We live in a world that demands relentless perfection. Happy marriages and easy friendships. Bucket list–level adventures and matching family photos. But what if our actual lives don’t feel very #blessed? Might our everyday existence be worthy of a blessing too? Even an average Tuesday?

This is a newly revised edition of one of the standard introductory preaching textbooks on the market today. Beginning with a solid theological basis, veteran preacher and best-selling author Thomas G. Long offers a practical, step-by-step guide to writing a sermon. Long centers his approach around the biblical concept of witness. To be a preacher, Long posits, is to be a witness to God's work in the world - one who sees before speaking, one whose task is to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what is seen".

Should Christians be politically withdrawn, avoiding participation in politics to maintain their prophetic voice and to keep from being used as political pawns? Or should Christians be actively involved, seeking to utilize political systems to control the levers of power? In Jesus and the Powers, N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird call Christians everywhere to discern the nature of Christian witness in fractured political environments.

Every worship leader is really a pastor. In The Worship Pastor, Zac Hicks gives worship leaders a practical and biblical introduction to this essential pastoral role. Filled with engaging, illustrative stories, it is organized to address questions of theory and practice, striving to balance conversational accessibility with informed instruction. 

In The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham along with renowned sociologist Dr. Ryan Burge examine the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching—the largest and fastest religious shift in US history—to drill down to exactly why people are dechurching with respect to beliefs, behavior, and belonging.

We tend to think of Advent as the season of anticipation before Christmas—and while it is that, it's also much more. Throughout its history, the church has observed Advent as a preparation not only for the first coming of Christ in his incarnation but also for his second coming at the last day. It's also about a third coming: the coming of Christ to meet us in our present moment, to make us holy by his Word and Sacrament. Priest and writer Tish Harrison Warren explores all three of these "comings" of Christ and invites us into a deeper experience of the first season of the Christian year.

"I'm tired of helping others enjoy God―I just want to enjoy God for myself." With this painful admission, Ruth Haley Barton invites us to an honest exploration of what happens when spiritual leaders lose track of their souls. Each chapter includes a spiritual practice to ensure your soul gets the nourishment it needs. Forging and maintaining a life-giving connection with God is the best choice you can make for yourself and for those you lead.

What do you do when you start to feel a shift and must decide if it’s time to make a change? When it comes to navigating big decisions about when to stay and go, how can we know for sure when the time is right? Though we enter and exit many rooms over the course of our life—jobs, relationships, communities, life stages—knowing how and when it’s time to leave is a decision that rarely has a clear answer.

This practical, how-to book will help churches plan and implement passionate and invigorating worship. Step by step, author Lester Ruth and contributors Zachary Barnes, Andrew Eastes, Jonathan Ottaway, Adam Perez, Glenn Stallsmith, and Deborah Wong break down the process of re-thinking what the official or recommended order of worship is truly suggesting, so pastors and worship leaders can plan and lead a service of Word and Table that feels genuinely relevant and attuned to the congregation's culture.

In this classic theological treatise, the acclaimed theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman (1900-1981) demonstrates how the gospel may be read as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. Jesus is a partner in the pain of the oppressed and the example of His life offers a solution to ending the descent into moral nihilism. Hatred does not empower—it decays. Only through self-love and love of one another can God's justice prevail. 

Walk through the Bible's earliest source for the life of Jesus with scholar Amy-Jill Levine as she examines John the Baptizer, the Little Apocalypse, the Transfiguration, and several of Jesus's most notable stories and parables. The Good News of the gospel message comes alive in this book as listeners see Jesus as divine and human, powerful and weak, approachable yet mysterious. The book features an in-depth study of select passages and illuminates the Gospel in its historical context and as a source for the other gospels.

Corrymeela is Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. At its heart is a simple pattern of daily worship that is structured around meditation on the Gospels. This prayer book captures the essence of the Corrymeela prayer experience for everyone who wishes to incorporate its spirituality into their regular prayer practice.

Finding one's calling is not just about finding something we can do - it is about finding what we can't not do. "Let your life speak" is a time-honored Quaker admonition to live one's life as witness to the deepest truths one knows. But as Parker Palmer explains, those words can also mean "listen to your life, and let it tell you what your truth is."

N. T. Wright—widely regarded as the most influential commentator and interpreter of Paul—deftly unpacks this dense and sometimes elusive letter, detailing Paul's arguments and showing how it illuminates the Gospel from the promises to Abraham through the visions of Revelation. Wright takes a deep dive into Romans 8, showing how it illuminates so much else that God reveals in Scripture: God the Father, Christology, and the Spirit; Jesus' Messiahship, cross, resurrection, and ascension; salvation, redemption, and adoption; suffering and glory; holiness and hope.

Jesus died with a psalm on his lips. For millennia, humans have been shaped by the Psalms. And before the Nazis banned him from publishing, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer published this book on the Psalms. What comfort is found in the Psalter? What praise, and what challenge? What threat? In Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, discover the richness this book of Scripture held for Bonhoeffer, and learn to pray psalms along with Christ.