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Countless books are designed to help leaders to become better leaders. But most resources neglect the underlying emotional struggles of both emerging and established leaders, who are often isolated and suffering in silence. Leadership professor Nicholas Rowe and counselor Sheila Wise Rowe offer their expertise in helping leaders process painful and traumatic experiences. Trauma contributes to how we lead others in either empowering or dysfunctional ways. Understanding how these experiences formed us is the beginning of the path to healing.Woven throughout each chapter are five themes--invitation, attachment, remembrance, healing, and reconnection. Healing Leadership Trauma lays out the emotional challenges of leadership and offers encouragement, prayer, and therapeutic tools to help leaders face their pain and begin to heal.

Surrounded by a Cloud of WitnessesDo you ever feel like you're alone in your struggles to live out the Christian faith? Do you ever read the Bible yet still wonder what it looks like to follow Jesus in the complexity and difficulty of our time?The stories of great men and women throughout the history of the church can help us form a bridge between the teaching of Scripture and our embodied lives. This illustrated devotional vividly depicts the lives and words of great women and men of faith. Artist Ben Lansing and Anglican priest D. J. Marotta offer fifty-two profound images and reflections on Christians, from Polycarp in the first century to the martyrs of Sudan in the twenty-first century. These saints, from every continent and century of church history, demonstrate the historic church's relevance for Christians today and reveals God's faithfulness in all times and circumstances.The artwork, biographies, devotionals, and prayers in this book are meant to spark our imaginations, helping us to be faithful here and now, in our own age.

Can we still have joy in a world of pain and anxiety?The troubles around us and in our lives lead many of us into a joyless experience where despair and hopelessness are the norm. Yet something within us still longs for a joy that transcends our challenges and gives us meaning and satisfaction.Alastair Sterne says that our inner longings for joy actually point us to a God of joy who gives us both the capacity for joy and the realities of joyful experience. Sterne explores pathways to joy and why we often experience the absence of joy. He then offers theologically grounded and research-based practices for becoming people of joyful presence. Even if we are not temperamentally happy enthusiasts, we can gradually cultivate the deep abiding joy that we were created for and that enriches the world around us.

The Spiritual Practice of Watching MoviesWhat's your favorite Christmas movie? Easter movie? Pentecost movie? Casual viewers and movie buffs alike have favorite movies to watch at certain times of the year. But for film critic Abby Olcese, movies with spiritual themes aren't just limited to the holiday season. They're part of a deep human need to connect our favorite stories to the natural rhythms of our lives, and to let them shape and give meaning to our experience of the seasons all year long.The life of the church is also defined by stories, which we revisit through the pattern of the Christian year. In Films for All Seasons, Olcese invites us to reflect on the great themes of the church calendar through the lens of film. From superhero movies and Star Wars to classics and arthouse films, she chooses movies for each liturgical season and leads us through them with skill and infectious enthusiasm, exploring how each one can inform and deepen our appreciation of its corresponding season.Films for All Seasons is more than just a book about movies--it's a model for how we engage with art as Christians.Includes: Explorations of popular, classic, and arthouse films and how they relate to liturgical seasonsReflections on the great themes of the church calendarDiscussion questions after each movie designed to facilitate discussion with small groups and friends

Two of the world's greatest crises, systemic racism and environmental destruction, share the same origin story. The two are rooted in economic forces that exploit and oppress both people and land.Pastor and activist David Swanson shows how we have failed our God-given duty as caretakers of creation and how that failure has resulted in the exploitation of people and the extraction of natural resources. Racial and ecological injustice share the same root cause--greed--that turns people and the natural world into commodities that are only valued for their utility. Yet Christians have the capacity to live in a way that nurtures racial and environmental justice simultaneously, honoring people and places in dynamic relationship with our Creator God. Swanson shows how we can become communities of caretakers, the way to restore our relationship with creation and each other, and the holistic justice that can result.

Family discipleship is one of the most basic ways God has ordained to build his kingdom--and yet most parents struggle to do it consistently.Amid our busyness, the multitude of different approaches, and our own self-doubts, the deck seems stacked against us. But Brian Dembowczyk isn't here to pile on the guilt or to make us feel like failures. As a parent himself, he knows this struggle firsthand.In Family Discipleship That Works, Dembowczyk says that the goal of discipling our kids isn't just passing along head knowledge. It's teaching them to act like Jesus. The Bible itself is not just a story but a drama in which we ourselves participate, and our kids have roles to play too. Dembowczyk offers practical advice and a wealth of ideas for teaching our kids to imitate the character traits of Jesus himself as we "act out" the Christian life together.As parents, we are indeed called to disciple our children to know and act like Jesus. By God's grace, that's a task we can do--not out of guilt but with joy and good hope.Family Discipleship That Works . . . Invites parents into more active family discipleship without judgmentalism, but with grace and understandingPresents "imitating Jesus" as a new model for understanding and enacting family discipleshipIncludes practical, achievable advice for parents to live out these principles in their homes

How do you rebuild your life after it falls apart?Catastrophic events often feel like the end of the world. When we feel like we have nothing left, we sometimes wish for our own end too. Yet God keeps waking us up every morning--a sign that God wants us to keep living when our world ends. We must find our way to the new life that awaits us on the other side of loss. But how?Dawn Sanders has traveled this path before and lived to tell the tale--not once but twice. After a divorce and then the sudden death of her second husband, Dawn discovered a buried treasure in Genesis 1: God's process for creating new life out of chaos. In When Your World Ends, Dawn digs deep into the creation story and unearths a seven-step process by which God brings us out of the void and into new beginnings. With her unique perspective, authenticity, and courage, Dawn meets those who are starting over and guides us into renewed hope.

How to Fight Sexism in the ChurchDespite the real progress that has been made in recent years, women continue to be silenced, wounded, and relegated to the sidelines in our churches. Many churches--even churches that outwardly affirm and platform women--remain unaware of the patterns and cultures at play that set up unseen barriers for women.This is a book for Christians who want to learn how to do better. Heather Matthews has experienced sexism in the church firsthand. In Confronting Sexism in the Church, she explores the history and culture of sexism in our contemporary evangelical world and describes the many ways--subtle and not so subtle--that it lives on in the church today. She gives simple, practical steps for how Christians can actively fight sexism in its many forms.The mistreatment of women has been part of the human experience from the very beginning--but in Christ, women are set free to be all they've been created to be. This book invites churches to live out that reality in all its fullness.

Here is a one-year guide through one of our most treasured books: J. I. Packer's Knowing God. Each day you'll read a Scripture and a brief passage about the glory and joy of being in relationship with God. At the end of each day's reading you will find a prompt to help you respond to God in prayer and reflection. This could be the most significant book you will read this year--or next.

Trust is not transformation. Instead, we must invest trust for transformation.Groups that have become skeptical need leadership to refuel a sense of community and continuity if change is going to happen. But trust can be easily hoarded or squandered. In this fully illustrated volume in the Practicing Change Series, Tod Bolsinger outlines steps to envision trust for the sake of growth.More adaptive leadership titles in the Practicing Change Series: How Not to Waste a CrisisThe Mission Always WinsLeading Through Resistance

People don't resist change. They resist loss.Leading people who struggle to see the future feels impossible. As hesitancy overwhelms, we can't eliminate change, but we can chart a steady course through it. In this fully illustrated volume in the Practicing Change Series, Tod Bolsinger teaches courage and empathy for communities stuck in the loss of the past.More adaptive leadership titles in the Practicing Change Series: How Not to Waste a CrisisThe Mission Always WinsInvest in Transformation

It's time to further the mission. Not the boss, not the team, not the stakeholders--the mission.Change requires tough decisions. But when the focus is blurred, how can we stay on track? We need clarity and agreement on the real task at hand--our genuine mission. In this fully illustrated volume in the Practicing Change Series, Tod Bolsinger guides us through naming competing values and realigning the driving purpose with missional clarity.More adaptive leadership titles in the Practicing Change Series: How Not to Waste a CrisisLeading Through ResistanceInvest in Transformation

A Christian case for natural burialThe promises of the Christian gospel are never more precious or more beautiful than in the context of death and burial. And yet current burial practices in Western society are archaic and impersonal. They fail to confront us with the reality of death, and they make it harder to process death or to grieve properly.Kent Burreson and Beth Hoeltke have been teaching a Christian understanding of death and natural burial for many years. They argue that natural burial--laying the body into the earth in a way that allows it to decompose naturally--is not only better for the environment but is also a more accurate picture of Christian hope of the resurrection. Grounded in sound Christian teaching about death and burial, they advocate for natural burial and offer practical instructions for navigating the complex questions around burial practices.Lay Me in God's Good Earth is not only an immensely practical guide to natural burial; it is also an application of the hope of the resurrection to those grieving the loss of their loved ones.

Christian nationalism, a worldview rooted in un-Christian ideas about power, race, and property, has taken over large swaths of the United States. Introducing the basics of Christian nationalism and its talking points, pastor Caleb Campbell equips Christians to confront these claims with compassion and the truth of the good news of Jesus.

Setting Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and George Whitfield into their own contexts, Sean McGever tells the true story of these men's deeply compromised relationship to slavery. More than just a history, this book is an invitation to examine our own legacies and to take ownership of our heritage and our own part in the story.

Drawing from his thirty-five years as a CEO, popular leadership literature, and the Scriptures, Eugene Habecker makes the case of the integration of soft skills, like emotional intelligence and character quality, in building healthier professional and personal lives and healthier organizations.

Adoption is often framed by happy narratives, but many adoptees struggle with unaddressed trauma. Narrating his own and other adoptees' complex stories, counselor Cameron Lee Small unpacks the history of adoption and the church's influence, helping adoptees regain their agency and identity on a journey of integration and healing.

Growing up as an Indian American immigrant in white Southern culture, Prasanta Verma unpacks the exhausting effects of cultural isolation and marginalization as well as the longing to belong and the hope of finding safe friendships in community. Our places of exile can become places of belonging-to ourselves, to others, and to God.

In this meditation on birding as a practice of hope, Courtney Ellis weaves together stories from her own life, including the death of her grandfather, with reflections on birds of many kinds. By "looking up to the birds," Ellis found the beauty of these creatures calling her out of her darkness into the light and hope of God's promises.

While most of society views high-risk youth with fear or disregard, Amy Williams has come to see them through God's eyes-as having tremendous value and potential. With stories and practical tips from three decades of ministry, Amy challenges perceptions and increases compassion for these youth who are often pushed to the margins of society.

What is Critical Race Theory, and how should Christians engage it? Ed Uszynski carefully unpacks what critical race theorists seek to accomplish and what Christians can learn from them. In this guide, he carefully explores CRT's roots, context, and tenets, revealing common distortions and providing responsible answers to legitimate concerns.

The American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. Will conflicts, hostility, and incivility tear the country apart? Os Guinness provides a careful observation of the American experiment, offering a stirring vision for faithful citizenship and renewed responsibility for not only the nation but also the watching world.

I am with you, I will strengthen and help you, I will uphold you. God's promises spoken through Isaiah offered reassurance and comfort during difficult days, and they're still true for us today! Join Bible teacher Kori de Leon in this six-week Bible study experience on Isaiah 40-48, pointing us to God's faithfulness and mercy.

New research shows that unchurched Americans are surprisingly more receptive to the Christian faith that is commonly assumed. Rick Richardson presents his research that reveals best practices to reached the unchurched and shows how churches and organizations can be transformed into places where conversion growth becomes the new normal.

How we hold and carry our memories-good and bad-is a part of what forms us spiritually. In this way we have a common bond with the people of Scripture who also had a sensory life. Exploring the power of memory, Casey Tygrett offers biblical texts and practices to guide us in bringing our memories to God for spiritual transformation.

While Christians generally acknowledge that the Bible is God's Word, many of us lack robust confidence in the reality of its trustworthiness. We may not be sure if we really believe what we read. But the more we understand how Scripture came to be, the more we discover its power and truth.Historian Susan Lim unpacks how the history of the Bible bolsters our faith and anchors us through the changing tides of time. The story of Scripture, while messy and complicated at times, is also the story of how God shepherded his people throughout the centuries in and through these writings. Lim explains how Christians came to accept certain documents as inspired and not others, and how the books we now call the Bible came to be assembled and canonized as authoritative. The same Spirit of God who oversaw the writing of Scripture continues to be at work actively in us in our receiving and reading of it, to grow us in faith and maturity.Those of us who confess that Jesus is Lord can also confess with confidence that Scripture is God's Word. As the church through the ages has received and passed down the sacred Scriptures, so too can we receive for ourselves the living Word that God still speaks through today.

How can we carry on when we are weary and overwhelmed by the unjust world around us? God is a God of justice who cares for people in distress. By looking to God's perspective, Bruce Strom shows how we can find direction for what God has in store for us. If you're running on empty, discover how God's persevering power can renew your soul.

In stirring verse and essays, Katy Bowser Hutson chronicles her battle with breast cancer and the complications of faith amid such a fight. Accentuated by the art of Jodi Hays, Katy's words lead us through the realization of cancer, the experience of chemotherapy and a mastectomy, relentless rounds of radiation, the uncertainty of ongoing treatment, and what comes after survival. She writes in resistance to sickness, of wrestling toward beauty:Cancer is an overgrowth, a kudzu: Tangling and strangling legitimate life. Chemo is a killing, a burning out: Burning down to ashy carbon, indiscriminately But cancer, did you know that I am a poet?Through it all, she shows what it means to struggle in a battered body and to pray to a God who is near to the broken. Join her in this consideration of mortality and witness her persisting trust in God's unseen ways.

Have you ever daydreamed when trying to listen to God, or stumbled when speaking to him? In real prayer, head, heart, and hands go together. This book from J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom leads us through different moods of praying, challenging and inspiring us to pray by pointing us to a clearer realization of God and his character.