Showing results by publisher "Tantor Audio" in Ministry & Evangelism

Is Christianity a bland, domesticated religion, unthreatening and easy to grasp? Or is it the most exotic, unexpected, and uncanny of religious paths? For the mystics and saints - and for Robert Barron, who discovered Christianity through them - it is surely the strangest way. "At its very center", writes Barron, "is a God who comes after us with a reckless abandon, breaking open his own heart in love in order to include us in the rhythm of his own life." What could be more compelling?

Beginning with the life of Jesus, Robert Louis Wilken narrates the dramatic spread and development of Christianity over the first thousand years of its history. Moving through the formation of early institutions, practices, and beliefs to the transformations of the Roman world after the conversion of Constantine, he sheds new light on the subsequent stories of Christianity in the Latin West, the Byzantine and Slavic East, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Theology shapes who we are and how we organize to transform the world. Especially written for required United Methodist classes, this accessible book uses a Wesleyan theological frame—connection—to help listeners understand United Methodism's polity and organization as the interrelationship of our beliefs, mission, and practice. The book is organized into four parts—United Methodist beliefs, mission, practice, and organization. Polity and organization are primary embodiments of The United Methodist Church.

Nathan was different and Sally knew it. From his early childhood, Nathan was bursting with creativity and uncontainable energy, struggling not only with learning issues but also with anxiety and OCD. He saw the world through his own unique lens - one that often caused him to be labeled as "bad", "troubled", or someone in need of "fixing". Bravely choosing to listen to her motherly intuition rather than the loud voices of the world, Sally dared to believe that Nathan's differences could be part of an intentional design.

From peasants to princes, no one was untouched by the spiritual and intellectual upheaval of the 16th century. Martin Luther's challenge to church authority forced Christians to examine their beliefs in ways that shook the foundations of their religion. The subsequent divisions, fed by dynastic rivalries and military changes, fundamentally altered the relations between ruler and ruled. Geographical and scientific discoveries challenged the unity of Christendom as a belief community.

Coaching is a widely respected and highly effective way of helping people get unstuck. Companies, churches, families, and individuals are turning to coaches for help in navigating life's transitions, obstacles, relationships, and more. This second edition of Christian Coaching is a revised, expanded, and updated version with significant new material to reflect current trends and standards in the coaching field. Dr. Collins offers you biblical principles, how-tos, and tools to enhance your coaching skills. 

When someone suffers through trauma, can healing happen? And, if yes, how does it happen? Dr. Diane Langberg tackles these complex and difficult questions with the insights she has gained through more than 40 years of counseling those whose lives have been destroyed by trauma and abuse. Her answer carefully explained in Suffering and the Heart of God is Yes, what trauma destroys, Jesus can and does restore.

Nearly a decade after Spain's conquest of Mexico, the future of Christianity on the American continent was very much in doubt. Confronted with a hostile colonial government and Native Americans wary of conversion, the newly-appointed bishop-elect of Mexico wrote to tell the King of Spain that, unless there was a miracle, the continent would be lost.

Most Christians would agree that the Bible provides a basis for mission. But Christopher Wright boldly maintains that mission is bigger than that - there is in fact a missional basis for the Bible. The entire Bible is generated by and is all about God's mission. In order to understand the Bible, we need a missional hermeneutic of the Bible, an interpretive perspective that is in tune with this great missional theme. We need to see the "big picture" of God's mission and how the familiar bits and pieces fit into the grand narrative of Scripture.

Many Catholics have either left the Church or been scandalized by the errors or immorality rampant in her clergy. We've watched aghast as faithful Catholics have been restricted or punished without just cause, while those who confuse, contradict, or undermine the Faith are elevated. In this bold and urgent book, the authors notice an apparent absurdity: those most disciplined by the Church at this time are often least deserving of correction. This protracted state of confusion and injustice, plain for all to see, has shaken the faith of millions.

Christianity has tended to focus on right beliefs and right choices as the keys for personal growth. But biblical evidence and modern brain science show that our character is shaped more by whom we love than what we believe. Through conversations he had with Dallas Willard at the Heart and Soul Conference shortly before Dallas' death, Jim Wilder shows how we can train our brains to relate to God based on joyful, mutual attachment - which leads to emotional and spiritual maturity as our identity and character are formed by our relationship with God.

Churches often realize they need to change. But if they're not careful, the way they change can hurt more than help. Leading practical theologian Andrew Root offers a new paradigm for understanding the congregation in contemporary ministry. He articulates why congregations feel pressured by the speed of change in modern life and encourages an approach that doesn't fall into the negative traps of our secular age.

This new edition of a best-selling evangelical survey of the Old Testament has been thoroughly updated and retains the pedagogical features that have made the work so popular.

Simon Peter, Andrew, James the son of Zebedee, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Jude, Simon, Judas, and Matthias - what happened to the men who answered Jesus' call to follow him? What impact did they have on the world? Where did they go and what did they do after Jesus' resurrection and ascension? In these fascinating profiles, Dr. McBirnie offers listeners a snapshot of the lives of each apostle.

Mystified by the situations girls face today? There's a good reason, Mom. Our girls are growing up in a completely different world than we did. But whether your daughter is very young or a teenager, you can equip yourself with the wisdom and practical help she needs for the pressures and decisions ahead. With keen insight and warm encouragement, Cheri Fuller shares how you can become a more welcome influence at every stage in your daughter's life.

Many of us do not trust our own thoughts, feelings, and desires when it comes to discerning God's will. Instead we look outside ourselves to determine what God wants from and for us. In God's Voice Within, spiritual director Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ, shows us how to use Ignatian discernment to access our own spiritual intuition and understand that the most trustworthy wisdom of all comes not from outside sources, but from God working through us.

While many histories of Christian worship exist, this project undertakes a task both more focused and more urgent. Rather than survey the whole history of the Christian church, it focuses on the formative period between the first and fifth centuries CE, when so many of the understandings and patterns of Christian worship came to be. And rather than include such developments as the monastic hours of prayer and the history of ordination, the authors deal primarily with those aspects of worship that recur on a weekly or regular basis: preaching, Eucharist, and baptism.

A worship disorder: This is how Edward T. Welch views addictions. "Will we worship our own desires or will we worship the true God?" With this lens the author discovers far more in Scripture on addictions than passages on drunkenness.

Over the last thirty years, conservative evangelicals have been moving to the Northwest of the United States, where they hope to resist the impact of secular modernity and to survive the breakdown of society that they anticipate. Their activity coincides with the promotion by prominent survivalist authors of a program of migration to the "American Redoubt," a region encompassing Idaho, Montana, parts of eastern Washington and Oregon, and Wyoming, as a haven in which to endure hostile social change or natural disaster and in which to build a new social order.

At the approach of the first millennium, the Christians of Europe did not seem likely candidates for future greatness. They saw no future beyond the widely anticipated Second Coming of Christ. But when the world did not end, the peoples of Western Europe suddenly found themselves with no choice but to begin the heroic task of building a Jerusalem on Earth. In The Forge of Christendom, Tom Holland masterfully describes this remarkable new age, a time of caliphs and Viking sea kings, the spread of castles, and the invention of knighthood.