English Church

The Great War is still raging when Francesca Hatton’s adored grandfather dies on his estate in England’s isolated Exe Valley. She is his sole heir, for her five cousins are dead now on the battlefields of France. Among his effects, Francesca is stunned to find a letter cursing the Hattons. And at the funeral, a stranger publicly accuses Hatton of murder. Who was her grandfather? The kind man who raised her - or a secretive killer? For in the back garden where she and her cousins once played, there is a white stone they always called the Murder Stone

A third-generation Jehovah's Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God's warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture - and a whole new way of thinking - turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true.

As a child, Anna Wintour was a tomboy with no apparent interest in clothing but, seduced by the miniskirts and bob haircuts of swinging 1960s London, she grew into a fashion-obsessed teenager. Her father, an influential newspaper editor, loomed large in her life, and once he decided she should become editor-in-chief of Vogue, she never looked back.

Think about an incredibly joyful event in your life. Do you remember how you couldn’t wait to talk about it? You were willing and eager to have a conversation about it with anyone who would listen! Why doesn’t our excitement for Jesus overflow from our lives in a similar and natural way? In this book, Thom Rainer explores what makes so many Christians hesitant to talk about the greatest news the world has ever heard. There are real obstacles, challenges, and fears, but God is bigger and stronger than these hurdles.

In this second volume of the Called Out of Darkness trilogy, Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., draws together some of the best advice given by Catholic spiritual masters across the ages and brings it into harmony with modern scientific research, offering practical ways to live out the gospel in our busy days. It is a road map to a deeper relationship with the Lord and to authentic transformation through the imitation of Christ. Giving evidence that Jesus established just one Church, with Peter as its head, Spitzer shows that the Catholic Church continues to be fertile ground for conversion.

In Churchwork, Rodney Shaw provides pastors', ministry leaders', and volunteers' invaluable wisdom and insight to optimize the performance of ministry teams. With fresh perspectives on follower-centric leadership and courageous followership, this book will bring clarity to your vision. As you begin to implement the principles in this book, you can expect to see results.

She had no choice in the matter - none of the girls did. Her mission was to give birth to and raise many children in devoted service to a shared husband. Susan was 15 years old when she became the sixth wife of Verlan LeBaron, one of the leaders of a rogue Mormon cult, who was engaged in a blood feud with his brother that from 1972 to 1988 claimed up to two dozen lives. In this gripping and eloquent book, Susan Ray Schmidt tells the story of growing up on the inside and of her ultimate escape with her children from an oppressive and violent life.

One of the church's primary responsibilities is to foster genuine spiritual growth in people's lives. Today's pastors bring tremendous effort and passion to this task, but they are often disappointed by people who sit in the pews for years, knowing about Jesus but never really knowing him. In 2004, Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago undertook a three-year study to measure spiritual growth called the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey. Over the next six years, additional data was collected from over a quarter million people in well over a thousand churches of every size....

Organizational behavior is an important and growing field in leadership and management studies, yet it has been largely overlooked by leaders of churches and other Christian ministries. This introduction to the topic accounts for the unique dynamics of Christian organizations, gives theological foundations, and provides key insights and guidance to those studying or practicing leadership in churches and ministries.

Christians have proclaimed the good news about Jesus for centuries. But the good news isn't sounding so good these days, at least to some. More and more surveys show that people view Christians as bearers of bad news, judgment, and intolerance. In Vanishing Grace, best-selling author Philip Yancey acknowledges the problem and then explores how we can respond with both grace and truth. He offers a discerning look at what contributes to a hostility toward Christians, and identifies three groups - pilgrims, artists, and activists - who can show us a different way.

Two years after a devastating defeat in the decade-long Spore War, the island nation of Hōppon and its capital city of Neo Kinoko are occupied by invading Coprinian forces. Its fungal citizens are in dire straits, wracked by food shortages, poverty and an influx of war refugees. Even worse, the corrupt occupiers exploit their power, hounding the native population. As a winter storm looms over the metropolis, NKPD homicide detective Henrietta Hofmann begrudgingly partners up with mushroom-headed patrol officer Koji Nameko to investigate the mysterious murders of fungal and half-breed children.

Why do youth ministries crumble? And what is the cost to students, parents, volunteers and church staff? Is a sustainable youth ministry possible, even after a youth pastor leaves? Youth ministry expert Mark DeVries knows the answer is yes, because he helps build sustainable youth ministries through his coaching service called Youth Ministry Architects. So take heart: No matter what state the youth ministry at your church is in—in need of a leader and volunteers, full of battles and stress, large or small in number—it can be built to survive and to last for the long haul.

In the mid-1990s, a clandestine group of high-ranking churchmen began gathering in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Opposed to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the circle plotted a revolution in stealth. By 2015, their secret ached to be told. Before an audience, Cardinal Godfried Danneels joked of being a part of a "mafia." But as explosive as Danneels's confession was, a thick cloud of mystery still enshrouds the St. Gallen mafia.

The second in Joe Thorn's series on the confession, nature, and expression of the church, The Character of the Church explores what the church is fundamentally like. Useful for training in membership classes, discipleship groups, and elder boards, The Character of the Church is at once theological, practical, and experiential. Listeners will be not simply informed but led to a deeper appreciation of the church of God.

At last, Mitford's rector and lifelong bachelor Father Tim has married his talented and vivacious neighbor Cynthia. Now, of course, they must face love's challenges: new sleeping arrangements for Father Tim's sofa-sized dog, Cynthia's urge to decorate the rectory Italian-villa-style, and the growing pains of the thrown-away boy who's become like a son to the rector.

The church of Jesus Christ is the locus of God’s plan for creation—a plan to reclaim all things for his glory. In The Church: God’s New People, Savage shows how it is within this corporate body that the larger dimensions of God’s plan for creation receive breathtaking definition.

Compiled with the intent to improve the preaching standards in churches at the time and to increase pastoral understanding of Christianity, Homilies is a comprehensive overview of Christian theology, the history and impact of the Reformation, and daily applications of faith and doctrine. The sermons included here dive into the issues and questions of salvation, Christian living, justification by faith, the weight of sin, and many more impactful themes and ideals.

Is Atheism Dead? is an entertaining, impressively wide-ranging, and decidedly provocative answer to that famous 1966 Time cover that itself provocatively asked “Is God Dead?” In a voice that is by turns witty, muscular, and poetic, Metaxas intentionally echoes C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton in cheerfully and logically making his astonishing case, along the way presenting breathtaking - and often withering - new evidence and arguments against the idea of a Creatorless universe.

Let the gospel of Jesus and the example of Jesus motivate you to serve your church sacrificially. This book looks at the gospel of Jesus and the example of Jesus to motivate us to serve our church family sacrificially with our energy, time, and gifts. This is a great book for Christians who have grown weary over time, those who need help in identifying their gifts and gaining the confidence to offer them, and church members who are lacking the motivation to get started.

The Little Office of Our Lady, also known as the Hours of the Virgin, is a liturgical devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in imitation of, and usually in addition to, the Divine Office in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a cycle of psalms, hymns, scripture, and other readings that came into general use in the 10th century, and was so well received that eventually by the 14th century the Little Office was obligatory for all clergy. Although no longer an obligatory prayer book, it is still widely used by those who wish to draw closer to Christ and to the Virgin Mary.