, sonic, and visual practices and the sensual experiences they create are not only important for imagining what Crawley identifies as “otherwise worlds of possibility,” they also yield a general hermeneutics, a methodology for reading culture in an era when such expressions are increasingly under siege.

Guides both pastors and members to recognize key characteristics of a healthy church and then challenge each person to do his or her part in developing those characteristics in the local church body.