Mostrando resultados por autor "Schmitt" en Todas las categorías

Just a Fool for Christ is a gentle, story-driven exploration of joy, presence, and holy foolishness, told through the unexpected lens of clown ministry. Drawing on decades of experience as a priest, chaplain, hospice caregiver, prison volunteer, and clown—known affectionately as Pockets—Geoffrey Schmitt reflects on how laughter lowers defenses, silence creates space for grace, and vulnerability opens doors that authority cannot. From churches and hospitals to prisons and nursing homes, he discovers that the most faithful ministry often happens when performance is laid aside and presence...

What if faith is not about arriving at certainty, but learning how to walk faithfully when answers are incomplete? A Rule of the Road offers a gentle, lived approach to Christian spirituality shaped by decades of ministry, marriage, loss, prison chaplaincy, and pastoral presence. Rather than presenting doctrines to master or techniques to perfect, this book offers a set of guiding commitments — a rule of life for those walking the long road of faith. Each chapter explores a simple but demanding choice: presence over answers, relationship over results, love before usefulness, being before ...

What if the faith you started with was never meant to last? In The Faith I Did Not Start With, priest and chaplain Geoffrey Schmitt tells the story of a faith that had to be dismantled before it could become real. This is not a story of rebellion or abandonment, but of maturation—where borrowed belief gives way to truth, truth alone proves insufficient, and faith is slowly re-formed through encounter, loss, love, and presence. Schmitt writes candidly about early disillusionment, a profound encounter with God, a call to ministry, and the long road of formation that followed. Seminary study...

Walking Alone in Community: The Paradox of Faith explores one of the quiet tensions at the heart of the Christian life: faith is deeply personal, yet never meant to be lived in isolation. Drawing from Scripture, prison ministry, hospice chaplaincy, aging, suffering, and decades of pastoral walking, Geoffrey Schmitt guides readers along roads where solitude and companionship meet. From the Emmaus road to prison walls, from Communion to grief, from listening to responsibility, this book names what many feel but rarely articulate: some stretches of faith must be walked alone — and yet none ...

You Are Not Lost: Waiting Without Panic Until the Path Is Clear is a gentle, honest spiritual companion for anyone who has felt disoriented—on the road, in life, or in faith. Beginning with a simple, relatable experience of panic when losing one’s way while driving, Geoffrey Schmitt (writing as Willingheart) opens a deeper exploration of why uncertainty unsettles us so deeply. Drawing from Scripture, pastoral ministry, hospice work, prison ministry, marriage, and a lifetime of movement and change, he reframes panic not as failure, but as a doorway to trust. Through reflections on ...

The Ministry of Touch: Faith You Can Feel explores one of the most overlooked yet powerful dimensions of Christian faith: embodied presence. Drawing on decades of pastoral ministry in parishes, prisons, hospitals, hospice care, and retreat settings, Geoffrey Schmitt invites readers to rediscover how God works through hands, proximity, restraint, and sacrament. From holding a trembling hand to anointing with oil, from baptismal water to bread broken in communion, this book traces how grace is not only believed—but felt. With honesty and reverence, Schmitt also addresses necessary ...

We Hold These Truths explores the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the biblical moral imagination that shaped it — without claiming that America is a Christian nation or that Scripture belongs to any political system. Through careful reflection on truth, human dignity, unalienable rights, moral law, accountability of authority, liberty, responsibility, and formation, this book traces how biblical ideas influenced foundational American ideals — and how Scripture continues to judge, refine, and challenge those ideals today. Written from a pastoral rather than ...

Lives That Teach Character Lessons from the Bible is a reflective Bible study exploring how God forms character through real lives—faithful, flawed, and redeemed. Rather than presenting idealized heroes or simple moral lessons, this study invites readers into the honest, often complicated stories of people whose lives continue to teach because they mirror our own struggles with trust, fear, pride, mercy, repentance, and hope. Drawing from both Scripture and decades of pastoral, hospice, and prison ministry experience, Geoffrey Schmitt walks alongside biblical figures such as Abraham, ...

The Long Work of God is a reflective journey through faith formed not in moments of intensity, but over decades of living, loving, losing, and remaining faithful. Drawing on a lifetime of parish ministry, prison work, hospice chaplaincy, marriage, suffering, and accompaniment, Geoffrey Schmitt explores how God patiently shapes the human heart through ordinary days, detours, limits, and quiet endurance. Rather than offering quick answers or dramatic conversions, this book honors a slower, deeper formation—one marked by presence rather than proof. Through personal stories and pastoral ...

Bearing One Another’s Burdens: Faithful Love Along the Long Road is a pastoral, lived-faith reflection on what it truly means to love one another over time—through grief, aging, illness, friendship, prison walls, and the ordinary demands of daily faithfulness. Drawing from Scripture, decades of ministry, personal loss, and prison and hospice chaplaincy, Geoffrey Schmitt explores the biblical call of Galatians 6:2 with honesty and discernment. This book carefully distinguishes bearing burdens together from unhealthy co-dependency, showing how love can be both generous and wise, present ...

Courage to Be Gentle: Where Strength Meets Compassion explores the paradox at the heart of Christian character: that true strength is revealed not through force, but through restraint, kindness, presence, and love. Drawing from Scripture, pastoral ministry, prison work, marriage, aging, and personal stories, Geoffrey Schmitt invites readers to rediscover courage as something quiet and enduring. Each chapter offers reflection, prayer, poetry, and practical practices for living with strength shaped by compassion. This book is written for those who are weary of loud strength and longing for ...

We all carry wounds. Some come from loss, failure, disappointment, or sorrow; others arise from the simple challenges of being human. But when these wounds are touched by God’s grace, something extraordinary happens: they become wisdom. In Turning Hurt into Help: Wounds That Become Wisdom, Geoffrey “Willingheart” Schmitt reveals how our scars can become lanterns for others—lights that shine not because we are perfect, but because God has healed us in imperfect places. Through Scripture, personal narrative, prison ministry stories, and years of pastoral experience, he shows how ...

The Church in the World, but Not of It: Influence Without Compromise explores the timeless tension of Christian living: how to engage the world faithfully without being shaped by it. Through Scripture, teaching, meditation, personal stories from parish and prison ministry, and gentle pastoral wisdom, Geoffrey Schmitt guides readers into a deeper understanding of influence rooted in Christlikeness. Each chapter offers practices for shaping character, cultivating discernment, speaking truth with grace, serving without losing one’s center, and shining with hope in a cynical age. The book ...

The Beauty of Truth with Grace is a reflective Christian work that explores how faith is lived—not loudly or triumphantly, but faithfully, patiently, and beautifully. Through Scripture, personal stories, poetry, and gentle spiritual practices, Geoffrey Schmitt invites readers to consider a deeper kind of beauty: beauty shaped by honesty, humility, endurance, and love. Drawing from ministry in prisons, hospice care, aging, loss, and long companionship, the book resists urgency and argument in favor of presence and trust. This is a book for those who are tired of noise, wary of easy answers...

Held Fast: God’s Strength in Our Fragile Seasons is a gentle and deeply personal guide for anyone walking through moments when life feels unsteady, uncertain, or overwhelming. Drawing from Scripture, caregiving, grief, anxiety, ministry, and lived experience, Geoffrey Schmitt invites readers to discover the God who holds them with unwavering tenderness. Through ten reflective chapters—each shaped by teaching, meditation, personal narrative, poetry, and prayer—this book offers a sacred companion for fragile days. Whether the challenge is illness, loss, fear, aging, caregiving, or the ...

The Unseen Road: Walking with God in the Ordinary invites readers to discover the sacred beauty hidden in the simplest moments of life — small tasks, daily routines, quiet drives, unexpected conversations, and places that anchor the soul. Through Scripture, personal stories, reflections, poems, and gentle spiritual practices, Willingheart shows that God’s presence is not reserved for mountaintops, miracles, or extraordinary events. Instead, He walks with us in the unnoticed pathways of everyday life. This book is a gentle companion for anyone seeking peace, steadiness, and the grace of ...

The Work of Love: Serving God in the Ordinary and Overlooked invites readers into the quiet places where God’s presence often hides — the small tasks, unnoticed acts, and everyday moments that shape a life of faith. Drawing from Scripture and decades of pastoral ministry, Willingheart explores twelve simple themes: seeing the overlooked, the holiness of small tasks, showing up, listening deeply, blessing with words, serving behind the scenes, and offering what little we have to God. Through stories of Boy Scouts, church volunteers, altar guild members, prison ministry, food pantries, ...

The Courage to Be Small invites readers into the gentle, countercultural way of humility — not as weakness, but as strength surrendered to God. Through Scripture, personal stories, Kairos experiences, meditation, poetry, prayer, and the Smithy’s Forge, Geoffrey Schmitt guides us down the “small path” Jesus walked. From the hidden life of Nazareth to the secret service of unseen kindness, from weakness made strong to Christ’s great descent in Philippians 2, this study reveals that humility is not about becoming less but becoming free. Free from striving. Free from comparison. Free ...

With the rate hand sanitizers are flying off the shelves of supermarkets, you can opt to make yours using simple over the counter, or natural plants found in the garden. If you are ready, here are 50 simple but effective sanitizer sprays to keep the infection away.

Warum müssen Haie nicht zum Zahnarzt? Warum können Flugzeuge fliegen? Wo ist der Wind, wenn er nicht bläst? Um Fragen sind Kinder fraglos nie verlegen. Eltern um Antworten dagegen oft schon. Die sprichwörtlichen Löcher, die Kinder Mamas und Papas in den Bauch fragen – hier werden sie mit klugen und lustigen Geschichten gestopft. Was beispielsweise die Haie betrifft: Deren Zähne wachsen nach. Wieder was gelernt, oder?