Religion Education

Many of us would love to hold the attention of a crowd, a classroom, or just a group of our friends by telling them a great story. We have felt the pressure of a public presentation or the disappointment of a story that is ignored and we are ready for more. In The Art of Storytelling, John Walsh talks through the steps to presenting a compelling story, outlining the strategies that helped him move from stutterer to storyteller as he fulfilled his calling of becoming a preacher.

The third in Joe Thorn's series on the confession, nature, and expression of the Church, The Life of the Church explores what the church does because of who it is. Useful for training in membership class, discipleship groups, and elder boards, The Life of the Church is at once theological, practical, and experiential. Listeners will not simply be informed, but led to a deeper conviction about their role in the body of Christ.

Leo Tolstoy was born to an aristocratic Russian family, became a world-famous influential novelist, and then chose to lead the simple life of a peasant. Dating from this last part of his life, Tolstoy’s influential book What I Believe takes readers along on the path to a life modeled literally on Jesus Christ’s "Sermon on the Mount" and the teachings of the Gospels. In revealing and frank essays he reimagines a faith without dogma, centered solely on Jesus’ doctrine of love, humility, and self-denial.

With so many Bible translations available today, how can you find those that will be most useful to you? What is the difference between a translation that calls itself “literal” and one that is more “meaning-based”? And what difference does it make for you as a reader or listener of God’s Word? How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth brings clarity and insight to the current debate over translations and translation theories.

This insightful history explores the stereotype of Dallas Theological Seminary as an anti-intellectual stronghold of fundamentalism and dispensational premillennialism. The tenures of the schools five presidents reveal the tensions that DTS, a blend of differing heritages and of opposing traditions, has experienced amid changes in American religious and cultural life.

The Redeemer of Man is the name of the first encyclical written by Pope John Paul II. It lays a blueprint for his pontificate in its exploration of contemporary human problems and especially their proposed solutions found in a deeper understanding of the human person.

Story captures our hearts and feeds our imaginations. It reminds us who we are and where we came from. Story gives meaning and direction to our lives as we learn to see it as an affirmation of God’s love. Drawing upon her own experiences, well-known tales in literature, and selected narratives from Scripture, Madeleine L’Engle gently leads the way into the glorious world of story in The Rock That Is Higher. Here she acknowledges universal human longings and considers how literature, Scripture, personal stories, and life experiences all point us toward our true home.

Here is the remarkable story of how this humble language took vigorous root in Eastern European shtetls and in the Jewish quarters of cities across Europe; how it achieved a rich literary flowering between the wars in Europe and America; how it was rejected by emancipated Jews; and how it fell victim to the Holocaust. And also how, in yet another twist of destiny, Yiddish today is becoming the darling of academia. Yiddish is a history as story; a tale of flesh-and-blood people with manic humor.

For the novice as well as the sophisticate, this audiobook is full of surprises. It includes subtle discoveries lying just “beneath” the text - hidden messages, encryptions, deliberate misspellings, and other amendments to the text - that present implications beyond the immediate context, demonstrating a skillful design that has its origin from outside our space and time.

Enjoy this single-voice audio recording of the Contemporary Chinese Bible, which offers a concise “thought-for-thought" translation. By focusing on delivering a clear rendition of the Bible’s stories and concepts, the Contemporary Chinese Bible in the Mandarin dialect offers a better comprehension of Scripture for the listener than a word-for-word translation.

This audiobook is a restatement of the life and teachings of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Like an earlier effort by Thomas Jefferson, who produced The Jefferson Bible in the early 1800s, its purpose is to distill from the scriptures only those verses truly portraying the life and teachings of Jesus. Each major event of his life is treated individually, and then arranged in chronological order. Thus, it presents the story of Jesus as it actually took place, from birth through death and resurrection.

Exactly what has public education been trying to accomplish? Before the 1830s and Horace Mann, no schools in the US were state-supported or state-controlled. They were local, parent-teacher enterprises, supported without taxes, and taking care of all children. They were remarkably high in standard and were Christian. From Mann to the present, the state has used education to socialize the child. Public education became the means of creating a social order of the educators' design. Such men saw themselves and the school in messianic terms.

In Your Part in the Great Plan, the famous New Age seer, Michael X. Barton, has put together a course of instruction that was given to him by the illustrious Venusian thinker, Valiant Thor (otherwise known as the "Stranger at the Pentagon").

In this thought-provoking look at what's really important in life, John Ortberg uses games as a metaphor to help us recognize and play for life's real prize: being rich toward God. Told with humor and wisdom by this best-selling author, pastor, and game-strategist, When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box reminds us that everything on earth belongs to God, and everything we "win" is just on loan. Being Master of the Board is not the point; playing by God's rules is.

What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive - experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing. The "great spring" of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again - the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example.

Haunted by the memory of the tragic loss of a family member, James embarks on his medical studies and struggles to establish himself as a physician. He is racked by despair when the girl he hopes to marry chooses a gold miner instead, then finds new love of his own in the most surprising of places. Meanwhile, his sister Elizabeth copes with the heartbreak of her husband's increasing coldness as his drinking and gambling put them and their newborn child in jeopardy. When James visits her in Nauvoo on his return from medical college, the stage is set for a climactic confrontation.

"Pascendi Dominici Gregis" is a papal encyclical letter promulgated by Pope Pius X on September 8, 1907. The pope condemned modernism and a whole range of other principles described as "evolutionary".

Buddhism is one of the most practical and simple belief systems on this planet and it has greatly helped me on my way to become a better person in every aspect possible. No matter if you are totally green when it comes to Buddha's teachings or if you have already heard something about them - this audiobook will help you systematize your knowledge and will inspire you to learn more and to take steps to make your life positively better!

In 1979 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith withdrew Hans Kung's missio canonica. Pope Paul VI approved the censure saying, "We are obligated to declare that in his writings he fell short of integrity and the truth of the Catholic faith." Through a 1980 agreement with the Vatican, Kung is now permitted to teach, but only under secular auspices. In this acclaimed Modern Library Chronicle, Kung examines the Catholic Church through its many reformations, focusing on the people and events...

In this book, renowned interfaith leader Eboo Patel offers a clear, detailed, and practical guide to interfaith leadership, illustrated with compelling examples. Patel explains what interfaith leadership is and explores the core competencies and skills of interfaith leadership, before turning to the issues interfaith leaders face and how they can prepare to solve them. Interfaith leaders seek points of connection and commonality - in their neighborhoods, schools, college campuses, companies, organizations, hospitals, and other spaces where people of different faiths interact with one another.