Books published by Abingdon Press

This leader's guide gives for each lesson: a purpose statement, Bible background, and sections on beginning the lesson, developing the lesson, concluding the lesson and a prayer. In the developing the lesson section you will help class members look at how the scriptures were heard in Bible times, how we hear them today and how members can apply them to their life. Sessions: Genesis 2:4b-3:24 Adam and Eve Genesis 6-9 The Flood Genesis 28:10-22 Jacob's Ladder Genesis 37-45; 50:15-21 Joseph Exodus 12:1-39 The First Passover Numbers 6:22-27 The Benediction 2 Samuel 7 The Unconditional Covenant Job 19:25-27 My Redeemer Lives Psalm 121 My Help Comes From the Lord Psalm 139 Where Can I Go From Your Spirit Isaiah 40:1-11 A Voice in the Wilderness Isaiah 40:12-31 Wings Like Eagles Micah 6:6-8 What Does the Lord Require? Matthew 1:18-2:12 When Jesus Was Born Matthew 6:1-15 The Lord's Prayer Mark 2:1-12 Forgiveness of Sins Mark 14:12-25 The Last Supper Luke 4:16-30 Jesus Fulfills the Prophecy Luke 10:25-37 The Good Samaritan Luke 15:11-32 The Waiting Father John 1:1-18 The Coming of the Word John 10:1-18 The Good Shepherd Acts 2:1-36 The Day of Pentecost Philippians 2:1-11 The Mind of Christ Hebrews 11:1-3; 12:1-3 Faith and Witnesses Revelation 7:9-17 The Church Triumphant in Heaven Each session contains: Words for Bible Times (how the scriptures were heard) Words for Our Time (how we hear them today) Words for My Life (how we apply them to our life) separate Student Book #9780687071791 26 sessions / 45-60 minut

This book is a companion to Webber's "Journey to Jesus" seminars, held in over 100 American cities from 2000-2003. The "seeker" model of worship presupposes a split between what goes on during the worship service and how the church evangelizes its members into full discipleship in Jesus Christ. The basic idea is to draw the unchurched in through lively, uplifting services, and then move them into small group ministries that will lead them to a deeper understanding of the Christian life. While this model works well in some, mostly "start-up" congregations, it has been a dismal failure in traditional, established churches, many of which have had to abandon their seeker services. Robert Webber here proposes an alternative: a model of worship that emphasizes the fact that those who come to worship are at very different points in their spiritual lives. Rather than ignore these differences or gear all of worship to those already established in the faith, he argues that churches should openly recognize the stages of faith through which their members are passing, and structure their worship and ministry to celebrate those stages, openly encouraging Christians to move from spiritual infancy to maturity in Christ.

Churches stagnate, decline, and die for a number of reasons, but principally because they have forgotten that we worship, not to feel comfortable and safe, but to come into the presence of a God who leads us out into the world. They have forgotten the "cloud of witnesses" who have gone before them in the Christian faith, providing models for how they can proclaim the message of the gospel in ways that new generations can hear it. Paul Nixon calls this failure of memory "spiritual amnesia." Concerned with institutional survival and personal comfort, congregations have forgotten what previous generations of Christians have learned time and again: that the church's great challenge is to make the gospel available in new and compelling ways to those who need to hear it. In a series of sweeping insights into congregational life and contemporary culture, Nixon maps a course that will help churches remember who they are and for whom they exist.

Coyner and Anderson believe that to assimilate newcomers into the life and ministry of the congregation, the whole church system must be involved. They show how to identify and respond to visitors in a nonthreatening, yet interested way; how to share information about them with leaders of ministries and programs that would interest them most; how to help them in their decision to become church members; and how to help them understand and fulfill their own call to ministry in the congregation.

Written by well-known preachers, these sermons explore the intimate connection between body and spirit.

Why do we pray? What is God's role in prayer? What is the human role? "Prayer: Living in God's Power and Presence explores definitions of prayer, Scriptures that show Jesus' teachings and practices related to prayer, methods of and aids to prayer, the varieties of individual words, needs and emotions that form the content of prayers, ways people interpret answered or unanswered prayer, and the unity between prayer and human action.

According to The Book of Discipline, Wesley believed that the "living core of the Christian faith" is revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, "vivified" by personal experience, and confirmed by reason. The thesis of Wesley and the Quadrilateral is that the Church needs serious conversation about reappropriating the Quadrilateral in a manner that is consistent with historical Methodist identity (beginning with Wesley), a conversation that takes the church's past identity with the utmost seriousness while recognizing present and future cultural trends.

Everyone understands human pain. But many Christians have difficulty comprehending God's pain, especially God's pain in the death of Christ. Is it atonement or child abuse? To speak of God in pain, says Barbara Brown Taylor, is not only to address the biblical stories of Christ's suffering and death, but also to proclaim the God who is present in our pain. This volume of teaching sermons on suffering presents different approaches to the problem of God in pain. In each sermon, Taylor speaks with sensitivity and profound insight as she addresses pain and both its human and divine impact. TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I: Pain of Life: The Gift of Disillusionment; A Cure for Despair; Learning to Hate Your Family; Divine Anger; Feeding the Enemy; The Betrayer in Our Midst; Buried by Baptism; The Suffering Cup; Pick Up Your Cross; Unless a Grain Falls; The Dress Rehearsal; Surviving Crucifixion; Portents and Signs; and The Delivery Room. Part II: Pain of Death: Believing What We Cannot Understand; Someone to Blame; The Triumphant Victim; The Myth of Redemptive Violence; The Silence of God; The Will of God; The Suffering of God; May He Not Rest in Peace. BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR, an Episcopal priest in the diocese of Atlanta, holds the Butman Chair in Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia. She is widely sought after as a preacher and guest lecturer, and is the author of five books, including Preaching Life and Bread of Angels.She was named by Baylor University as one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English language.

This second collection of approximately 100 piggyback songs for preschool children differs from the first collection by using new texts never published before. While the texts are based on Scripture and themes such as God's love, friends, and so forth, the tunes are familiar children's songs such as "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" or "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." The words are written around a story, character, or theme, and are created to fit a popular tune. Piggyback songs are popular to use with preschool children's choirs, vacation Bible school, and children's Sunday school settings, and with teachers who are not overly musically inclined. For ages 3-7. Key Benefits: * Allows teachers to be comfortable with music because of the use of familiar tunes * Fun for children because they already know the tune of the new song * Songs included for all parts of the Bible

..." will undoubtedly stimulate debate among readers of this challenging prophetic book."

John Wesley's Life & Ethics offers a comprehensive analysis of John Wesley's personal and social ethical thought. Ronald Stone places Wesley in a social location and examines his ethical thought biographically. He argues that in the case of John Wesley, the Christian traditions provide a biblically informed deontological ethic of love. This ethic is grounded in the Christian community to form the individual and in social reform to transform the nation within the limits of Christian realism concerning human nature and social order. The volume covers Wesley's complete ethical reflection and teaching and, at appropriate points, places them in comparative perspective to other 18th century ethics and social thought contributors. Ethical topics addressed include abortion, vocation, family, money, social nature of humanity, politics, economics, imperial relations, and war and peace. This book will be a supplementary text in Ethics classes, primarily in United Methodist schools. It will also be a useful text in Methodist history classes. Methodist scholars and pastors interested in a social biography of Wesley will want to own this book.

Here are twenty tested church-growth strategies that have been implemented by church consultant William Easum with more than 4,000 church leaders across the United States and Canada. The Church Growth Handbook provides diagnostic tools, which now can be used with The Complete Ministry Audit, also by Easum.

The first volume of a 3 volume series of studies organized into 13-sessions each.> Leader material is interspersed within the book. Sessions include: What Can I Discover About Christian Faith? What Can I Know About God? How Can I Understand Jesus? What Can I Believe About the Holy Spirit? What Is the Bible? How Can the Bible Help Me? Does the Bible Mean What I think it Means? How Can I Make Sense Out of Evil? What Can I Believe About the Devil? What Do the Church and the Bible Teach About Life After Death? What Is the Second Coming? What Is Sin?>

"Mission" has become, for North American Christians, an ambiguous and often uncomfortable term. The power of the idea of mission is that it defines those specific actions of God which proclaim the gospel and build God's kingdom.

Living Grace is the most comprehensive expression of systematic theology for United Methodism to appear in the 1990's. It meets the long-felt need to provide partners in ecumenical dialog a clearer exposition of Methodism's theology, as founded upon biblical witness, apostolic heritage, the Protestant Reformation, and the Wesleyan Revival.