Church Age

Here are only a few of the new friends you’ll meet in TEENAGE CHRISTIAN, Inspirational Short Stories for Guys: DAVID, proud to be the owner of his grandfather’s Civil War-era rifle—a family heirloom—discovers the hard way that only a fine line separates adoration and idolatry. TIM, caught in a fierce tornado, has nowhere to run, except straight into the loving, protective arms of the Lord. KYLE’S feelings for his best friend, Charlie, turn from love to hate when Charlie hunts and kills Jannie, the tame little doe that Kyle befriended. MIKE puts an opportunity to work at a popular ...

Reverend Smith is responsible for leading Pride Horizon Church in communion. Every Sunday he leads the congregation in the ritual of taking the body and the blood of Christ. My next step to Holy Ordinance at Pride Horizon is getting a lesson from the Reverend in what it really means to take the body, to come closer to your church leaders, and thereby closer to Christ. Reverend Smith takes me to the communion room where the wine is kept. He pulls it out, takes a sip, and commands me to take it from his mouth and into mine. Then I notice something in his pants, also begging me to take it in ...

In How the Nations Rage, political theology scholar and pastor Jonathan Leeman challenges Christians from across the spectrum to hit the restart button by shifting our focus from redeeming the nation to living as a nation already redeemed, rejecting the false allure of building heaven on earth while living faithfully as citizens of a heavenly kingdom, letting Jesus’ teaching shape our public engagement as we love our neighbors and seek justice.

The true queen of Weirandale has returned. Cerulia has done the impossible and regained the throne. However, she's inherited a council of traitors, a realm in chaos, and a war with Oromondo. Now a master of her Gift, to return order to her kingdom she will use all she has learned - humility, leadership, compassion, selflessness, and the necessity of ruthlessness.

Loveday Cardew prefers books to people, and her job in a York bookshop is her refuge. If you look carefully, you might see the first lines of the novels she loves the most tattooed on her skin, but there are secrets Loveday will never share. Into the bookshop come a poet, a lover, a friend and three mysterious deliveries, each of which stirs unsettling memories she wants to forget. Turning the pages of her past will be the hardest thing Loveday has ever done. Can she trust those around her?

Are you looking for the meaning of life? Maybe you are a lukewarm Christian looking to get back to your roots of Jesus as your savior as the son of God. This book details what it takes to grow closer to God, so that you may spend eternity with him in heaven. Written for the new or lost Christian, or anyone interested in avoiding an eternity in hell. this book clearly outlines the steps to take to guarantee a life everlasting with God our Father in heaven. New Age falsely teaches that "you are god", and while so many of their practices actually get you closer to God, their intent is to lead ...

Time can heal all wounds, but not all wounds are visible. Barely surviving her ordeal in Oromondo and scarred by its Fire Spirit, Cerulia is taken to a recovery house in Wyeland to heal from the trauma. In a ward with others who are all bound to serve each other, she discovers that not all scars are visible, and dying can be done with grace and acceptance.

In this groundbreaking, inspiring book, Robin R. Meyers, the senior minister of Oklahoma City’s Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ, shows how listeners can move from a theology of obedience to one of consequence. He argues that we need to stop seeing our actions as a means for pleasing a distant God and rediscover how God has empowered us to care for ourselves and the world. Drawing on stories from his decades of active ministry, Meyers captures how the struggles of ordinary people hint at how we can approach faith as a radical act of trust in a God who is all around us.

I think Pastor James and I did something sinful. I have to tell someone. I grab my church brother, Cody and pull him into the Sunday School room after service. He says what we did was normal, that he had to do it too to move up in Pride Horizon church. This is only tradition—ordained by the Lord himself. Our privacy is quickly interrupted when Pastor James and Bishop Faulk enter the room. Pastor explains my next step in the process to church leadership is taking the Bishop the way I took him. And sharing is a value of the church. The clothes begin to come off and Bishop takes my neck in ...

In the long, hot summer of 1995, 22-year-old Alice Lang rents a caravan on a holiday park on the outskirts of the lively holiday resort of Severn Sands. She befriends Marnie, a shy, damaged little girl whose father is the park's caretaker and whose mother died a few months earlier. Will, whose mother runs the bar, falls in love with Alice and is unbearably jealous of anyone else she sees. Tensions rise until one evening Alice disappears from her caravan. She's never seen again, and only her scarlet dress is found washed up on the shore.

Churches and their leaders have innovation fever. Innovation seems exciting—a way to enliven tired institutions, embrace creativity, and be proactive—and is a superstar of the business world. But this focus on innovation may be caused by an obsession with contemporary relevance, creativity, and entrepreneurship that inflates the self, lacks theological depth, and promises burnout. In this follow-up to Churches and the Crisis of Decline, leading practical theologian Andrew Root delves into the problems of innovation.

Fresh Expressions is a canary in the coal mine, alerting congregations to reevaluate what the Church is, where and when it can happen, and who can lead it. Church as we know it is inaccessible to most people. A fundamental premise of the movement is that Church can become accessible again by emerging in every nook and cranny where life already happens. Fresh Expressions is based in simplification, returning to basic scriptural principles, and a recovery of a "priesthood of all believers" - in the three places where people live and relate to others.

Cool secrets exist throughout God's wondrous world as Christian kids read about: 1. Tricky Tadpoles 2. Wise Cracks 3. Wolf Wonders 4. Tornadoes 5. Open Your Eyes 6. Life and Bubble Gum 7. Word Birds 8. All Puffed Up 9. River Of Miracles 10. All People 11. Underground Fire 12. New Again 13. Perfect Vision 14. A Light In The Dark 15. All About Alligators 16. Goose Bumps 17. Wonderful Water 18. All In God’s Time 19. Under Attack 20. Patience Pays 21. Underwater Singers 22. The Unlovely Lobster 23. The Sea That’s A Lake 24. The Human Body—A Living Miracle 25. Off The Bench and Into The Game

She came to the resort to heal her voice, only to discover her heart needed healing more. Breaking under the stress of being a rising star, opera singer Grace Galveston travels to Tallulah Falls in search of reprieve. With its multiple waterfalls, spectacular gorge and mountain scenery, and lavish resorts, "The Niagara of the South," seems the perfect place to do just that. Even amid the crowds and excitement of an aerialist’s attempt to cross the gorge, Grace hopes to find peace. Daniel Monroe basks in that peace as minister of a local church. He’s the perfect tour guide for Grace ...

Things are racing toward the era known as the Tribulation, though most people are oblivious. A group of Christians works to create a resource to help the people who will be left behind after the rapture. Other people just live day to day. Politicians scheme for power and riches. The Bible’s End Times events are closer than any of them think. In the Great Surprise, millions are taken to heaven. Is there hope for the people who are left behind?

Sometimes it can seem as if friends are more work and pain than they're worth, with friendship challenges that we have to endure and struggle through. Life gets in the way of our well-intentioned efforts to connect. Conflicts and differences over serious issues divide us and make us think that we could never be close to a person ever again. How can we build real relationships that are life giving and pass the test of time? Bryan Loritts mines one of the Bible's least-known books for insights into how friendships can flourish even in the midst of sin and brokenness.

Fishing on the Other Side is about following Jesus and obeying his command to make disciples. Jesus told his first disciples that if they were to follow Him, He would teach them how to fish for people. They already knew how to catch fish, but now they would be catching people with a gospel net. The principles for reaching people and catching fish are similar. What I’ve learned about fishing, I’ve also learned to apply to making disciples of Jesus:1. You have to go where the people are. 2. You have to use different techniques and tools to reach different kinds of people.3. To reach a ...

Sophie, Emily, Amy, and Melissa have been best friends since they were girls. They have seen each other through everything - from Sophie's private fear that she doesn't actually want to be a mother despite having two kids, to Amy's perfect-on-the-outside marriage that starts to reveal troubling warning signs, to Melissa's spiraling alcoholism, to questions that are suddenly bubbling up around the paternity of Emily's son. But could a lie that spans just as long as their friendship be the thing that tears them apart?

One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Matthew, the oldest, becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim’s brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford, looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back.

The Lord’s Prayer is a beautiful, subversive passage of words given to the church by Jesus. It forms our imaginations and—given time—transforms us. And today, we are in desperate need of renewed imaginations. Christians are living in a wilderness of secularism. In Liturgy in the Wilderness, Anglican priest D. J. Marotta shows how the Lord’s Prayer provides a framework in our secular age for understanding, believing, and living in light of Jesus Christ.