Church Parents

The last time I spoke was eight years ago when my best friend tried to kill me. I never dreamed my silence would break with a scream. Being sent to Chapel Crest after my new stepfather deemed me a heathen seemed like a blessing compared to staying with him and my mom. I was a mute demon in his eyes, and when the rod didn’t beat the evil out of me, he prayed Chapel Crest could. I envisioned the religious academy would become my sanctuary. I was wrong. So very wrong. Chapel Crest was an asylum moonlighting as a religious school.

Church Unique is written by church consultant Will Mancini - an expert on a new kind of visioning process to help churches develop a stunningly unique model of ministry that leads to redemptive movement. He guides churches away from an internal focus to emphasize participation in their community and surrounding culture. In this important audiobook, Mancini offers an approach for rethinking what it means to lead with clarity as a visionary. Mancini explains that each church has a culture that reflects its particular values, thoughts, attitudes, and actions.

Trapped. Beaten. Broken. Adam destroyed himself to save me. At first, I doubt if I have the strength to go on. But with every second that passes, I seethe and curse the Prophet. My time as a Maiden is over. I refuse to be a toy in his game any longer. But there’s always more ways for the Prophet to get to me, to use me, and to keep me under his influence. Will I be strong enough to break free?

One year ago, I walked away from everything I knew and all the lies I’d been told. For the first time in my life, I was free from the constraints put on me by power hungry men, who twist faith and devotion into fear and control. All to feed their own egos. Now my sister’s ready to leave, too, but the only one who can help me save her is a ghost from my past. One who’s haunted my thoughts more than I’d like to admit.

Based on scriptural teachings and the author's personal experiences, this book discusses principles for church growth and provides practical examples and suggestions. The discussion applies to churches of various sizes, from daughter works and home-missions efforts to assemblies with a regular attendance of over 500.

After the death of her husband, Anna Meade Harris discovered that single-parent families don't seem to have a place in the local church. Because she and her kids no longer fit into the Christian family mold, the body of Christ felt alien and strange when Anna's family needed it the most. Belonging, even in the most loving church, was a challenge.

Questions about what the Bible says about the LGBT community abound in Christian circles. Pastors and ministry leaders are flooded with inquiries. Parents and loved ones ask how to respond to a son or daughter asking about reassignment surgery or struggling with same-sex attraction. And many individuals question their own LGBT lifestyle choices.

Do you want your children to be actively serving in the local church when they turn 30 and beyond? Why They Stay can help! Much has been written about younger adults and their departure from church involvement. Concerned parents and church leaders want to know what has caused them to depart. Instead of asking why young adults are leaving the church, Parr and Crites conducted a national research project of those who grew up in church and are still serving faithfully.

Scripture calls parents to train and nurture their children's faith. How can churches best equip families to disciple their children? Family ministry expert Dr. Timothy Paul Jones gives church leaders a practical plan to equip parents to be the primary faith trainers in their children's lives, moving beyond mere programming into genuine spiritual transformation.

This book is about the various places and ways that uncertainty shows up for parents who, having left or altered the faith they once knew, now must decide what to give their kids. It’s about church attendance, Bible memorization, school choices, and sex talks. It’s about forging new paths in racial justice and creation care while the intractable voices in your head call you a pagan Marxist for doing so.

Sylvia lives in a flat on a council estate with her not-quite-husband Obe and their two young children. She dreams of buying a house on a leafy street like the one she grew up in. If she closes her eyes, she can see it all so clearly: the stripped floorboards, the wisteria growing around the door.... It's not ideal that she's about to be made redundant, or that Obe, a playworker, is never going to earn more than the minimum wage. As sleep deprivation sets in, and the RnB downstairs gets ever louder, Sylvia's life starts to unravel.

Frances Mathews doesn’t get out much since her husband died, but that doesn’t stop her from jump-starting a campaign to create a hedgehog highway in Hilltop Place—feeding stations, holes at the bottoms of gates and fences, and wild garden areas for hibernation. To Frances’s delight, her neighbours are on board. Mostly.

Learn the wisdom, patience, and love that comes from life experience through the years - learn from your elders and grow in your faith.

Ned is in IKEA with his wife when she breaks the news that it’s over. For Gemma, it happens on the way to get fish and chips, when she opens the glove compartment of her husband’s car to find a pair of women’s sunglasses that aren’t hers. For both, it’s a bolt from the blue that rocks their faith in the world, relationships, and themselves. But you can’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself, especially when there are children involved, so both—for very different reasons—join a support group for single parents. It’s fair to say they don’t exactly hit it off.