Six Spiritual Needs In America Today

A Gallup poll revealed the following six spiritual needs of Americans in the '90s: 1. the need to believe that life is meaningful and has purpose; 2. the need for a sense of community and deeper relationships; 3. the need to be appreciated and respected; 4. the need to be listened to and heard; 5. the need to feel that one is growing in faith; 6. the need for practical help in developing a mature faith.This book contains a series of six brief dramas with accompanying sermons that addres each of these six needs. By speaking directly to the heartfelt concerns of Americans today they provide a perfect Lent or summer series that will boost worship attendance.

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.

Is your church viable in the changing marketplace of today--and tomorrow? Today's church market is comprised of four cultural paradigms--Youth, Baby Busters (Generation X), Baby Boomers, and Pre-Boomers. Each has unique characteristics in terms of attitudes, spiritual orientation, values, emotional needs, moral perspective, and lifestyle. This implies significant changes for the church--new approaches to ministry and different methods of communication and interface. Church Wake-Up Call's unique “Ministries Matrix” approach provides effective management techniques to help you define and evaluate duties, priorities, and remedial actions for the future of your ministry in today's multigenerational context. Church Wake-Up Call will inform and enlighten you on these subjects: understanding and using the Ministries Matrix to define purposes and priorities for your church eirecting your ministry toward a particular age group without compromising the church's message increasing your church's visibility structuring your church's management organization creating an effective outreach program . . . and more! Although the book is oriented toward churches and their leadership and has been written largely from an evangelical Christian perspective, the descriptive information regarding each of the generational categories that comprise today's populace is applicable to all Christian organizations, whether they be evangelical or mainline Protestant, Catholic or parachurch. Similarly, the management system, which integrates defined purposes, priorities, and programming options into a well-coordinated plan of action, can be applied by all such organizations.

Have you ever asked yourself what changed when you were "born again?" You look in the mirror and see the same reflection - your body hasn't changed. You find yourself acting the same and yielding to those same old temptations - that didn't seem to change either. So you wonder, Has anything really changed? The correct answer to that question is foundational for receiving from God. If you lack this basic understanding, you'll forever ask yourself doubt-filled questions like: "How could God love somebody like me?" and "How can I possibly expect to receive anything from the Lord? I don't deserve it, I'm not good enough!" Spirit, Soul, and Body will help you eliminate those and other doubt-filled questions that destroy your faith. If you have trouble receiving from God, this is a must-read!

Includes Internet access card bound inside front matter.

The rise of the modern Christian Right, starting with the 1976 Presidential election and culminating in the overwhelming white evangelical support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, has been one of the most consequential political developments of the last half-century of American history. And while there has been a flowering of scholarship on the history of American conservatism, almost all of it has focused on the emergence of a conservative movement after World War II. Likewise, while much has been written about the role of Protestants in American politics, such studies generally begin in the 1970s, and almost none look further back than 1945. In this sweeping history, Gillis Harp traces the relationship between Protestantism and conservative politics in America from the Puritans to Palin. Christian belief long shaped American conservatism by bolstering its critical view of human nature and robust skepticism of human perfectibility. At times, Christian conservatives have attempted to enlist the state as an essential ally in the quest for moral reform. Yet, Harp argues, while conservative voters and activists have often professed to be motivated by their religious faith, in fact the connection between Christian principle and conservative politics has generally been remarkably thin. Indeed, with the exception of the seventeenth-century Puritans and some nineteenth-century Protestants, few American conservatives have constructed a well-reasoned theological foundation for their political beliefs. American conservatives have instead adopted a utilitarian view of religious belief that is embedded within essentially secular assumptions about society and politics. Ultimately, Harp claims, there is very little that is distinctly Christian about the modern Christian Right.

Clearly written, comprehensive coverage of psychiatric mental-health nursing delivers what nursing students need to meet the challenges of health care today. Its evidence-based, holistic approach to nursing practice focuses on both physiological and psychological disorders. Designed to be used in longer psychiatric mental-health nursing courses, this text provides students with a comprehensive grounding in therapeutic approaches as well as must-know DSM-5 disorders and nursing interventions.