Community Houses

Belonging brings out the best in everyone. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, community organizer, or leader of any sort, your group is unlikely to thrive if the individuals don’t feel welcomed, included, and valued for who they are. The good news is that you can use design to create feelings of inclusion in your organization: rituals that bring people together, spaces that promote calm, roles that create a sense of responsibility, systems that make people feel respected, and more.

So, let's talk about loneliness. Human connection specialist Simone Heng knows a lot about being lonely. She left an enviable career and social life to move back to her family home to care for her mother. All alone in a house filled with memories but devoid of people, she was faced with the realization that human connection is one of our most essential needs. Simone shares her journey to understanding the value of human connection and explains how to distinguish authentic relationships from fake substitutes.

When Noel learns that his terminally ill former flame is pregnant with his child, he agrees to take guardianship of the baby girl once she's born. But as a single father battling demons of his own, Noel can't do it alone.

The book of Revelation is filled with angels and dragons, fantastic beasts and golden cities, bottomless pits and mysterious numbers. It’s dramatic, sure - but what exactly does that have to do with the tests we face today? Actually, a lot. When the apostle John penned the book of Revelation, believers lived in a time of deception and injustice. But his message doesn’t just reflect their cries for things to be made right; it reveals heaven’s perspective of the bigger picture.

When Dr. Will Cooke, an idealistic young physician just out of medical training, set up practice in the small rural community of Austin, Indiana, he had no idea that much of the town was being torn apart by poverty, addiction, and life-threatening illnesses. But he soon found himself at the crossroads of two unprecedented health-care disasters: a national opioid epidemic and the worst drug-fueled HIV outbreak ever seen in rural America. Confronted with Austin’s hidden secrets, Dr. Cooke decided he had to do something about them.

From the author of Messy Grace, a former pastor raised by gay parents, comes a compassionate playbook to help Christians, church staff, and ministry leaders create a culture of belonging without sacrificing theological convictions.

The Goat House Market in charming Dogwood Dale, NC, is usually a haven of homespun delights and neighborly cheer. But when Lily Thistle’s beloved goat, Buttercup, vanishes from her pen, a ripple of unease disturbs the market’s peaceful rhythm. For Bea Thistle, Lily’s sharp-witted grandmother and purveyor of artisanal goat milk soaps, a broken gate and strange footprints are more than just a runaway animal. As Bea delves into the mystery, she unearths whispers of local folklore—tales of a hidden spring beneath the market and ancient rituals demanding a pure offering. A quiet, intense...

Let these three faith-filled, heartwarming romances uplift and encourage you! These books are part of The Potter's House Books series, stories of love, hope, redemption, and second chances. They can also be read as stand alone. May these feel-good romances with a dollop of humor and a touch of suspense speak to your heart. HEART UNBROKEN. Can a widowed sheriff and a former drug addict believe God has the power to mend all broken hearts, even crushed ones like theirs? Now a Christian, former drug addict Emma Hughes is back in the small town of Rios Azules. She's desperate to regain the trust...

Ready to Rise tackles the real-life issues - from harassment and sexism to self-doubt and loneliness - that can discourage and derail women from leading in the areas God has called them to. With insights from her own journey and powerful biblical examples, Jo offers practical advice to empower and equip women to transform their communities.

Before you spend any of your hard-earned money on a real estate seminar, read this book. I promise it will be less expensive than most real estate seminars, you will learn more, and you won’t have to sit in an uncomfortable chair for hours. Have you ever considered flipping real estate? Ever wonder what it would take to successfully renovate a property and make a profit? Do you have a full-time job already and just need a side hustle? If you’ve answered yes, this book is for you. This book will inspire you to consider flipping real estate as your part-time hustle. I want to show you how...

Our bodies are designed to heal. But while our skinned knees easily heal, it can sometimes feel like our emotional and relational wounds are left gaping open, broken beyond repair. If our bodies instinctively know how to heal physical injuries, could they also help us understand how to restore painful emotional and relational ruptures? Physician Jennie McLaurin and scientist Cymbeline T. Culiat present Designed to Heal: a fascinating look at how the restorative processes of the body can model patterns we may adapt to heal the acute and chronic wounds of our social bodies.

Nowhere are Kathryn Tucker Windham's transcendent themes of community, fidelity, and family more evident than in these stories. The author calls them "recollections of a happy Southern childhood", but her avid admirers would tell you that they are much more than that.

The housing crisis plaguing major urban centres has sent countless people into the streets. In spring 2022, some of them found their way to the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto’s Kensington Market, where Maggie Helwig is the priest. They pitched tents, formed an encampment, and settled in. Known as an outspoken social justice activist, Helwig has spent the last three years getting to know the residents and fighting tooth and nail to allow them to stay, battling various authorities that want to clear the yard and keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind.

Live your senior years as part of a thriving community—choose the continuing care retirement community or life plan community that’s right for you, even if you’re still a few years away from retirement. Retirement can be a joyful time; however, one question hangs over your head: how can you prepare for your long-term care? The old idea that family will take care of you in your senior years is beautiful but often impractical. You may not have any family or your family may be consumed with their daily survival or not be as financially stable as you are. You may not want to be a burden ...

When a powerful corporation moves in on Dogwood Dale, they're not just after the land beneath the Goat House Market. They're after something buried deep within the town's history—a secret that could unravel the very fabric of Dogwood Dale. As the vendors fight to save their market, they become entangled in a mystery that spans generations, leading them to question everything they thought they knew about their home. Will the Goat House Market vendors prevail?

When Maeve McQuaid loses her boyfriend and her gardening job in one fell swoop, fate intervenes in the shape of Beth, an elderly lady carrying a gap-year-size backpack. She turns out to be the owner of the mysterious Druid's Oak Farm in North Yorkshire and offers her a job. The farm is an artist's community which has become tired and run down, much like its inhabitants. The Elizabethan building needs to be saved but Beth is slowly going bankrupt. Can Maeve make a formal garden from an overgrown shambles? Can her enthusiasm lift everyone out of their lethargy or will they rise up against her...

Jesse has it together in school and he’s well on his way to that NASA dream of his. He knows what he wants professionally, but the stress can get to him and he’d just as soon drop it all when the studying is done. This is one reason he’s looking for a daddy, the other is his unrelenting attraction to his aeronautics professor. Bumper is living his best life yet. As a shifter born with no family, he’s lived a few pocket lives already and now that he’s free of his past, he can live openly as a gay man. His problem is he can’t get one of this students out of his head, Jesse. This ...

Each Christmas retired chemistry teacher Edwina Bopp makes her newest invention of miracle fudge as a fundraiser for missions in her small Southern town Fountain City. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the good lady cooks through the night and then gives the candy away to the fudge-hungry group of people who know this year's newest recipe is coming and line up in front of her store before she ever opens the door of her Main Street candy shop. People receive their portion of this year's fudge and place donations for missions in her jar on the counter, expecting miracles. Some miracles have...

It’s the holy month of Ramadan, and twin sisters Amira and Lina are about to graduate high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On the precipice of adulthood, they plan to embark on a summer of teenage revelry, trying on new identities and testing the limits of what they can get away with while still under their parents’ roof. But the twins' expectations of a summer of freedom collide with their older brother's return from prison, whose mysterious behavior threatens to undo the delicate family balance.

When we think about freedom within the LGBTQ+ community, we often focus on all of the "good" things. We can make our own choices, be who we want, go where we want, love who we want, etc. But how is it that even after we are done doing everything that could possibly bring us pleasure, we still feel unfulfilled and empty? Still, craving more and more? Being tempted to go deeper and deeper into this never-ending cycle of pleasure-seeking only to come out more empty and emotionally drained than before? Is it possible that everything you considered to be freedom is really the very thing that is ...