Social Ministry

It is a question at the center of many arguments against the existence of God and a conundrum that stumps even the most devout worshipers. What do we make of pain and suffering? What does it cost us? What is its value? How can an all-loving God allow for world catastrophe, grave illness, and devastating carnage?

Is it possible to be both a Catholic and a feminist? Claire Swinarski, writer and creator of The Catholic Feminist podcast, believes it is: "I'm a feminist for the same reason I'm bold and honest and sometimes ragey: because Jesus was all of those things." In Girl, Arise!, Swinarski reconciles the two identities by demonstrating the strength and abilities women have to share with the Body of Christ, the importance of women throughout the history of the faith, and how the love you experience through Christ and the Church can change you and the world around you.

New research finds that Christians are less involved in spiritual conversations today than we were twenty-five years ago. As society has changed, it seems we have become more uncomfortable talking with people about our faith. We are reluctant conversationalists. As a result, many of our churches and communities are shrinking instead of growing. What can we do about this?

"Children don't fail, the adults around them do - and it is up to us to light the candle of excellence within each one we know and love," begins Marva Collins, one of America's foremost educators, in her important work, Values. This practical guide is for those of us who strive to be role models, who want to know the important values, live them, and teach them to our children.

This book is not about pornography. You won't find graphic depictions about the porn industry, the catastrophic effects it has on individuals and relationships, or how to think differently about porn. If you're reading this book, you probably have some understanding of those things already—the last thing you need is to be subjected to that kind of detail...again. Finally Free is about hope. It's about discovering the freeing power available to those who trust in Jesus Christ, who can, will, and does set people free from the power of pornography.

Drawing Lines Building Bridges seeks to bring clarity to the confusion Christians have today concerning what to do about homosexuality in the church and how to respond to homosexuals in their lives. While drawing lines between the values held by society and the traditional morality preserved by the church, Drawing Lines Building Bridges advocates strategies of bridge-building engagement between Christians and the LGBT community - strategies which model the example of Jesus and Paul in the Bible and reflect the concerns of the LGBT community.

From colonial times into the 20th century, our laws and court cases ignored atheism, assuming that all good Americans were religious. Only in the 20th century, with the passage of laws allowing for conscientious objection to war, did nonbelief enter debates about religious liberty. Still, today every one of the 20 states has God written into its constitution. God is everywhere in American public life. R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick explore both God's omnipresence and the dramatic rise in nonbelievers that has led to an "atheist awakening" intent on holding the country to its secular principles.

American Millennials - the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s - have been leaving organized religion in unprecedented numbers. For a long time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an exception: Nearly three-quarters of people who grew up Mormon stayed that way into adulthood. In The Next Mormons, Jana Riess demonstrates that things are starting to change.

We all need help navigating the politics of ministry. In The Politics of Ministry, Bob Burns, Tasha Chapman, and Donald Guthrie combine their long ministry experience with sociological research on the topic. Filled with real-life stories taken from a variety of ministry settings, this book sets out wise principles and practices that help us see more clearly the political dynamics at play in our churches and parachurch ministries.

God Breathed will help you understand and courageously doubt the popular dogma that God cannot speak, that the Bible is not only inaccurate but impossible. It will help you break out of the soul-suffocating confines of self-made truth. Within the pages of God's book is the true you, just waiting for you to arrive. God Breathed will help you get there.

Los grupos evangélicos tuvieron en los últimos años un crecimiento exponencial en todo el continente americano y lograron consolidarse como una nueva fuerza política y social. Entre sus miembros hay presidentes, ministros y ministras, diputados y diputadas, asesores y asesoras que ocupan puestos clave en los gobiernos de la región. Son dueños de grandes medios de comunicación, tienen una fuerte base territorial entre los sectores populares y obtienen muchos recursos del Estado, por eso, sus líderes son muy requeridos por aquellos políticos que tienen ambiciones de poder.

The deeper I grow in my own faith as a Christian, the greater my desire to explore. My faith whets my appetite for discovering what God is doing in and through the world each and every day. This book is a chronicle of some of the most important lessons I have learned thus far. I write to encourage my fellow nomads who, like me, so often feel alone in their wanderings yet are a part of a much larger caravan of fellow wanderers seeking to discover for ourselves the meaning and mysteries of life.

In this poignant and vulnerable book, Leslie shows you how each hodgepodge piece of your life, no matter how haphazard, represents a part of what you do and who you are. While on the surface, none of these pieces may seem to make a terribly dramatic impact, Leslie will show you how they are your life and how when they are collected into a jar, a loving human heart, they become a treasure.

Filled with vivid details and little-known facts, this work of Christian nonfiction literature is filled with inspiration and deep knowledge. It gives the listener a sense of inner peace and spiritual respite as it's being read that is unmatched with any other Christian nonfiction that one may have listened to before. The book is written from the theme of the Social Gospel.

There is a war against your children. Every day, kids of all ages are bombarded with the enemy's lies that war against their God-given identities and divine destinies. But when kids speak God’s truth over themselves, their minds are renewed and they become rooted in a healthy, Bible-based identity. In God’s Got This: Power Decrees to Overcome Problems, Step into Purpose, and Receive Promises, notable apostolic leader and prophet Tim Sheets teams up with his daughter, Rachel Shafer, to provide a powerful resource—biblical decrees that kids can speak over themselves in every season of life.

Talking About Race argues Christians must understand why they avoid honest conversations about race if they want to enjoy authentic racial unity in their churches. Isaac Adams shows that if we can understand the reasons for our reluctance to speak about race, we can grow together in love rather than apart in bitterness.

Outreach to those who struggle with same-sex attraction is severely lacking in most churches. As a result, most Christians learn more about homosexuality from movies, the internet, television, and so-called diversity training than they learn in their own congregations. Many people who struggle with same-sex attraction are torn by the debate while yearning to hear the redemptive truth of the Bible and be touched by the unyielding love of Christ. Author Bill Campbell believes that Christians can have a significant positive influence on how the larger culture frames the issue of same-sex attraction. He combines twenty years of study with current surveys and research by national leaders of ministries to homosexuals.

The Japanese army's brutal occupation of the city of Nanking during the 1937 Sino-Japanese War is known, for good reason, as the rape of Nanking. As they slaughtered an estimated 300,000 people, the invading soldiers raped more than 20,000 women - some estimates run as high as 80,000. Hua-ling Hu presents here the amazing untold story of the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, whose unswerving defiance of the Japanese protected 10,000 Chinese women and children.

The world is not as God intends it to be. God's heart is to make things right, and for the world to be just. But complex problems warrant more sustained attention than quick posts on social media. How can we actually make a difference? Activist Mae Elise Cannon takes us beyond the hashtags to serious engagement with real issues. God calls the church to respond substantively to the needs of the poor, the realities of racial inequity, and the mistreatment of women and the marginalized.

Many White Christians are eager to fight against racism and for racial justice. But what steps can they take to make good, lasting change? How can they get involved without unintentionally doing more harm than good? In this practical and illuminating guide drawn from more than 20 years of cross-cultural work and learning from some of the greatest leaders of color, pastor and racial justice advocate Daniel Hill provides nine practices rooted in Scripture that will position you to be an active supporter of inclusion, equality, and racial justice.