Books published by Abingdon Press

A collection of worship services for various special days celebrated in most African American churches. Programs provide an introduction tying the African American heritage to the occasion, with a welcome address, prayer, litany, Scripture, and suggested parament colors. Includes graduation/promotion, homecoming, Mother/Father's Days, groundbreaking and cornerstone services, mortgage-burning, Black History celebration, and others.

In this volume, Richard J. Clifford seeks to make the biblical wisdom literature intelligible to modern readers. It is easy to quote the occasional proverb, say a few things about "the problem of evil" in Job, or quote "vanity of vanities", but far more rewarding to read the whole book with an appreciative and informed eye. Opening chapters of The Wisdom Literature comment on the striking similarities between ancient and modern "wisdom literature" and on the comparable literature from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan. Thereafter, a chapter is devoted to each biblical book (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon), studying not only its content but also its rhetoric - how it engages the reader.

Divided into four sections, this volume is ideal for children's ministry, children's church, and childcare programs, and features ready-to-use games for infants from birth to 23 months, ages 2-3 years, and both younger and older preschoolers.

Spiritual Entrepreneurs tells the story of an innovative pastor and leadership team who intentionally led their church to take spiritual risks. By using six principles, renewal can come to any church. These six principles are focus on: (1) Jesus Christ, (2) the Bible, (3) new forms of worship, (4) a commitment to membership, (5) equipping lay people for ministry, and (6) spiritual leadership. Slaughter belives that church leaders are inspired to work tirelessly when they hear or learn of good-news stories. He also believes that covenants, Christianity training, and an innovative small-group structure are vital in producing high-commitment members.

Four highly respected thinkers discuss the need for a renewal of Christian ethical reflection in a dramatically and radically different world and offer their own unique points of view about how this should be done responsibly. This book is both a call for renewal in our thinking and acting and an introduction to the issues and bases for the formulation of meaningful responses to our new situation.

One special focus in this reflective overview of Wesley's theological convictions is highlighting the practical-theological dynamics of Wesley's work and suggesting possible implications for contemporary attempts to recover theology as a practical discipline. Another distinctive focus of this work is a systematic consideration of integration of theological emphases traditionally divergent in Eastern/Western Christianity.

This book provides help for parents and other people who are bereaved. Simple and appropriate, the book contains short sections that are easy to read and easy to understand.

Hoppe opens his study of the biblical idea of the poor and poverty with the socioeconomic structures in ancient Israel and Roman Palestine, then proceeds systematically to examine the biblical evidence, including the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Apocrypha, and Rabbinic literature. In the Bible, poverty is sometimes a curse and sometimes a blessing. Poverty is portrayed in both physical and metaphorical terms. Hoppe describes the various ways the Bible deals with the poor and poverty, and his primary conclusion is that the Bible never idealizes the reality of material poverty and the oppression caused by the rich. Even when the Bible speaks of the "poverty of the spirit" as a positive religious metaphor, God requires humans to seek social justice. Just as poverty is not idealized in the Bible, the poor belong to the agenda of every community of faith. Ancient Israel, early Judaism, Jesus, and the first Christians did not forget the poor, and if believers today wish to be faithful to their biblical heritage, neither can they. This book provides the practical background for scholars and is a primer for a significant theological motif. It will be useful in the classroom (in college and seminary courses in biblical ethics and social justice), as well as serious Bible study. The book includes study questions and a reading list that will help readers and students further probe history, theology, and application.