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Trying to get your message heard? Build an iconic brand? Welcome to the battlefield. The story wars are all around us. They are the struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through the din, using the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behavior—great stories. With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, viral storyteller and advertising expert Jonah Sachs takes readers into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity. You’ll discover how: • Social m...
Based on groundbreaking Barna Group research, unChristian uncovers the negative perceptions young people have of Christianity and explores what can be done to reverse them.
Gagnon offers the most thorough analysis to date of the biblical texts relating to homosexuality. He demonstrates why attempts to classify the Bible’s rejection of same-sex intercourse as irrelevant for our contemporary context fail to do justice to the biblical texts and to current scientific data. Gagnon’s book powerfully challenges attempts to identify love and inclusivity with affirmation of homosexual practice. . . . the most sophisticated and convincing examination of the biblical data for our time. —Jürgen Becker, Professor of New Testament, Christian-Albrechts University
If you eat to help manage your emotions, you may have discovered that it doesn’t work. Once you’re done eating, you might even feel worse. Eating can all too easily become a strategy for coping with depression, anxiety, boredom, stress, and anger, and a reliable reward when it’s time to celebrate. If you are ready to experience emotions without consuming them or being consumed by them, the mindfulness, acceptance, and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills in End Emotional Eating can help. This book does not focus on what or how to eat—rather, these scientifically supported skills will teach you how to manage emotions and urges gracefully, live in the present moment, learn from yo...
Spirituality is lived belief. When we pray, worship, or reach out to our neighbors, we live out our beliefs. Our beliefs structure our spirituality like skin stretched over the bones of our bodies. These beliefs start with faith in God the Father through Jesus Christ as revealed through the Holy Spirit in scripture, in the church, and in daily life. Our Trinitarian theology orders our beliefs. Without a coherent theology, we lose our identity in space and time having no map or compass to guide us on our way. In the end, we focus on ourselves, not God. Christian spirituality starts with God, not with us. In this book are 50 prayers taken from A Christian Guide to Spirituality (2014) by the sa...
Stephen J. Hiemstra (Phd) chronicles his early life, schooling, military service, and service in the federal government. In this rages-to-riches story, read about how an Iowa farm boy finds love, earns a doctorate, serves this country, combats hunger, advises presidents, and starts the first doctoral program in hospitality anywhere, Stephen is a Professor Emeritus at Purdue University and former Senior Research Fellow in the School of Business and Public Policy at George Washington University. He is the founder and Director of the hospitality Ph.D. program in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Purdue University. Stephen grew up on a mixed, grain-livestock farm in near Os...
When did you first hear God’s call? Called Along the Way describes the author’s faith journey from unbeliever to believer, from cultural Christian to active disciple, from disciple to realization of call, and from seminary to early ministry. Unlike Adam and Eve, this story does not begin the Garden of Eden. If you too have struggled with your faith walk, then this story may offer solace. Even in our baby steps of faith, God promises to walk with us. Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy! The cover image comes from a woodcut called a Nauis Socialis Mechanicorum (Social Ship of Mechanics) attributed to the artist Albrecht Dürer. This woodcut is better known as the Ship of Fools. Author Stephen W. Hiemstra (MDiv, PhD) is a slave of Christ, husband, father, volunteer pastor, writer, and speaker. He lives with Maryam, his wife of 30+ years, in Centreville, VA and they have three grown children. Keywords include: Christian memoir, faith, discipleship, pastoral call, personal memoir, autobiography, memoir, federal service, education.
As Christians, how do we know what we know? This simple question challenges the nature of information, how we learn, decision making, who we are, and who this God is that we worship. If this challenge appears optional; it is not—our post-Christian culture questions every faith assumption. Simple Faithexamines these questions and discusses implications for faith and life. An important implication of this study is that faith plays a critical role into how we think, learn, and make decisions in the context of limited resources and an uncertain future. Even scientific inquiry requires faith, which normally gets hidden in untested assumptions and presumptions about what is interesting to invest...
When God comes into our lives, we change. Our new identity in Christ comes into tension with our old identity in ourselves as the Holy Spirit works in our hearts and minds. This tension arises between who we were and who God created us to be, between us and God, and between us and those around us. The Apostle Paul calls the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives sanctification. Life in Tension reflects on Jesus' Beatitudes in the context of scripture. The Beatitudes serve as an introduction to the Sermon on the Mount and lay out Jesus' priorities in teaching his disciples. Because the sermon serves as a kind of ordination service for the Apostles, the importance of the Beatitudes for the early...
This trilogy combines three books published previously: A Christian Guide to Spirituality, Life in Tension, and Called Along the Way. Together they chronicle a spiritual journey during the period from 2013 through 2017. The first two books focus on the question—who is God?—while the third book focuses on the question—who are we? The call to faith and ministry is personal but it is also corporal, being informed by the community of faith at one time and in one place. The original books have been reproduced as published. Offering them together makes them available more economically and draws attention to their common purpose. Because spirituality is lived belief, it is important to reflec...