Toddling To The Kingdom

Drawing on current scholarship and research by authors with experience of a range of International contexts who are experts in their field, this accessible guide focuses on approaches that encourage spiritual, physical, mental and emotional development in children. By outlining a range of lenses through which readers can reflect on their ministry with children and their families. this book offers inspiration to help them improve their practice. Up-to-date research and thinking provides a fresh and flexible understanding of work with children and families. It also prepares readers to develop and support a team that can take responsibility for the key areas needed in an effective children's ministry. With each chapter featuring practice examples, relevant theory, theological reflections, opportunities for contemplation and suggestions for further reading, Re-Thinking Children's Work in Churches is an accessible and indispensable guide for those wishing to focus on the holistic development of the child.

"Smith's sage advice will aid Christians in recognizing the simple joys of practicing their faith."--Publishers Weekly Western culture is in a tailspin, and Christian faith is entangled in it: we do kingdom things in empire ways. Western approaches to faith leave us feeling depressed, doubting, anxious, and burned out. We know something is wrong with the way we do faith and church in the West, but we're so steeped in it that we don't know where to begin to break old habits. Popular pastor and speaker Mandy Smith invites us to be unfettered from the deeply ingrained habits of Western culture so we can do kingdom things in kingdom ways again. She explores how we can be transformed by new postures and habits that help us see God already at work in and around us. The way forward isn't more ideas, programs, and problem-solving but in Jesus's surprising invitation to the kingdom through childlikeness. Ultimately, rediscovering childlike habits is a way for us to remember how to be human. Unfettered helps us reimagine how to follow God with our whole selves again and join with God's mission in the world. Foreword by Walter Brueggemann.

Dr Keith White, the co-founder and chair of the international Child Theology Movement says, Child Theology is a lively movement that is developing, with a range of personal insights and much cultural variety. What Vivienne charts so delightfully is the story of her own awakening primarily in an Australasian context, richly informed by the experiences and reflections of children and adults from around the world. This book will inspire those who work with children. It also offers insights and challenges for all people who are engaged in ministry. It asks what does it mean ‘to place the child in the middle’ for discipleship and for the church itself? Dr Alan Niven, vice-principal of Stirling Theological College, Melbourne, says ‘Competent research, measured theological reflection and insights from practice, combine to offer us a resource that will enable and empower.

This interdisciplinary study tackles the controversy of translating nephesh ( נפֶֶשׁ ) by using an intergenerational translation team to deepen our understanding of this term and providing a more valuable translation in Chinese, especially for use in specialist Children’s Bibles. Traditionally nephesh is often translated in the Bible as ‘soul’, but despite the limitations of this popular rendering, it has led Christians in Chinese contexts to falsely understand views regarding the nature of human beings as a trichotomy. Dr Hui Er Yu’s study offers different options for translating nephesh using the context of where the word appears in Scripture as well as in reference to linguistic and cultural meanings in Chinese contexts. The findings in this book will help to remove anthropological misunderstandings among many Chinese Christians related to nephesh as a result of historic translation decisions. Dr Yu takes a unique approach to translation by using an intergenerational Bible translation team, ranging from seven to fifty-one years of age, which not only demonstrates the importance of intergenerational ministry but also presents a way to fulfill the growing need for well-translated Children’s Bibles in China for thousands of young believers. This book provides important lessons for the many translation projects working towards Children’s Bibles but also for how translation of biblical terms can be better reached through this intergenerational process.

The memoir of the female aviator who became Hitler’s favorite pilot. The Sky My Kingdom is the fascinating autobiography of the famous World War II test pilot Hanna Reitsch. As the war progressed, Reitsch was invited to fly many of Germany’s latest—and increasingly desperate—designs, including the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and several larger bombers, on which she tested various mechanisms for cutting barrage balloon cables. After crashing on her fifth Me 163 flight, she was badly injured but insisted on writing her report before falling unconscious and spending five months in the hospital. Eventually, she became Adolf Hitler’s favorite pilot. Reitsch was one of only two women awarded the Iron Cross First Class during World War II, and the only woman awarded the Luftwaffe Combined Pilot and Observer Badge with Diamonds. She survived many accidents and was badly injured several times. In the last days of the war, Reitsch was asked to fly her companion, Col. Gen. Robert Ritter von Greim, into Berlin to meet with Hitler. The city was already surrounded by Red Army troops, who had made significant progress into the downtown area when they arrived, landing on a city street and traveling to the Führerbunker. The aircraft she used was the justly famous Fieseler Storch, already well known for the exploit that rescued Mussolini, only adding to the legend of both Reitsch and that aircraft. She is said to have overheard Hitler laying out plans for Nazi commanders to join together in mass suicide when it was obvious that the war was over. She also hoped to fly out propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ six children, who had been staying in the bunker since April 22 with their parents, but neither Joseph nor Magda Goebbels would allow it. She managed to escape Berlin herself, on April 29, by flying out through heavy Russian antiaircraft fire. She was a devoted and idealistic Nazi who adored Adolf Hitler and refused to believe the reports of concentration camps and torture. Not until much later would she say that she had been “disgusted” by what she witnessed in the Third Reich. She was held for eighteen months by the American military after the war, interrogated, and subsequently released—ultimately to become a champion glider pilot, as gliders were the only craft German citizens were allowed to fly. Hers is a story that arguably stands as unique in the great drama of World War II.

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is best known for designing parks in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, and the grounds of the Capitol in Washington. But before he embarked upon his career as the nation's foremost landscape architect, he was a correspondent for theNew York Times, and it was under its auspices that he journeyed through the slave states in the 1850s. His day-by-day observations--including intimate accounts of the daily lives of masters and slaves, the operation of the plantation system, and the pernicious effects of slavery on all classes of society, black and white--were largely collected in The Cotton Kingdom. Published in 1861, just as the Southern states were storming out of the Union, it has been hailed ever since as singularly fair and authentic, an unparalleled account of America's "peculiar institution."