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Famous theologian Jürgen Moltmann returns here to the theme that he so powerfully addressed in his groundbreaking work, Theology of Hope. In the twenty-first century, he tells us, hope is challenged by ideologies and global trends that would deny hope and even life itself. Terrorist violence, social and economic inequality, and most especially the looming crisis of climate change all contribute to a cultural moment of profound despair. Moltmann reminds us that Christian faith has much to say in response to a despairing world. In "the eternal yes of the living God," we affirm the goodness and ongoing purpose of our fragile humanity. Likewise, God's love empowers us to love life and resist a culture of death. The book's two sections equally promote these affirmations, yet in different ways. The first section looks at the challenges to hope in our current world, most especially the environmental crisis. It argues that Christian faith-and indeed all the world's religions-must orient themselves toward the wholeness of the human family and the physical environment necessary to that wholeness. The second section draws on resources from the early church, the Reformation, and the contemporary theological conversation to undergird efforts to address the deficit of hope he describes in the first section.

You're not alone in your ministry. And you don't have to suffer in silence.Ministry is a stressful vocation, with unspoken expectations, projected anxieties, and conflicting demands. After the pandemic caused a sudden shift to online worship and factions fighting over when and how to return to in-person worship, pastors have been leaving congregational ministry at even higher rates than usual. The emotional fallout of burnout and abuse at the hands of parishioners is something pastors carry for years, whether they stay or leave the congregation.Seasoned pastor Carol Howard Merritt and psychotherapist and former pastor James Fenimore join their expertise to offer validation, support, and guidance for pastors who have been hurt by the church. With wisdom that can come only from experience, they describe and define aspects of struggle and pain readers may have difficulty articulating or claiming for themselves, and they offer compassionate, informed guidance on how to find healing. A systems approach to conflict sheds light on the dynamics of church conflict and how clergy can tend their own well-being amid leadership challenges. The final chapter helps readers consider their overall vocational path based on what they've experienced and decide whether they can remain in congregational ministry or need to pursue a different line of work.Free downloadable resources available for pastors and church members! Visit www.wjkbooks.com/WoundedPastors to download a personal inventory for pastors that can be printed out or used as an interactive, digital journal; a list of seven ways that church members can support pastors; and social media images that can be shared.

This collection of prayers by noted Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann can be used in both public worship and private devotion.These prayers run the gamut from particular days in the church year to special moments in the lives of worshiping communities to events playing out on the world stage. In all cases, the prayers show us how God accompanies us through all the moments and stages of our life, bringing us the joys of life even amid a broken and hurting world and especially offering a joyous calling in Christ to serve that world.

Lent is an ideal time to step back and reflect on the deeper movements of the spirit, and Elizabeth Caldwell helps readers do this through a simple but profound approach.Pause: Spending Lent with the Psalms invites us to take up the spiritual practice of encountering, sinking into, and deeply engaging with one psalm each week during Lent and Holy Week.The season of Lent encourages Christians to consider a different pace-one of slowing down, noticing, pausing-than what our dominant culture values. The invitation to pause with the Psalms begins on Ash Wednesday, starting with a mark of ashes on our foreheads that reminds us that in spite of our failures-things we have done or failed to do-we belong to God. Readers are then guided into an exploration of Psalm 51 and the theme of a clean heart. Each chapter helps readers to connect an image drawn from that psalm, such as paths, faces, blessing, tables, waiting, thanksgiving, listening, being alone or abandoned, and hands, with their own lives. At the close of each chapter, readers are invited to try a different prayer practice to help them continue to reflect on the theme and psalm each day. This intentional engagement-without feeling burdensome-opens just enough space and time for a creative spiritual practice to flourish, sustaining the life of faith during the Lenten season in ways that can make a difference in God's world.Reflection and discussion questions are included with each chapter and the book includes a leader's guide at the end for study groups.In addition to the individual devotion and group study material found in the book, you can access free digital resources, which include a sermon series guide, children's bulletins, and illustrated sheets for use during worship or study, at www.wjkbooks.com/Pause.

This inaugural Interpretation Bible Commentary volume on Matthew by Mark Allan Powell brings theological and pastoral sensitivity to the text, exploring how the Gospel of Matthew might be understood today by readers who receive it as its intended audience.It leads us to understand how the church can embody God's abiding presence in the world, to explore how biblical ethics can remain relevant for ever-changing situations, to consider healthy interfaith dialogue between Jews and Christians, and to move progressively toward values of compassion, mercy, justice, and love. Powell's exegesis emphasizes the Gospel's sustained critique of coercive power and its support for children, immigrants, and other vulnerable or marginalized populations. It also makes an honest assessment of the text's legacy, exposing unfortunate ways that it has been used throughout history (e.g., to justify Crusades and colonialism, or to sanction sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism). The volume also offers summaries of 17 prominent themes developed throughout Matthew, with cross-references to discussions of individual passages, and provides several excursuses that illuminate special topics such as worship, the Sermon on the Mount, the presence and absence of Jesus, stewardship, and Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus.Emphasizing sound critical exegesis with strong theological sensibilities, the new Interpretation Bible Commentary series features innovative interpretive approaches that help readers engage the biblical text as a source for participating in the larger social world. These new volumes, written by an array of new and diverse authors, are designed to meet the needs of clergy, teachers, and students by inviting readers into the lively work of careful biblical interpretation for the purpose of faithful exposition. Through its engagement with Scripture, the Interpretation Bible Commentary series illumines our relationship with God, one another, and creation so that readers are propelled with new understanding and energy for fulfilling God's claims on us in our rapidly changing contexts.

While the world tries to rush us into Christmas, decorating the day after Halloween and packing it all up once the gifts are opened on December 25, Advent is a season of preparation that-like our holiday gatherings themselves-takes time and care. Think of the anticipation that comes with hosting loved ones for Christmas dinner: We begin by extending an invitation. We make plans, and as the event draws closer, we begin our preparations. Ultimately, we open the door and welcome our guests, and that is when, finally, we celebrate. ¿Advent should feel the same way, a time to make ready for the long-awaited event of Christ's birth. In Stay Awhile, pastor Kara Eidson presents a banquet table of inspiration for Advent, including weekly reflections for personal and small group use, brief daily devotions, and ideas to involve the whole congregation. Congregational resources include liturgies, sermon starters, children's moments, and even a no-rehearsals-needed Christmas pageant.

"In this book, Erickson's steps don't lead to grand cathedrals but to the transformative, powerful elements supporting life itself. " - Foreword Reviews"Travel writer Erickson has written a travelogue about areas of the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, that have sacred and spiritual meaning to people now and throughout history . . . Ideal for fans of Erickson's work, curious readers, armchair travelers, and those who are compelled to take a spiritual pilgrimage." - Library JournalGlobetrotting travel writer Lori Erickson has long searched for the sacred in locations and cultures far from home as well as in her beloved Iowa. But when the pandemic put both air travel and in-person worship off-limits, Lori and her husband hit the road with a camper in tow to discover spiritual sites and experiences in their own home country.From the Serpent Mound of Ohio to the Redwoods of California-and, ultimately, by air to see natural wonders in Alaska and Hawaii-Erickson uncovers deep connections both to the lands that now make up the United States and to the elements that have had sacred meaning to people throughout history and across the globe. Through her profound, informative, and witty reflections on the power of stone, water, light, fire, and more, readers will discover new destinations in North America while deepening their own connection to spirit. Whether exploring national parks or visiting holy sites, this book makes for the perfect spiritual companion and guide.

Feasting on the Gospels is a new seven-volume series that follows up on the success of the Feasting on the Word series to provide another trusted preaching resource, this time on the most prominent and preached upon most preached upon books in the Bible: the four Gospels. With contributions from a diverse and respected group of scholars and...

Of all the things modern people of faith overlook or choose to ignore in the Bible, stories of sexual exploitation are near the top of the list. This isn't so different from our world today, when victims of trafficking, rape, and harassment are dismissed and disbelieved, their stories twisted and erased. Trauma-informed educator and minister Camille Hernandez dives deep into the Bible's stories of exploitation and abuse to name the difficult truths buried in Scripture, address the forms such violence takes in modern society, and illuminate a path of healing and hope.¿With a blend of storytelling, cultural analysis, and trauma-informed care, The Hero and the Whore invites readers to reconsider their assumptions about victims of sexual exploitation and respond with compassionate understanding that will bring us all to the wholeness God desires.

The understanding of God that many Christians insist is so clear in the Bible makes faith seem like an all-or-nothing proposition. When much of that rigid projection seems in doubt, it's not surprising that many people leave behind this take-it-or-leave-it religion. Pastor Mark Feldmeir offers an introduction to a God that many people weren't aware existed-a mysterious, uncontainable, still-active God who loves and cares for real people with real problems. ¿Life after God offers glimpses of the ineffable God, who can emerge when we forget what we think we're supposed to believe about God and open us up to the mystery, wonder, and compelling love we crave.

The Spirit of American Liberal Theology is an interpretation of the entire U.S. American tradition of liberal theology. A highly condensed and far-more-accessible summary of Gary Dorrien's three-volume trilogy, The Making of American Liberal Theology (Westminster John Knox Press 2001, 2003, and 2006), Dorrien here presses the argument that the most abundant, diverse, and persistent tradition of liberal theology is the one that blossomed in the United States and is still refashioning itself. While discussions of English and German liberalism persist, new material includes expanded treatment of the Black social gospel, the Universalists, developments into early 2020s, and a robust expression of the author's post-Hegelian liberal-liberationist perspective.

Children are often touted as the "future" of the church, but their role in the church today is less frequently considered. In The Gifts They Bring, New Testament scholar, pastor, and mother Amy Lindeman Allen challenges readers to reconsider the way we view children in the church, focusing on our present life together as a diverse, inclusive community of faith. To do this, Lindeman Allen looks to the past, rereading familiar Gospel accounts with an eye to the experience of childhood in Jesus' world, highlighting both the gifts that children brought to Jesus' ministry as well as those they received from him. Through this lens, she invites readers to reconsider the age and relationship of well-known and lesser-known Bible characters, including the Bethlehem shepherds; James and John, the two disciples who followed Jesus alongside their mother; and the young boy whose lunch Jesus used to feed the five thousand. In the process, Lindeman Allen reconsiders ministry with children today, moving away from a transactional model of imparting wisdom to children to a dialogical model of learning and serving together with children. ¿Each chapter reads a different Gospel story in conversation with experiences of real children in the church today, bringing into focus the varied gifts that children bring in a practice of inclusive ministry. These gifts include participation, proclamation, advocacy, listening, sharing, and partnership. Readers will grow more attuned to recognize the gifts that we each bring-children and adults-as essential members working together as one community in the body of Christ and so to share in the gift of Christ together.

Joyful and daunting opportunities to live into God's dream of justice and beloved community are compelling and available. Hope, says Luther Smith Jr., is essential to the needed personal and social transformations that prepare us for such sacred opportunities. Yet genuine hope is often confused as merely wish fulfillment, optimism, or perceiving better tomorrows. In Hope Is Here! Smith describes how we truly perceive and join "the work of hope," enlivening us to a life that is oriented toward immediate and future experiences of personal fulfillment, justice, and beloved community. Interpreting five spiritual practices for individuals and congregations to experience the power of hope, this book prepares us to engage racism, mass incarceration, environmental crises, divisive politics, and indifference that imperil justice and beloved community. ¿It delivers the inner resources necessary to work for change through its interpretation of hope. Additionally, each chapter ends with questions that prompt readers to examine their experiences and their readiness to journey with hope. Written for Christians who want to commit themselves to justice and beloved community, this book will provide helpful guidance for a life sustained by God's gifts of hope and love. Hope is here for our "responsibility" and "response-ability" to live the fulfilling life that God dreams for us.

This collection of prayers by noted Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann can be used in both public worship and private devotion. These prayers run the gamut from particular days in the church year to special moments in the lives of worshiping communities to events playing out on the world stage. In all cases, the prayers show us how God accompanies us through all the moments and stages of our life, while simultaneously calling us to do the same for all those whom God has placed alongside us in the journey.

After Method assumes the impossibility of doing theology right-and moves beyond it. Organized as a conversation in two voices-with systematic-theological commitments represented by Karl Barth and constructive-theological commitments represented by Marcella Althaus-Reid-this book calls the redemptive potential of any methodological program into question. Indeed, the search for a full and complete theological account of reality has only further fragmented theological discourse. Thus, Hanna Reichel argues that method cannot "save" us-but that does not mean that we cannot do better. After Method harnesses the best insights systematic and constructive theologies have to offer in their mutual critique and gestures toward a "better" theology.Utilizing architectural metaphor, Reichel pulls from systematic and constructive approaches to develop an understanding of theological work as conceptual design, responsibly ordering and structuring given materials for a purpose. This necessitates a more realistic adaptation to reality for theology, expanding its standards to encompass the experiences and perceptions of people and speaking the truth available to it. The honesty, humility, and solidarity generated through the failure of method liberates theology to a more playful and tentative cruising of different approaches and redirects its attention to "misfits" and outsiders. Equally demanding and self-relativizing, the resultant ethos is better able to do justice to the reality of the world and the reality of God than doctrinal orthodoxy or methodological orthopraxy.

In A Three-Dimensional Jesus, Clifton Black offers a fresh, critically sympathetic reading of the New Testament's first three Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Intelligent and accessible, conversational and whimsical, this volume helps readers consider the questions that are basic to the Synoptic Gospels' interpretation. Black addresses their literary genre and origins; portrayals of the figure of Jesus and other central characters; the relationships among these three books; and the social, political, and religious worlds from which they emerged and to which they were addressed. Individual chapters on each Gospel highlight their likely audiences, literary structures, and primary theological themes. Throughout, Black's presentation is clear and engaging, making use of topical sidebars, charts, and illustrations as well as wit and good humor to draw readers into these Gospels' interpretations. The volume also includes such original features as conversations with other well-established scholars, which help the reader appreciate a range of perspectives on topics like the historical Jesus and the Gospels' depiction of women, and interviews of experts on these Gospels' afterlife in the history of Christian thought, sacred music, fine art, and preaching.A Three-Dimensional Jesus is a concise, approachable study of the New Testament's first three Gospels viewed from multiple angles-historical, sociological, literary, theological-with attention paid to their history of interpretation. In as much, Black invites readers to better understand and appreciate the Synoptics, while guiding them to learn even more.

A blend of heart-wrenching memoir and astute cultural analysis, Out of Focus will help heal individuals harmed by evangelicalism's toxic influence and inspire Christian communities to pursue a path of love and inclusion.When a mass shooter killed five people in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, grieving people graffitied James Dobson's Focus on the Family headquarters with the words "Their blood is on your hands." Such an accusation against evangelicalism comes as no surprise to Amber Cantorna-Wylde, whose father is a Focus on the Family executive and cast Amber out of her family when she came out in 2012. From severed family ties to hate crimes, such enmity is the fruit of a religious movement that considers it more faithful to reject your child or even to kill than to accept and love LGBTQ+ people. Evangelical organizations like Dobson's, along with pastors like Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham, and Robert Jeffress, built an empire out of their conservative Christian beliefs and convinced millions of Americans that sexual purity, patriarchal families, and militaristic nationalism were God's priority. Cantorna-Wylde shows readers how the political and personal intertwine to cause shame and suffering that Jesus would never desire, including the long-term effects of identity-repression, trauma, and family estrangement.

"One the greatest challenges the church faces today," writes Jerome F. D. Creach, "is to interpret and explain passages in the Bible that seem to promote or encourage violence" (Violence in Scripture, 1). In the past fifteen years, a number of books have been published to help people make sense of God's violent behavior in the Bible. Yet very little has been written about how to use these (and other) violent texts constructively in church. This leaves religious practitioners-pastors, priests, Sunday school teachers, worship ministers, lay leaders, and others-at a real disadvantage. What should they do with stories that sanction genocide or praise individuals for killing others? How can they use these violent texts in sermons, liturgies, Christian educations classes, and elsewhere without promoting the violent ideologies they contain?In Redeeming Violent Verses, Eric Seibert addresses these questions by focusing on a wide range of practical ways to use violent biblical texts responsibly in the church and beyond. With chapters devoted to using violent verses when preaching sermons, teaching Sunday school, and leading worship, this book is filled with guidelines and specific practices designed to help ministers use violent verses responsibly. Seibert includes numerous examples to illustrate specific ways these verses could be used in ministry settings and pays special attention to dealing with passages that portray God behaving violently. Rather than ignoring these passages or being intimidated by them, Redeeming Violent Verses tackles troublesome texts head-on. It charts a bold path forward, one that opens up new possibilities for ministers by equipping them to use these texts in life-giving and spiritually edifying ways. Religious practitioners of all stripes will find this book immensely helpful, and readers will benefit greatly from the many strategies and suggestions offered here.

This volume of the Connections Worship Companion series offers complete liturgies-from the call to worship to the closing charge, with prayers and litanies for every need in between-for all worshiping occasions between Advent and Pentecost of Year B. Part of the Connections commentary series, these worship resources help congregations illuminate the connections between Scripture and liturgical rhythms and between the Sundays of each liturgical season. A "Making Connections" essay precedes each season's resources, providing context for worship within the themes and purpose of the season, while liturgies for repeated use throughout each season enhance connections from Sunday to Sunday. Contributors to this volume include Claudia L. Aguilar Rubalcava, Mamie Broadhurst, Marci Auld Glass, Marcus A. Hong, Kimberly Bracken Long, Emily McGinley, Kendra L. Buckwalter Smith, Samuel Son, Slats Toole, and Byron A. Wade.

Beloved preacher and writer Anna Carter Florence brings winsome insight to an array of characters and stories in the Bible-some celebrated and some overlooked. ¿From courageous Abigail to Zelophehad's daughters, and from an alabaster jar of ointment to Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree, Florence takes readers on an enchanting tour of the Old and New Testaments with reflections that reveal ancient wisdom and spark imagination anew.

The swelling ranks of religious "nones"-those who do not identify with any particular religious tradition-have demonstrated that traditional Christian apologetics set on delivering a universally accepted, objectively verifiable system that proves the truth and superiority of Christian belief has failed. Turned off by organized Christianity's hypocrisy and politics of intolerance, millennials and Generation Z have rejected such domineering forms of reasoning aimed at winning converts through logical argument. Not only is this misguided missional strategy, argues Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, but it's grounded in bad theology as well. The propositional truth claims imply that if you accept the argument, you must accept the Christian faith too. Instead of this triumphalist understanding of Christian truth, Rosario argues for a broken and contrite Christian theology that can help make sense of a fractured world. Realizing that fragments of truth are often all we have, he points out that the search for the truth of God and the self will most often be found while engaged in the struggle for justice. Theological Fragments is not another set of strategies for how to win back millennials. Rather, it provides a foundational theological vision necessary to the work of inviting the "nones" to hear the gospel afresh.

The question of what to do with the biblical text in the sermon is perennial. Biblical scholarship constantly evolves and grows, making it hard even for biblical scholars themselves to apply the latest insights in their preaching. The average pastor doesn't have time to keep up with the changes in biblical studies and, as a result, often defaults to interpretive methods learned in (increasingly distant) seminary years. Preaching the Word addresses those needs by surveying recent developments in biblical studies with an eye to applying them in preaching the Gospel of John. Noted New Testament Scholar and homiletician Karoline Lewis lays out these recent interpretive tools and methods, demonstrating their application to preaching using specific passages in the Fourth Gospel.

Among the books of the Old Testament, the book of Esther presents significant interpretive problems. The book has been preserved in Greek and Hebrew texts that diverge greatly from each other. As a result, Jews and Protestants usually read a version of the book of Esther that is several chapters shorter than the one in most Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. Jon D. Levenson capably guides the reader through both the longer Greek version and the shorter Hebrew one, demonstrating their coherence and their differences.This commentary listens to the voices of modern scholarship as well as rabbinic interpretation, providing a wealth of interpretive results.

This volume of the Connections Worship Companion offers complete liturgies-from the call to worship to the closing charge, with prayers and litanies for every need in between-for all worshiping occasions for the season after Pentecost of Year A. Part of the Connections commentary series, these worship resources help congregations illuminate the connections between Scripture and liturgical rhythms. A "Making Connections" essay precedes each liturgical season's resources, providing context for worship within the themes and purpose of the season.