Preparing for ministry involves more than the acquisition of certain skills. The shape of a disciple's soul as he or she embarks on this journey is as important if not more so than learning how to exegete a text or engage in pastoral care. Ministry is not easy, and the preparation for this form of Christian discipleship is open to a variety of temptations, not least of which is a kind of despair over the paucity of one's own resources, or worse, the illusion that one is better off...
Parktails is an adventure that takes place in the aftermath of a great forest fire. Once the fire is extinguished, the animals of Geyser District, led by Zornova and Gondzor, are forced to confront numerous difficulties. Many of these displaced animals become despondent as a result of the loss of homes, relatives, and friends. As part of their attempts to find answers, they send parties of their representatives to oracles in search of answers and wisdom. While searching they confront a variety...
In the last twenty years, Orthodox Catholics have come to expect their art to be necessarily about beauty. They expect it always and everywhere to lift one up, to be tinged with, to linger in the dimly-lit rooms of old-moneyed Europe, to be passed around among the best families, among like-minded gnostics, generous Jansenists. But these expectations have nothing to do with reality. In fact, most of the real contributions during the postmodern period have come from blue-collar poets–influenced by...
Joseph of Nazareth, often «the forgotten man» in early Christian history, comes to life in the compelling historical novel, The Joseph Dialogues. At a time when Caesar Augustus has a firm grip on the Roman Empire, Alexios, a prominent tree farmer in a southern Syria Province, befriends Joseph, a young carpenter from Galilee. For forty years their friendship deepens and the purchase of lumber becomes secondary to their far-reaching dialogues about family, faith, and politics. Alexios, a...
"All of us ought to be ready to laugh at ourselves," wrote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, «because all of us are a little funny in our foibles, conceits, and pretensions.» Yes, to a greater or lesser extent, we all belong to Hypocrites Anonymous. Laughter helps us to preserve sanity in a crazed world; provides the lubrication we so desperately need to deal with irritating people and situations. Furthermore, it accents our need for humility by pricking the balloons of vain pretension. These...
S. Dorman began Maine Metaphor with The Green and Blue House. She continued her explorations in the Western Mountains of Maine, studying Maine's characteristic ways and natural realm, possessing the experience, studies, and journaling of rural life and creation. And she wanted to learn about the character of the people who sometimes must live a hardscrabble life. Her quest began thirty some years ago merely in living the life on moving to Maine with her family. This state of New England,...
The mighty Assyrian army has invaded the tiny kingdom of Judah to crush the rebellion against the great king Sennacherib. After a long siege, the Assyrians capture the fortified city of Lachish. They show no mercy to the vanquished people. But one girl is able to escape-Rivkah. She hides in the hills and finds refuge in the company of other survivors. In a devastated land they seek to rebuild their lives. The words of the prophet Micah-spoken to the people over many years-speak to Rivkah anew,...
If we are being honest, many of us would admit that we spend practically no time praising God when we pray. We confess and thank and ask, but we don't do so well with the praising part of prayer. It is not that we don't think God worthy of our praise, nor is it because we don't desire to praise God for his greatness and goodness. We simply do not know how to do it! Admiring and Applauding God is a practical and simple tool that helps us praise God in prayer by daily focusing our...
This work includes essays in preaching method and a series of sermons on Romans 10, a mini-treatise on preaching. It reflects on the tasks of preaching and teaching preaching as a form of communication that is critical to the life of the church. Despite the numerous existing volumes, useful texts are still needed. The quest is for methods of preparation that can be applied with consistency, and that suggest habits for labor, which can be tedious or cause tasteless outcomes. The volume is...
"These sermons were prepared from 1920 to 1924. Professor Barth preached some of them while he was minister of the Reformed congregation in Safenwil, Canton Aargau, Switzerland; others in the Reformed Church in Goettingen while he was professor of theology in the University. Pastor Thurneysen at that time preached to the congregation in Bruggen, near St. Gall, Switzerland. The sermons were written not for special occasions but for the regular Sunday morning service, and were addressed to...
These psalms grow out of a decades-long fascination with the biblical psalms, particularly the Davidic psalms, which portray the tempestuous, sometimes awful intimacy of the Divine-human relationship. In the lightning-shot Psalm-space where Divine meets human, time shatters, splits, leaps like a river, and so does the soul of the speaker, now hunting God, now hunted, now languishing in despair, now reclining in quiet triumph against the pillars of Heavens. These contemporary psalms attempt to...